RunwayDue vs QuickBooks Online

If somebody already does your bookkeeping, or you want somebody to, pick QuickBooks. It is a more capable accounting system than this one and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

If the thing you actually lose sleep over is which of six proposals will close and when that money lands, RunwayDue is the closer fit. Especially if you would rather not run a proposal tool, a signing tool and an accounting tool to find out.

Leaving QuickBooks Self-Employed rather than QuickBooks Online? Intuit no longer sells it to new customers, and the QuickBooks Self-Employed comparison covers what it did and what Intuit sells in its place.

That is the whole comparison. Everything below is why.

At a glance

QuickBooks US prices and features checked 25 September 2026 on Intuit's own pages, before the introductory discount Intuit offers new subscribers, currently half price for three months.

Who each one is built for

QuickBooks is a general ledger with a business wrapped around it. Its centre of gravity is the transaction: money moves, a bank feed pulls it in, somebody categorises it, the month reconciles, the reports fall out the other end. For a business where money moves constantly and in small amounts (a shop, a trades company, anything with stock or staff), that is the right shape, and decades of refinement have gone into it. The category question underneath this one, and how to test a tool against it, is in how to choose invoicing software when your revenue is not monthly.

RunwayDue starts one step earlier, at the deal. A proposal, then an agreement, then an invoice, then the books. It is built for businesses with lumpy revenue: project work, retainers, long sales cycles, four quiet months and one where three things close at once. For that shape, the ledger is the last question you ask, not the first.

The number you need lives before the ledger

This is the real argument, and it is structural rather than a feature-list win.

A ledger records what has happened. But a project business with sixty-day terms does not fail because last month was miscategorised. It fails because nobody could see that March was thin until March. The information that would have shown it was sitting in an unsigned proposal and a retainer schedule. Neither is a transaction, so neither belongs in a ledger.

In RunwayDue they are first-class records:

• A proposal carries a win probability and an expected close date, so a pipeline is a weighted number rather than a folder of PDFs.
• A contract carries a billing type: one time, monthly retainer, quarterly, or milestones you set yourself. Every future payment becomes a dated row, so committed future revenue is a query, not a spreadsheet somebody maintains by hand.
• When a row comes due, the contract page says so, and its Bill it button opens an invoice filled in from that row for you to check and send. Client, currency, exchange rate, amount, description and tax rate all carry across, and the money lands in the same books as everything else.

Be clear about that last one: nothing bills itself off a contract while you are not looking. You still press the button. The only thing here that raises itself is a recurring invoice, which you set up on purpose.

The alternative is not that QuickBooks does this badly. It is that answering the question needs a second tool alongside it, and then the two have to agree.

Signing, and what the signature turns into

QuickBooks Online can now send documents for signature itself. Two Intuit help articles, both updated 5 August 2026, describe a proposal builder that holds one estimate and is signed by the client typing their full legal name, and a contract builder that sends an uploaded PDF for a typed signature behind an access code, with reminders, an expiry date and an electronic signature certificate. Both are listed for Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced, and neither for Free or Lite (checked 25 September 2026). A third Intuit help article, dated 21 September 2026, lets you require an e-signature on an estimate on the same four plans: the client types their full legal name on the estimate's link, pays any deposit you asked for in the same step, and QuickBooks emails a signed PDF to both of you (checked 29 September 2026). Both are listed for Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced, and neither for Free or Lite (checked 25 September 2026). The mobile app can also capture a signature in person: your customer signs on your phone with their finger, on the estimate in front of them. What the contract builder article describes ends at the signed document: it mentions no billing schedule, invoice or forecast coming out of the contract.

RunwayDue signs documents itself. The document has to be a PDF: upload one, or use one already attached to a proposal or contract; place fields for each signer; send. Each recipient gets their own private link, so each signature on the record belongs to the recipient whose link was used; whoever holds that link can use it, since nothing beyond the link checks identity except an optional access code on Business and Enterprise. When the last person signs, the signatures are burned into the original and a certificate of completion is bound to the back: who signed, the address the link went to, the time to the second, the network address, their explicit consent to sign electronically, and the SHA-256 fingerprint of the original file. One self-contained PDF, with everything a dispute would ask for already inside it.

Signing is included on Pro. On the free plan it is $2 a document, or a pack: $7 for five, $12 for ten, $25 for twenty-five (US prices, checked 11 September 2026). So a freelancer with one contract to get signed this week can pay for that one contract instead of a subscription.

What the price is buying

QuickBooks Online US prices, checked 25 September 2026 on Intuit's pricing page: Simple Start $38/month (1 user), Essentials $85/month (3 users), Plus $140/month (5 users) and Advanced $340/month (25 users). Intuit changed the Essentials, Plus and Advanced prices for renewals on or after 1 August 2026, and says Simple Start's price did not change. Its Solopreneur page also sells Free at $0 and Lite at $20/month, each for one user. New subscribers currently get half price for their first three months, so a first year costs the same as ten and a half months at the full price.

The honest reading of that gap is not "QuickBooks is expensive". It is that Simple Start's price reflects a full accounting system with bank feeds behind it, and Plus adds inventory, class and location tracking and project profitability. If you use those, the price is fair. If you do not, you are paying for a ledger you will half-fill.

RunwayDue's first read-only accountant login is free on every plan, Free included, and does not count as a seat; running an export from it needs Pro. Extra people are $6 a month each.

What the books actually do

Pro includes the cost side: vendors, bills, expenses, receipts, a chart of accounts. And seven reports: profit and loss, cash flow, balance sheet, aged receivables, aged payables, a tax summary, and income by client, which warns you when one client is half or more of your invoiced revenue.

The profit and loss runs on an accrual or a cash basis, as a switch on the page rather than a setting buried once. For a business with lumpy revenue those two answers are often wildly different and both correct: accrual counts the work you did, cash counts what hit the bank. The gap between them is usually the entire story. The other six reports do not take that switch. If you need every statement on both bases, that is a QuickBooks job, not this one.

Multi-currency is not an upgrade. Any document can be in any of nine currencies, and every report converts using the rate saved on that document the day it was issued, so history never silently re-rates at today's number. Indian GST is built in properly: CGST and SGST against IGST decided by state, checksum-validated GSTINs, per-slab summaries. In the US you set a sales-tax rate per line and we apply it; we do not look rates up by address or check nexus, and we would rather say so than approximate it.

When QuickBooks is the better choice

Genuinely, and not as throat-clearing. Take QuickBooks if any of this describes you:

• You have more than a handful of bank transactions a month. RunwayDue has no bank feeds. None. There is no way to bring transactions in from a file either, so every expense is typed in. QuickBooks connects bank and card accounts and downloads transactions automatically on every plan, though Intuit's help calls the feature limited on its Free and Lite plans. If you are reconciling two hundred card transactions a month, that single fact ends the comparison, and it should.
• You carry stock, or run payroll. RunwayDue does neither, and payroll is deliberate; it is jurisdiction-specific in a way that punishes approximation. QuickBooks Plus and above handle inventory; Intuit sells payroll as a separate subscription alongside the books.
• You need class or location tracking, or reporting across several companies. RunwayDue has one workspace, one entity, no dimensions beyond the client. QuickBooks Plus adds class and location tracking, and Advanced can group companies and run multi-company reports through Spreadsheet Sync.
• Your accountant works in QuickBooks all day. This is a better reason than most people give it credit for. An accountant who can open your file in the software they already use will do a faster, cheaper and more accurate job than one learning a new tool for one client.
• You need statutory accounts with fixed assets and depreciation schedules. RunwayDue builds its balance sheet from documents rather than hand-written journal entries, and derives equity as assets minus liabilities. It says so on the page. That is a working set of books, not a filed one.
• You need integrations. QuickBooks has a public API on the Intuit Developer platform and a large app marketplace. RunwayDue has neither: no public API, no Zapier, no marketplace.

Two more that are just true. QuickBooks has mobile apps on its paid plans, with receipt capture from your phone (checked 25 September 2026); RunwayDue has no mobile app at all. And QuickBooks has decades of track record, an ecosystem of trained bookkeepers, and reviews you can read. RunwayDue launched in August 2026. If you want to buy something proven, buy the proven thing.

What happens here if you stop paying

Stop paying RunwayDue and the workspace drops to the free plan. Every invoice, proposal, contract and signed PDF stays exactly where it is, still openable, still sendable, and you can still record payment against it. What a plan limits is mostly what you can start, though a lapse also pauses some things you set up: bills and expenses already recorded stay readable but cannot be edited or paid, reports and automatic reminders stop, and recurring schedules raise nothing until you move back up. Nothing is deleted for not paying, and if you want the lot as files on any plan, ask and we will send it.

For a business that bills in bursts, that is not a detail. A quiet quarter should not cost you your history. If Xero is on the same shortlist, the comparison against Xero is written to the same standard.

Frequently asked questions

Is RunwayDue cheaper than QuickBooks Online?

Than most of it, yes. RunwayDue Pro is $15 a month billed yearly or $17 monthly for two people. Intuit's pricing page lists QuickBooks Online Simple Start at $38 a month for one user and Essentials, Plus and Advanced at $85, $140 and $340 a month, and its Solopreneur page adds Lite at $20 and Free at $0, each for one user (all checked 25 September 2026). Intuit discounts the first months for new subscribers, currently by half for three months, so compare the bill you would actually pay. The gap also buys things RunwayDue does not have: bank feeds on every plan, limited on Free and Lite, and inventory, class and location tracking on Plus.

Does RunwayDue connect to my bank like QuickBooks?

No. RunwayDue has no bank feeds and no way to bring transactions in from a file, so every expense is typed in and reconciling means ticking each transaction by hand. QuickBooks Online connects bank and card accounts and downloads transactions automatically on every plan, though Intuit's help calls the feature limited on Free and Lite (checked 25 September 2026). At a couple of hundred card transactions a month, that difference decides it for QuickBooks.

Can QuickBooks Online send a contract for e-signature?

Yes, from Simple Start up. Two Intuit help articles, both updated 5 August 2026, describe a contract builder that sends an uploaded PDF for a typed signature behind an access code, with reminders, an expiry date and an electronic signature certificate, and a proposal builder that holds one estimate and is signed by the client typing their full legal name. Both are listed for Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced, and neither for Free or Lite; Simple Start is $38 a month (checked 25 September 2026). What the contract builder article describes ends at the signed PDF, with no billing schedule or invoice coming out of it. RunwayDue sends a PDF for signature on Pro, or on Free with a bought pack, and when that PDF belongs to a RunwayDue contract, signing it puts the contract's billing schedule into the forecast.

Does RunwayDue create invoices from a contract automatically?

No. When an instalment on a signed RunwayDue contract comes due, the contract page says so, and its button opens an invoice prefilled from that row, with the client, currency, exchange rate, amount, description and tax rate carried across, for you to save and send. Nothing bills itself off a contract. The only invoices that raise themselves are recurring invoices you set up on purpose.

Can my accountant use RunwayDue if they work in QuickBooks?

They can read everything: RunwayDue Pro and Business include a free read-only login for your accountant that never counts as a seat and can run an export. What it cannot do is put your books into QuickBooks, because RunwayDue has no integration with QuickBooks or any other accounting tool. If your accountant works in QuickBooks all day, that is a better reason to stay than most people give it credit for.

Can I use RunwayDue and QuickBooks Online together?

Yes, but nothing connects them. RunwayDue has no public API and no integration with QuickBooks, so an invoice raised in RunwayDue does not appear in QuickBooks. If the account your client pays into is connected to QuickBooks, the payment arrives there as a bank deposit to categorise. Whether that split feels clean or like double entry depends on how many invoices you send.

Can I import my QuickBooks data into RunwayDue?

No. RunwayDue has no import of any kind, from QuickBooks or anywhere else, so your clients and open invoices are entered by hand and your history stays in QuickBooks. That is worth pricing in before you switch, in hours rather than dollars.

Does RunwayDue do payroll or inventory?

Neither. Payroll is left out deliberately, because it is jurisdiction-specific in a way that punishes approximation, and RunwayDue has no stock or inventory concept at all. QuickBooks Plus and above handle inventory, and Intuit sells payroll as a separate subscription alongside the books.