8 best CRMs with QuickBooks integration: key features and pros and cons, explained

QuickBooks is a household name among accountants, and for good reason: it helps them track all the financial activity of their clients with ease. However, there is one thing QuickBooks cannot do: serve as your customer relationship management (CRM) platform. 

Sure, accountants, bookkeepers and tax preparers can use QuickBooks to track business income and expenses, prepare taxes and generate financial reports.  And yet every business has growth as its target, and growth comes with more clients. QuickBooks cannot help you acquire those.

So partnering with a CRM that can bring you more clients — or manage your current ones effectively — is the way to go. In the next eight minutes, we’ll go over eight of the most popular CRMs that integrate with QuickBooks to help your company scale — and explain what the benefits of these CRMs are.

5 reasons why integrating QuickBooks with a CRM is a good idea for your business

1. It helps identify potential customers

QuickBooks only stores data, such as transactions, for your clients. However, it does nothing to help you nurture leads, or even identify who those leads might be — while a CRM does both. In QuickBooks you only work with the numbers you have, and even that comes with limitations. 

2. It analyzes the data at hand

QuickBooks works more like a spreadsheet: it helps organize data but it doesn’t do much else with it. You won’t get any useful insights from looking at QuickBooks — but you will with a CRM. CRMs have systems in place to help you track the trends you would otherwise miss — they also give you suggestions about your next steps.

3. It improves the existing customer experience

This is a direct consequence of data analysis. You can learn all you need about the  preferences of your customers, keep track of your interactions with them and zero in on their current stage of the sales’ cycle. This, in turn, allows your company to tailor your offerings specifically to those customers.

4. It eliminates duplicate data

You only need to enter client data once — in your CRM — and it will automatically be added to your QuickBooks account. This cuts down on time spent manually adding that data everywhere, as well as reduces the number of errors made.

5. It helps with the information overload

In short, you can divide your customers into two groups: your actual customers and your prospects. The former will go into your QuickBooks account. Because QuickBooks does not have any functionality to store leads separately, they will have to be stored in the CRM itself.

How we evaluated CRMs

• Pricing: big and small firms have different financial muscles to stretch. You are likely operating on a budget too, so pricing structure, as well as a free trial, is pivotal
• Functionality: some solutions are more intricate than others — and it’s not necessarily tied to their respective prices
• Ease of integration: some offer direct and straightforward integration with QuickBooks, others operate through third-party apps like Zapier and are harder to configure
• User reviews: we checked all the usual suspects — Capterra, G2, GetApp, SoftwareAdvice and (occasionally) QuickBooks’ own reviews — to gauge the opinions of actual users on popular CRMs

8 top CRMs you should consider for your firm

1. TaxDome

TaxDome’s CRM is one of its most highly-ranked aspects, and it’s just one part of what the practice management platform offers. On top of a centralized hub to manage your clients, it is a place to safely store and exchange documents, a tool to automate repetitive admin tasks, and a quick & easy way to contact your clients. And that’s before you get to electronic invoices, e-signatures and a convenient mobile app.

TaxDome’s CRM is powerful too. Here’s what it brings to the table:

• A direct integration with QuickBooks (not via Zapier)
• The ability to add as many contacts as you need (without changes in pricing)
• Bulk actions for clients: send messages and emails, and group clients as you wish
• Flexible import tools: TaxDome’s implementation team is available to help you import  client data at no extra charge — by mapping all the fields the way you want
• The ability to link contacts and accounts: your client account can have several contacts (e.g. for married couples) and one contact can have multiple accounts (personal, business, etc.)

User ratings: the app has a 4.7+/5 rating with 8,000+ reviews on Capterra, GetApp and SoftwareAdvice

Pricing: there’s a Lite plan that costs $25 per month for individual accountants, bookkeepers and tax preparers. There’s also a Pro plan that comes with extra functionality (such as recurring invoices) and costs $50 per month per user. 

Best for: small practices looking for a comprehensive practice management software

2. Insightly

One of the most popular solutions on the market, Insightly has a CRM that supports the QuickBooks online integration. Apart from the integration, Insightly offers a lot of features for managing your client relationships and identifying leads. Here are some of the key ones:

• The ability to build sales pipelines, manage leads and opportunities
• Automated workflows, which relieve your employees of admin tasks
• Real-time performance insights, which you can quickly visualize
• Comprehensive reports on your customers

User ratings: A 4/5 rating on Capterra, GetApp and SoftwareAdvice to the tune of just under 2000 reviews

Pricing: there are 3 plans (Plus, Professional, Enterprise), which cost $29, $49 and $99 per user per month respectively. The first two come with a free trial. Keep in mind some more advanced features (adding more than 2 users, viewing real-time insights) are not available with the cheapest subscription option.

Best for: companies that need next-level project management functionality

3. Salesforce

Salesforce’s CRM is a very powerful tool that is integrated with a bunch of apps you likely use on a daily basis: Google Cloud, Slack, LinkedIn and Jira are among them. It is also compatible with QuickBooks (otherwise it wouldn’t be on the list!) but it’s not a direct integration: Zapier is involved.

Here are some of the main features Salesforce CRM offers:

• A complete view of your customers’ profiles, including purchase history, preferences and more
• Easy access for all your team members (it’s a cloud-based solution)
• Lead and opportunity management
• A built-in AI called Einstein for data analysis

User ratings: a rating of 4.4 on all major marketplaces: Capterra, GetApp and SoftwareAdvice

Pricing: there are four subscription options (called Essentials, Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited). These cost $25, $75, $150 and $300 per user per month respectively

Best for: large firms looking for a cloud-based solution to work from

4. Method

Method humbly position themselves as “the best QuickBooks CRM on the market.”  Their entire value is tied up in how well it plays with QuickBooks — there is both a huge upside and a huge downside to this approach, for one simple reason: while the two-way QuickBooks integration is a rarity for other CRMs, it comes at the cost of some other functionality.

Here are some of CRM’s key features:

• A two-way integration with QuickBooks — any version of it, even desktop
• Workflow automation features to simplify lead management, invoicing and more
• Easy sales funnel tracking to convert leads into customers

User ratings: 4.1 based on 95 reviews on Capterra, GetApp and SoftwareAdvice

Pricing: $44 (Pro plan) per user per month is the cheapest if you want a QuickBooks integration. The next (and most advanced, Enterprise) plan stands at $74 per user per month. There’s a also a Contact Management plan option, which will set you back $25 per user per month

Best for: firms whose first priority is the QuickBooks integration — and not a standalone CRM

5. Zoho

Zoho is a powerful CRM and one of the more affordable alternatives on the market: plans start at just $14 per user per month. However, the first two plans (Standard and Professional) lack some functions you might consider key: analytics and customer segmentation.

Its QuickBooks integration is neither free, nor particularly in demand: it was released 6 years ago and the last review was written in 2021. The integration’s rating also hovers at just 3 out of 5.

Here are some of Zoho’s key features:

• Workflow automations for your sales and marketing teams
• Lead, deal and contract management
• Customizable look and feel of the entire CRM
• Path Finder and Journey Builder tools to better understand customers and predict their behavior
• A built-in AI assistant (Zia) that helps automate processes and provide insights

User ratings: a 4.2/5 rating on Capterra, GetApp and SoftwareAdvice

Pricing: there are 4 plans (Standard, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate) worth $14, $23, $40 and $52 per user per month

Best for: companies who need advanced customization options and are ready to spend some time on setting up and learning the system

6. Freshsales

Freshsales is part of the Freshworks’ ecosystem (you might have heard of Freshdesk!), which aims, as they put it, to“shorten your sales cycle with context-driven decisions.” One of its more interesting features is Freddy AI — a virtual assistant that complements your CRM with real-time insights about customers, and doubles as a chatbot to take some heat off your customer service team.

Here are some other key features Freshsales offers:

• AI-powered insights to help close sales deals
• An activity timeline to track customer interactions between teams
• Seamless communication between channels, including chat, sms, email and phone
• Integrations with other Freshworks services (such as Freshdesk) to help paint the full picture of your customers

User ratings: an average of 4.5 with 500+ reviews on Capterra, GetApp and SoftwareAdvice

Pricing: there are 3 plans — Growth, Pro and Enterprise — worth $15, $39 and $69 per user per month respectively

Best for: small teams who already use Freshworks other products and don’t need an in-depth QuickBooks integration

7. HubSpot

HubSpot is a leading CRM on the market and for good reason: it offers great flexibility based on your needs. The way it works is you get a free CRM (with limited functionality) and then buy an add-on: marketing, sales, customer service or operations.

This is somewhat of a downside: you have to be very specific about what you want and be ready that other functions will only be available on other subscriptions. However, you are likely to find everything you need to track leads and convert customers on the Sales plan.

Here are some of its key features:

• Deal pipelines
• Custom user permissions
• Reporting dashboard
• Conversation bots
• Sales automations

User ratings: 4.5 with just over 3,600 reviews on Capterra, GetApp and SoftwareAdvice

Pricing: there’s a free plan, a Starter plan that costs $18 per month (and includes 2 users), while a Professional plan is a whopping $450 monthly (5 users included). Yes, that’s still considered to be a plan for small businesses.

Best for: large firms that need advanced CRM capabilities — without a QuickBooks integration

8. Nutshell

Nutshell’s CRM is a bit like HubSpot in the sense that you get the basic CRM and can then purchase a specific add-on — but only for marketing. However, Nutshell’s plans are a lot more affordable and their pricing structure a lot more straightforward.

The difference between basic (Foundation) and advanced (Pro) subscription is also clear-cut and the integration with QuickBooks is decent, although not the level of what Method offers.

Here are some of Nutshell’s key features:

• Unlimited contacts and data storage
• Free data migration help
• Easy lead pipeline management with four different views (list, map, chart, board)
• Built-in email marketing with ready templates (a separate add-on you have to pay for)

User ratings: a 4.2 with just under 400 reviews on Capterra, GetApp and SoftwareAdvice

Pricing: the Foundation plan will set you back $16 per user per month, the Pro plan costs $42, while the cost of the marketing add-on will vary depending on your number of contacts

Best for: teams looking for a no-frills CRM and don’t need an in-depth QuickBooks integration

A comparison of the best CRMs with a QuickBooks integration

Wrapping up

There are many CRMs on the market that offer rich opportunities alongside a QuickBooks integration. Getting a CRM for your business is a worthwhile investment: a potent system will help you identify leads, analyze client data, improve the customer experience and eliminate duplicate entries.

When choosing a CRM, pay attention to pricing, functionality, ease of integration, user reviews and, if you have an accounting, bookkeeping or tax firm, to how well a particular CRM plays with QuickBooks. Some CRMs are slanted more towards managing leads and clients (like Insightly), others give their all to the QuickBooks integration (like Method), while some offer a complete accounting solution for tax firms (like TaxDome).