QuickBooks Online is genuinely excellent accounting software — but it wasn't built for makers who manufacture products from raw materials. If you need recipe costing, material tracking, and real COGS by product, you need something built for that. The good news? You don't have to choose one or the other.
No credit card required. Cancel any time.
Trusted by makers worldwide
Heads up: We make Craftybase, so we're obviously biased. We've tried to be fair below — including where QuickBooks Online is the better choice. Most of our customers actually use both tools together, and that's often the smartest setup.
These aren't competing tools — they solve different problems. QuickBooks tracks your money. Craftybase tracks what goes into making your products. Most makers get the best results using both.
Best setup for most makers: Craftybase for production + QuickBooks Online for accounting. Craftybase calculates your true COGS, then syncs it directly to QuickBooks.
Credit where it's due — there's a reason millions of businesses rely on it.
QuickBooks Online handles double-entry bookkeeping, bank reconciliation, expense categorization, and financial reporting better than almost anything else in the small business market. Your accountant already knows how to use it.
When tax season rolls around, QuickBooks has your income, expenses, and deductions already categorized. Give your accountant direct access to your books — no more emailing spreadsheets back and forth.
If you sell wholesale or do custom orders, QuickBooks handles professional invoicing, payment tracking, and automated reminders. It integrates with Stripe and Square for seamless payment collection.
Thousands of apps connect to QuickBooks. Banks, payment processors, payroll providers, and yes — inventory tools like Craftybase. Whatever your business needs, there's probably a QuickBooks integration for it.
"Hands down the best bookkeeping software for small business. The bank feeds and auto-categorization save me hours every month." — Capterra reviewer, small business owner
QuickBooks was designed for service businesses and retailers — not for people who manufacture products from raw materials.
QuickBooks tracks products, but it doesn't understand that your lavender soap is made from olive oil, coconut oil, lye, essential oils, and packaging — each with its own cost that changes when your supplier raises prices. Without recipes, you can't calculate cost per unit, which means you're guessing at prices. And guessing is how makers end up busy but broke.
QuickBooks can track finished products on a shelf, but it doesn't track the raw materials that go into making them. You can't see that you have 5kg of soy wax, 200ml of fragrance oil, and 50 wicks — and that's enough for exactly 25 candles. Makers end up running out of materials mid-production or over-ordering because they can't see what they actually have.
When you manufacture a batch of products, materials should deduct automatically and finished goods should increase. QuickBooks doesn't do this — there's no concept of "I made 50 bars of soap from these materials." You'd have to manually adjust every inventory item after every production run, which is exactly the kind of busywork that makes makers give up on tracking.
QuickBooks can record COGS as a journal entry — but it doesn't calculate COGS from your actual materials, labour, and overhead. For a maker, COGS should update automatically when you manufacture a batch. In QuickBooks, you (or your accountant) have to figure out that number yourself, usually at the end of each month or quarter. Most makers resort to spreadsheets — and that's where the errors creep in.
QuickBooks Online only includes inventory tracking on the Plus plan ($115/mo) and Advanced ($275/mo). The Solopreneur ($20/mo), Simple Start ($38/mo), and Essentials ($75/mo) plans don't include inventory at all. And even on Plus, you're getting basic product-level tracking — not the material and manufacturing features a maker needs.
"QuickBooks Online inventory isn't the best... I needed a way to track by both wholesale and retail, manage inventory images, and get more pricing flexibility." — Capterra reviewer
Comparing what each tool is built to do. These aren't the same category of software — that's the point.
| Craftybase | QuickBooks Online | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Makers who manufacture products | All small businesses (accounting) |
| Starting price | $24/mo (Pro) | $20/mo (Solopreneur, no inventory) |
| Inventory tracking starts at | $24/mo (all plans) | $115/mo (Plus plan) |
| Recipe / BOM costing | ✔️ Multi-level with cost roll-up | Not available |
| Raw material tracking | ✔️ Materials, components, products | Finished products only (Plus+) |
| Manufacturing / batch production | ✔️ Auto-deduction on manufacture | Not available |
| Automatic COGS calculation | ✔️ From actual materials + labour | Manual journal entries |
| Schedule C / tax-ready COGS | ✔️ Direct reporting | ✔️ With manual COGS entry |
| Bookkeeping & accounting | Not included — focused on production | ✔️ Full double-entry accounting |
| Invoicing | Not included | ✔️ Professional invoicing |
| Bank reconciliation | Not included | ✔️ Automatic bank feeds |
| Etsy integration | ✔️ All plans | Via third-party apps |
| Shopify / Amazon / Square sync | ✔️ All plans | ✔️ Via apps and integrations |
| QuickBooks sync | ✔️ COGS & inventory valuation push | — |
| Free trial | 14 days, no credit card | 30 days (or 50% off first 3 months) |
QuickBooks Online pricing from quickbooks.intuit.com as of March 2026. Craftybase pricing reflects current published rates.
You don't have to choose. Most of our customers run Craftybase alongside QuickBooks Online — and it's a genuinely better system than either tool alone.
Add your materials, set your quantities, and see your cost per unit immediately. When a supplier raises prices, every product cost updates across the board. No spreadsheet formulas to maintain, no manual recalculation. You'll always know whether you're making money on every product — not just hoping you are.
QuickBooks tracks finished products. Craftybase tracks everything that goes into making them: raw materials, components, packaging, and finished goods. When you manufacture a batch, materials deduct automatically and finished products increase. No manual adjustments, no inventory counts after every production run.
QuickBooks connects to bank accounts and payment processors. Craftybase connects to where you actually sell: Etsy, Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, Wix, Square, PayPal, and Faire. Orders sync automatically, stock adjusts across channels, and COGS updates without manual entry. If you sell at craft fairs, your website, and a couple of marketplaces, everything flows into one system.
QuickBooks is the right choice for plenty of businesses. Here's when you probably don't need Craftybase.
If you're reselling finished goods — buying products wholesale and selling them retail — QuickBooks' built-in inventory tracking (Plus plan) handles that well. You don't need recipe costing or manufacturing tracking because you're not making anything from raw materials.
Freelancers, consultants, contractors — if you're billing for time and expertise rather than selling physical products, QuickBooks is exactly what you need. No inventory to manage, no materials to track. Just income, expenses, and invoices.
If you make 2-3 products from a handful of materials and you're comfortable calculating costs in your head, QuickBooks' basic inventory plus a simple spreadsheet might be enough. Once you're past 10-15 products or your materials list grows, that approach starts to break down.
If you don't have any bookkeeping system at all, QuickBooks should probably come first. Get your income and expenses sorted, set up your Chart of Accounts, connect your bank. Then add Craftybase for the production side when you're ready. It'll sync right in.
QuickBooks has five tiers. Only the top two include any inventory. Here's how Craftybase compares.
| Craftybase | QuickBooks Online | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry tier | Pro — $24/mo | Solopreneur — $20/mo (no inventory) |
| Cheapest plan with inventory | Pro — $24/mo | Plus — $115/mo |
| Recipe / BOM costing | ✔️ All plans | Not available on any plan |
| Material-level tracking | ✔️ All plans | Not available on any plan |
| Batch manufacturing | ✔️ All plans | Not available on any plan |
| Automatic COGS | ✔️ From materials + labour | Manual journal entries only |
| Bookkeeping / accounting | Not included | ✔️ Full accounting on all plans |
| Etsy order sync | ✔️ All plans | Via third-party apps |
| Free trial | 14 days, no credit card | 30 days (or 50% off for 3 months) |
QuickBooks Online pricing from quickbooks.intuit.com as of March 2026. Craftybase pricing reflects current published rates. Many makers use both tools together for $44–$164/mo total depending on plans chosen.
Import orders automatically and sync stock levels across all your channels — so you never oversell or run out of stock.
I'm impressed with the ability to track minute quantities of essential oils and other materials used in multiple products. I love the conversion from purchase to tracking units, and love the ability to make components and recipes.
Craftybase makes it easy to create my formulas and automatically calculates what I need to use, when to re-order, how much it costs me to make my products, and so much more. I literally could not function without it!
This report makes tax time almost enjoyable. No more lists and spreadsheets — I just run the report for the time I need, and it's done!
Craftybase has given me the tools amp; resources to accurately track my materials, recipes, and inventory. I love that I can build out my recipes and make adjustments to see my cost in real time.
We do not know what we would do without this application. Spreadsheets and confusing documents is a thing of the past now!
I love that the app keeps track of how much material I have on hand and how much it costs me exactly… This allows me to really know how much my products cost me to make and how much I should charge.
My favourite feature is the software's ability to calculate the cost of our products in real-time, taking into account the increase in the costs of raw materials.
Craftybase is an instrumental part of our bookkeeping. Having a business that manufactures products with countless raw materials, Craftybase keeps us organized and helps us have a clear picture of the health of our business.
I love that Craftybase keeps track of the cost of materials over time including shipping. As costs creep up I can make sure my product prices reflect that reality.
Craftybase allows us to be lean with our materials inventory so we won't have any overage of inventory. It provides a great easy-to-use analysis of COGS to help us better manage our margins.
Craftybase helps me keep my sales automatically entered into my system so that I can get on with doing the fun part: the creative products I make!
It's super important that we can record and trace ingredient lots and production batches. Craftybase has made this process streamlined and easy to stay organized.
The manufacturing side QuickBooks doesn't cover
If you're a maker, there's a gap between "I sold $5,000 worth of candles this month" and "I know exactly what each candle cost me to make, how much material I used, and what my real profit margin is." QuickBooks gives you the first number. Craftybase gives you the rest.
That's not a knock on QuickBooks — it's genuinely great at what it does. It's just not built to understand that your lavender candle uses 180g of soy wax, 15ml of fragrance oil, one wick, and a glass jar. Craftybase is.
No — and it's not trying to be. Craftybase handles inventory, manufacturing, and product costing for makers. QuickBooks handles accounting, bookkeeping, and tax preparation. Most of our customers use both tools together: Craftybase calculates their true COGS and inventory valuations, then syncs those numbers directly to QuickBooks for clean financial reporting.
Yes. Craftybase integrates directly with QuickBooks Online to sync COGS and inventory valuations. You can also push purchase orders as bills to QuickBooks. This means your books stay accurate without manual journal entries — Craftybase does the manufacturing math, QuickBooks records the financial result.
QuickBooks Online Plus ($115/mo) includes basic inventory for finished products — tracking quantities on hand and reorder points. But it can't track raw materials separately, doesn't support recipes or bills of materials, and doesn't handle manufacturing. If you make products from raw materials, you'll need a dedicated tool like Craftybase for the production side.
A common setup is Craftybase Pro ($24/mo) + QuickBooks Simple Start ($38/mo) = $62/mo total. That gives you full manufacturing and inventory tracking plus solid bookkeeping — less than QuickBooks Plus alone ($115/mo), and with far better production features. If you need more from either tool, plans scale up independently.
QuickBooks records COGS as a manual journal entry — you or your accountant have to calculate the number first. Craftybase calculates COGS automatically from your actual material costs, labour, and overhead every time you manufacture a batch. It then syncs that number to QuickBooks so your books are accurate without spreadsheet calculations.
14 days free, no credit card, no sales call. Set up your first recipe, import your materials, and see your real cost per product — usually within the first session.
No credit card required
Intuit and QuickBooks are registered trademarks of Intuit Inc. Used with permission.
