QuickBooks Self-Employed Review: Great for Taxes, Meh for Everything Else

The one-line summary: QuickBooks Self-Employed does one thing really well — it tells you how much you owe in quarterly taxes. If that’s your biggest pain point, it’s worth $15/month. If you need great invoicing, good reports, or a pleasant user experience, look elsewhere.

I used QBSe for six months in 2022 between Wave and FreshBooks. Here’s the full story.

Why I Tried QuickBooks Self-Employed

After my $8K tax disaster in my first year of freelancing, I was desperate for a tool that would tell me exactly what I owed quarterly. Wave (my accounting tool at the time) tracked income and expenses perfectly but had zero tax calculation features. I was manually calculating quarterly estimates on a spreadsheet and second-guessing every number.

A CPA friend said, “Just use QuickBooks Self-Employed. It’ll calculate your quarterlies automatically.” So I signed up during one of their 50%-off promotions ($7.50/month for the first 3 months) and gave it a shot.

The Tax Features: Where QBSe Actually Shines

Let me be clear about what QBSe does well, because it does this REALLY well:

Automatic Tax Categorization

You connect your bank account, transactions flow in, and QBSe asks you to categorize each one as “Business,” “Personal,” or “Split.” Swipe right for business, left for personal. It’s almost like Tinder for expenses.

Once categorized, QBSe maps business expenses to the correct IRS Schedule C categories automatically. Office supplies go to Line 18, software subscriptions go to Line 27a, meals go to Line 24b at 50%. You don’t need to know Schedule C line numbers — QBSe handles it.

Quarterly Tax Estimates

This is the killer feature. Based on your year-to-date income and expenses, QBSe calculates:

• Your estimated federal income tax
• Your self-employment tax (the 15.3% that kills freelancers)
• Your estimated quarterly payment amount

It updates in real time. Land a new $5,000 project? Your quarterly estimate adjusts. Claim a big expense? It adjusts again. At any point, you can open the app and see “you should pay approximately $3,847 this quarter.”

How accurate is it? In my six months using it, QBSe’s estimates were within $150 of what my accountant independently calculated. That’s impressive for an automated tool.

Mileage Tracking

If you drive for business (client meetings, coworking space, conferences), QBSe has built-in GPS mileage tracking. Turn it on when you start driving, it logs the miles, and it calculates the deduction using the IRS standard mileage rate ($0.70/mile in 2026).

I don’t drive much for business, so I didn’t use this heavily. But for freelancers who do — photographers, consultants who visit clients, etc. — this alone could save hundreds in deductions you might otherwise forget to claim.

TurboTax Integration

At tax time, QBSe exports directly to TurboTax Self-Employed. One click, all your data transfers. Schedule C is pre-populated. If you use TurboTax, this integration saves 2-3 hours of data entry.

The Invoicing: Not Great

Here’s where QBSe falls apart for freelancers who care about looking professional.

The invoicing is… basic. You can create invoices, send them to clients, and accept payments. That’s about it. Compared to FreshBooks or even Wave:

• Templates are boring. One basic template with minimal customization. Your logo, your colors, but the layout is fixed and uninspiring.
• No proposals or estimates. You can’t send a proposal and convert it to an invoice.
• No deposit invoicing. Can’t create a 50/50 split invoice for milestone payments.
• Reminders are manual. No automatic follow-up on overdue invoices. You have to remember to check and manually send reminders.
• No client portal. Clients can’t log in to see their invoice history.

When I was using QBSe, I actually kept Wave active just for invoicing and used QBSe only for tax tracking. Running two financial tools simultaneously is not ideal, but QBSe’s invoicing was that insufficient for my needs.

The User Interface: Designed by Accountants

QBSe’s interface feels like it was designed by people who think in debits and credits, not people who think in projects and clients. Everything is organized around accounting concepts rather than freelancer workflows.

Example: To see if a specific client has paid all their invoices, you’d think you’d go to a “Clients” section. Nope. You go to “Invoices,” filter by client, and manually check statuses. In FreshBooks, you click the client name and see everything — invoices, payments, projects, time logs — in one place.

The mobile app is similarly functional-but-unfriendly. The home screen shows your tax estimate (useful) and recent transactions (useful) but navigating to anything else requires multiple taps through menus.

I’m not saying QBSe is hard to use. It’s not. It’s just not enjoyable to use. And when you’re doing something tedious like bookkeeping, the tool’s UX matters more than you’d think.

Pricing: Creeping Upward

QBSe costs $15/month in 2026. That’s up from $10/month when it launched and $12/month in 2023. Intuit (QuickBooks’ parent company) has a reputation for gradual price increases across all their products, and QBSe is no exception.

They frequently offer promotional pricing — $7.50/month for the first 3 months is common. Take the deal, but budget for the full $15 once the promo ends.

Is $15/month worth it for the tax features alone? For your first year of freelancing, probably yes. The tax estimates provide peace of mind that’s hard to put a dollar value on, but if it prevents even one underpayment penalty ($200-800), it’s paid for itself.

After year one? Once you have a year of tax data, you can calculate your own quarterly estimates pretty easily with a spreadsheet. At that point, the $15/month becomes harder to justify unless you really value the automatic calculations.

The Upgrade Trap

Here’s something nobody warns you about: QBSe and QuickBooks Online (QBO) are different products with different architectures. If your business grows and you need real accounting features — chart of accounts, project tracking, bill pay, inventory — you can’t seamlessly upgrade from QBSe to QBO.

You can migrate, but it’s messy:

• Not all historical data transfers cleanly
• You’ll likely need to re-categorize some transactions
• Your accountant may need to reconcile discrepancies
• The learning curve for QBO is steep (it’s a full accounting platform)

This is the biggest strategic risk of starting with QBSe. You might end up locked into the Intuit ecosystem and face a painful migration when you outgrow it.

My recommendation: If you think you’ll need full accounting within 2 years (growing beyond solo, adding subcontractors, forming an LLC), skip QBSe and start with FreshBooks or Xero. If you’re confidently staying solo, QBSe is fine.

Who Should Use QuickBooks Self-Employed

• Brand new freelancers who are anxious about taxes and want automated quarterly estimates
• Freelancers with simple invoicing needs (few clients, no proposals, no deposits)
• TurboTax users who want seamless tax filing integration
• Freelancers who drive a lot for business (the mileage tracking is legit)
• Anyone who tried doing taxes manually and failed — QBSe is training wheels, and there’s no shame in needing them

Who Should Skip It

• Freelancers who need professional invoicing — FreshBooks or Wave are miles ahead
• Freelancers planning to grow — the upgrade path to QBO is rough
• Anyone already comfortable calculating quarterly taxes — you’re paying $15/mo for something a spreadsheet does
• Freelancers who value good UX — the interface is functional, not pleasant

My Six Months: The Timeline

Month 1-2: Loved the tax estimates. Finally felt confident about quarterly payments. Invoicing frustrated me but I kept Wave for that.

Month 3: Realized I was paying for two tools (QBSe + Wave for invoicing). Started looking for something that did both well.

Month 4-5: Tested FreshBooks. Better invoicing, better UX, but no tax estimates. Decided the invoicing improvement was worth losing the auto tax calculation.

Month 6: Cancelled QBSe. Built a simple quarterly tax spreadsheet based on my first year’s actual tax rate. Never looked back.

The irony: QBSe taught me how to calculate quarterly taxes by showing me the formula for six months. Once I understood it, I didn’t need the tool anymore. It was the best $90 I’ve spent on financial education.

The Bottom Line

QuickBooks Self-Employed is a tax estimation tool with invoicing bolted on. If tax anxiety is your primary problem, it solves that problem well for $15/month. If invoicing efficiency is your primary problem, look at FreshBooks or Wave.

Most freelancers will eventually outgrow QBSe — either they learn to calculate taxes themselves (like I did) or they need better invoicing/accounting. But for the first 6-12 months of freelancing, when everything about self-employment taxes is new and terrifying, QBSe provides genuine peace of mind.

Just know it’s probably not your forever tool. And that’s okay. The best tool is the one that serves your current needs, not the one you’ll hypothetically need in three years.