When you do, you’ll notice the difference immediately as QuickBooks Online offers a streamlined user interface, while QuickBooks Desktop relies on a flow-chart based interface. Whether you’re thinking about converting to QuickBooks Online or switching from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online, your first step should be to take a long look at both applications. QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop are both excellent small business accounting software applications, both offering complete double-entry accounting as well as automatic processing of closing entries. Join us as we compare QuickBooks Online to its desktop counterpart in an effort to help you decide between these two popular small business accounting applications. While people may assume that QuickBooks Online is simply the cloud version of QuickBooks Desktop, in reality, the two products are very different.