The enhancement book
Chapter 5
5
SQL-Ledger, feature by feature, against the QuickBooks ladder
Chapters 1 to 4 asked what QuickBooks has that we lack. This chapter asks the opposite: for every screen in the SQL-Ledger menu and every addition Ledger123 has made, which is the lowest QuickBooks Online tier that offers it — and which have no tier at all. It is the page to hand a prospect who is choosing a plan.
5.1How to read the tables
Each row is a menu entry from menu.ini, or a
capability that lives inside one, in the order the menu presents them. The mark is
the cheapest tier at which QuickBooks Online does substantially the same thing; where
QuickBooks does it in a weaker form the note says so. No tier means not in
QuickBooks Online at any price, including Advanced; Add-on means sold
separately (payroll, payments, the inventory add-on).
Simple Start Essentials Plus Advanced Add-on No tier
5.2Selling
| SQL-Ledger | Lowest tier | Note |
|---|---|---|
| AR | ||
| Add Transaction (non-item receivable) | Simple Start | Sales receipt or invoice. |
| Sales Invoice | Simple Start | |
| Credit Note, Credit Invoice | Simple Start | Credit memo and refund receipt. |
| Several AR control accounts | No tier | One Accounts Receivable account per currency. |
| Reports: Transactions, Outstanding | Simple Start | Invoice List, Open Invoices. |
| Reports: AR Aging | Simple Start | Summary at Simple Start; the detail report is Essentials. |
| Reports: Reminder (dunning letters, three levels) | Simple Start | Automatic reminders, one message; no escalation levels. |
| Reports: Tax collected, Non-taxable | Simple Start | Sales Tax Liability. |
| Generate Sales Invoices from orders | Plus | Sales orders arrived in Plus in 2026; one at a time. |
| Consolidate Sales Invoices | No tier | Several open invoices merged into one document. |
| Customer statements | Simple Start | |
| POS | ||
| Sale, Open, Receipts (counter sales with drawer and workstation) | No tier | QuickBooks Point of Sale was discontinued in 2023; Intuit now refers to Shopify POS. |
| Customers | ||
| Add Customer, Search, History | Simple Start | |
| Credit limit shown and checked on entry | No tier | |
| Customer-specific prices and price groups | Plus | Price rules, still labelled beta. |
| Documents in the customer’s language | No tier | Templates are single-language. |
| Several ship-to addresses per customer | No tier | One shipping address on the record; edited per invoice. |
| Quotations | ||
| Quotation | Simple Start | Estimate. |
| RFQ (request for quotation to a vendor) | No tier | |
5.3Buying and paying
| SQL-Ledger | Lowest tier | Note |
|---|---|---|
| AP and Vendors | ||
| Add Transaction, Vendor Invoice | Essentials | Basic bill entry is in Simple Start since 2026; tracking, ageing and scheduling are Essentials. |
| Debit Note, Debit Invoice | Essentials | Vendor credit. |
| Reports: Transactions, Outstanding, AP Aging, Tax paid | Essentials | |
| Add Vendor, Search, History | Simple Start | |
| Cash | ||
| Receipt, Receipts (many customers in one pass) | Simple Start | Receive payment is one customer at a time. |
| Payment, Payments (many vendors in one pass) | Essentials | Pay bills. |
| Void and Reissue Check, Void and Reissue Receipt | Simple Start | Void only; reissue is a new transaction. |
| FX Adjustment (revalue open foreign items) | Essentials | Home currency adjustment. |
| Reconciliation | Simple Start | Against an imported statement there; against a typed balance here, until chapter 1 item 1. |
| Reports: Receipts, Payments, Reconciliation | Simple Start | |
| Vouchers | ||
| Payable, Payment, Payment Reversal and GL batches, entered then posted by a second person | Advanced | Bill approval workflows are the nearest thing; there is no batch concept. |
| Reports: All Batches and by type | No tier | |
| Order Entry | ||
| Sales Order | Plus | Since January 2026, Plus and Advanced only. |
| Purchase Order | Plus | |
| Reports: Sales Orders, Purchase Orders | Plus | |
| Reports: Requirements (what to buy to fill orders) | No tier | Advanced auto-raises a PO at the reorder point; no requirements view. |
| Generate Purchase Orders from sales orders | Plus | Convert a sales order to a PO, one at a time. |
| Consolidate Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Orders to Invoice | No tier | |
| Partial shipment and backorder on a line | No tier | Partial receipt on a PO is by editing the bill. |
| Work orders | No tier | |
| Logistics | ||
| Merchandise: Ship, Receive | Plus | Item receipts since 2026; there is no shipping step, an invoice is the shipment. |
| Assembly BOM Transfer, Warehouse Transfer | No tier | One stock location; no assemblies. |
5.4Goods, services, projects
| SQL-Ledger | Lowest tier | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Goods & Services | ||
| Add Part (stocked item with on-hand and cost) | Plus | Or the $40 inventory add-on on lower tiers. |
| Add Service | Simple Start | |
| Add Kit (sold as one line, components relieved) | Plus | Bundle, up to fifty items, no nesting. |
| Add Assembly (bill of material, stocked as a finished good) | No tier | Desktop Enterprise only. |
| Add Labor/Overhead (absorbed into assemblies) | No tier | |
| Add Group | Simple Start | Categories. |
| Add Pricegroup | Plus | Price rules. |
| Stock Assembly (build from components) | No tier | |
| Stock Adjustment | Plus | |
| Reports: All Items, Parts, Services, Groups, Pricegroups, Kits | Plus | Products and services list; inventory reports. |
| Reports: Assemblies, Components | No tier | |
| Reports: Supply / Demand, Requirements | No tier | Low-stock alert only. |
| Changeup (bulk price and cost change by percentage) | Advanced | Via Spreadsheet Sync, a thousand at a time. |
| Translations of descriptions and groups | No tier | |
| Serial number, lot and expiry on a line | No tier | |
| Reorder point | Plus | |
| Barcodes on labels | No tier | |
| Vendor part numbers, lead times and costs per vendor | No tier | One preferred vendor. |
| Projects & Jobs | ||
| Projects: Add, Reports (Projects, Transactions) | Plus | |
| Time Cards, Time Cards report | Essentials | |
| Projects: Generate Sales Orders from unbilled time | No tier | Unbilled time goes to an invoice, not an order. |
| Jobs: Add Job, Stores Card, Stock Finished Goods | No tier | Manufacturing jobs; no equivalent. |
| Jobs: Reports (Jobs, Time & Stores Cards) | No tier | |
| Reference Documents, Image Files | ||
| Add and list documents attached to transactions | Simple Start | Attachments. |
| Image files on parts, printed on documents | No tier | |
5.5Ledger, reports, people
| SQL-Ledger | Lowest tier | Note |
|---|---|---|
| General Ledger and Reports | ||
| Add Transaction (journal entry, any number of lines) | Simple Start | |
| GL Reports with account, department, project, reference filters | Simple Start | General Ledger and Journal reports. |
| Chart of Accounts, Trial Balance | Simple Start | |
| Income Statement, Balance Sheet, with a comparison period | Simple Start | |
| Statements by department | Plus | P&L by class. |
| Statements by project | Plus | |
| GIFI codes on the chart and statements (Canada) | No tier | |
| Recall Report (saved report configurations) | Simple Start | Custom reports. |
| Recurring Transactions | Essentials | |
| Exchange Rates by date | Essentials | |
| HR | ||
| Employees: Add, Reports | Add-on | Employee records come with payroll; without it, only a contact list. |
| Payroll: Add Transaction, Transactions | Add-on | Workforce Payroll from $50 plus $6.50 per employee; a filing service, not a module. |
| Payroll Setup: Wages, Deductions (your own tables) | No tier | Intuit maintains the tables; you cannot define your own scheme or country. |
| Batch | ||
| Print, Email: fourteen document types in bulk | Advanced | Batch send invoices only. |
| Queue (spool documents for later printing) | No tier | |
| Import and Export | ||
| Import Customers, Vendors, Parts, Services, Chart of Accounts | Simple Start | |
| Import Sales Invoices, General Ledger | Advanced | CSV invoices at a thousand lines a time; journals via Spreadsheet Sync. |
| Import Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Payments, Groups, Labor/Overhead | No tier | |
| Export Payments | No tier | Payments leave through Bill Pay, not as a file. |
5.6System
| SQL-Ledger | Lowest tier | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Defaults (numbering, accounts, precision) | Simple Start | |
| Audit Control (switch the trail, close periods) | Simple Start | Close the books; the audit log cannot be switched off. |
| Audit Log | Simple Start | |
| Bank Accounts, Payment Methods | Simple Start | |
| Taxes (any number of tax accounts, rates with validity dates) | Simple Start | Automated for the US; VAT and GST in national editions. |
| Currencies | Essentials | |
| Workstations (POS terminals and printers) | No tier | |
| Roles (named access sets) | Advanced | Fixed roles below Advanced; custom roles at Advanced. |
| Warehouses | No tier | |
| Departments (cost and profit centres, unlimited) | Plus | Classes and locations, forty at Plus, unlimited at Advanced. |
| Type of Business (customer and vendor types) | Simple Start | Customer types. |
| Language (the whole interface in any of thirty languages) | No tier | English; Spanish in some regions. |
| SIC codes | No tier | |
| Yearend (close the year to retained earnings) | Simple Start | Automatic. |
| Maintenance: Repost Invoices, Lock and Unlock Dataset, Monitor | No tier | |
| Backup: Send by E-Mail, Save to File; Restore | Advanced | Advanced restores to a point in time but not everything; a dump restores everything. |
| Chart of Accounts: Add, List, Translations, GIFI | Simple Start | Capped at 250 below Advanced; no translations. |
| HTML, LaTeX, Text and XML Templates, editable in full for every document | No tier | Form styles let you rearrange a fixed set of fields; the document is never yours to edit. |
| Stylesheet, Preferences per user (language, number and date format) | No tier | One number and date format per company. |
5.7What Ledger123 added
| Ledger123 addition | Lowest tier | Note |
|---|---|---|
| A storefront on the same catalogue, orders straight into the ledger, sixteen themes | No tier | Connectors to Shopify and Amazon; no shop of its own. |
| Stripe and PayPal checkout in the shop | Add-on | QuickBooks Payments, 2.99% on cards. |
| Coupons, gift certificates posted to a liability, reviews, wishlists | No tier | |
| Unlimited users on every plan | No tier | Twenty-five at Advanced. |
| Several companies under one account, each its own database | No tier | One subscription per company. |
| Your data as a PostgreSQL database you can open, query and take away | No tier | Export is by report; the database is Intuit’s. |
| Open-source code you can read, change and run yourself | No tier | |
| The application server: the same screens, without a per-request process | Simple Start | A hosting property; noted for completeness. |
| Documents rendered from redesigned HTML templates, PDF through LaTeX | No tier | See templates above. |
| A public manual at /manual and support from the developers | Advanced | Priority Circle. |
5.8The tally
| Lowest QuickBooks tier that has it | Rows | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Simple Start | 33 | The bookkeeping core: the part every plan has and every ledger has. |
| Essentials | 9 | Payables, recurring, time, currencies. |
| Plus | 17 | Stock, orders, projects, departments. |
| Advanced | 7 | Roles, batches, backup, bulk import. |
| Add-on | 3 | Payroll and payments, priced separately. |
| No tier | 45 | Not available at any price. |
| All rows | 114 |
Plate 5.1 · What no QuickBooks Online tier has
Grouped, so the list reads as what it is — the shape of a firm QuickBooks was not designed for.
- Making things: assemblies with bills of material, labour and overhead absorbed into them, stock assembly, jobs with stores cards and finished goods, work orders.
- Moving things: warehouses and transfers, partial shipment and backorders, serial numbers, lots and expiry dates, barcodes, vendor part numbers and lead times, a requirements report, RFQs, consolidation of orders and invoices, a queue for printing.
- Selling over a counter or a website: point of sale with workstations, a storefront on the same stock, credit limits enforced at entry.
- Trading in more than one language or country: the interface in thirty languages, documents in the customer’s language, translated item descriptions and accounts, per-user number and date formats, payroll tables you define for your own jurisdiction, GIFI.
- Owning the books: several AR accounts, editable document templates, the maintenance screens, unlimited users, several companies, the database itself, and the source code.
5.9How to use this with a prospect
Ask which rows in section 5.7 and Plate 5.1 they need. If the answer is none, chapter 1 is the comparison that matters and the eleven enhancements there are what stands between them and a Simple Start equivalent with more underneath. If the answer is any row at all, there is no QuickBooks plan to compare against, and the conversation is about migration, not parity. Most manufacturing, distribution, multilingual and multi-company prospects are in the second group before they finish reading the plate.
In one sentence
Of the 114 things SQL-Ledger does, 42 are in Simple Start or Essentials, 27 need Plus, Advanced or an add-on, and 45 — the making, moving, multilingual and ownership rows — are not in QuickBooks Online at all.
5.10Sources
The tier assignments rest on the research in chapters 1 to 4, whose sources are listed there; the SQL-Ledger side is menu.ini in the repository and the feature pages at /features.