Can Groundbase replace QuickBooks for invoicing? Yes, for invoicing. Not for the books.

A lot of one-person businesses pay for QuickBooks Online because it is the thing that sends the invoice. The chart of accounts, the bank feed and the reports are there, but what gets opened most weeks is New invoice, Send, and the list of who has not paid. If that describes you, Groundbase does that part of the job, inside the CRM, for a subscription that also covers texting, booking links and campaigns.

I build Groundbase, so read this with that in mind. The short version: it replaces QuickBooks for invoicing and getting paid. It does not replace it for bookkeeping, and I would rather you know that before you cancel anything. Prices below were checked October 14, 2026 and are in USD; QuickBooks changes them often and runs introductory discounts, so check its pricing page before deciding.

What you get in Groundbase

Everything below is in the one $19 plan. There is no invoicing add-on and no per-invoice fee.

• Invoices raised against the contacts you already have. No second customer list. A contact's billing profile holds their currency, payment terms, address and tax id, and every invoice for them starts from it.
• Quotes first, invoices after. A quote with its own number, a link where the customer presses Accept, an optional deposit paid by card at acceptance, and one click to turn the accepted quote into an invoice with the deposit already on it.
• Card payments through your own Stripe account. The invoice page gets a Pay button. The money goes to your Stripe, Groundbase holds nothing and takes no percentage. You pay Stripe's own rate and nothing else.
• Part payments, receipts and credit notes. Record a payment and the invoice moves to part paid or paid. A receipt goes to the customer automatically. A credit note takes an amount off an issued invoice without voiding it. A card payment can be refunded from the invoice.
• Overdue reminders. Switch them on in Settings → Invoicing and a reminder goes out a set number of days after the due date, from your own email address, to an invoice that is still unpaid.
• Repeating invoices. Weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly, either as a draft for you to check or issued and emailed without you.
• Hours onto the invoice. Track time against a contact or deal, then tick the unbilled entries in the invoice builder and each becomes a priced line. Unbilling a line releases the time, so nothing is billed twice.
• More than one currency. One saved item can hold a different price in each currency you bill in, as the round numbers you actually charge rather than conversions.
• Sent from your own address, as a PDF and a link. Gmail, Outlook or any mailbox you connect. The PDF is attached because accounts departments file it.
• Numbers with no gaps. An invoice gets its number when issued, not when drafted, and a voided invoice keeps its number.
• Who owes you. An outstanding list, overdue first, with lateness in days, on the dashboard and on your phone.
• Your AI can do all of it. Over MCP, your Claude or ChatGPT can raise an invoice, bill logged hours, record a payment and send the reminder. What that looks like.

The full feature is written up in invoicing inside your CRM and documented in the invoices help article.

What Groundbase does not replace

This is the section to read twice.

• Bookkeeping. No chart of accounts, no double-entry ledger, no journal entries. Groundbase knows what you invoiced and what was paid against it. It does not know what you spent.
• Bank feeds and reconciliation. Nothing connects to your bank account. Payments are recorded when Stripe confirms a card payment, or when you record one by hand.
• Expenses, bills and receipts in. No expense capture, no vendor bills, no mileage.
• Tax filing. Tax rates go on invoice lines, so an invoice shows the HST or sales tax correctly. There is no sales-tax return, no GST or VAT filing and no year-end package.
• Reports beyond invoicing. Outstanding, overdue and paid, by customer and currency. No profit and loss, no balance sheet, no cash-flow statement.
• Accountant access. One user per account. There is no accountant login, and no QuickBooks integration to push invoices into the books automatically. What you get is a full export of invoices and payments, and webhooks and Zapier or Make if you want to automate the handoff.
• Payroll, inventory, projects with job costing. None of it.

So at year end, your accountant still needs a set of books. If you were doing those books in QuickBooks, Groundbase does not take that over. What changes is where the invoices come from, and the invoice data can be exported and brought into whatever does the accounting.

What QuickBooks Online costs for one person

• Simple Start, the cheapest plan that sends invoices: $38 a month, after any introductory discount ends. It includes invoicing, estimates, expense tracking, receipt capture, sales tax, basic reports and a bank feed. One user plus your accountant.
• Essentials, which adds bills, time tracking and three users: $85 a month, after the increase that several pricing roundups report took effect in August 2026. Plus and Advanced are more.
• Card payments through QuickBooks Payments are a separate per-transaction fee on top of the subscription. ACH bank transfers were reported to have risen from $3 to $5 per standard transfer in 2026. These figures came from third-party roundups rather than Intuit's own fee page, so confirm them there.

So for the most common one-person setup, the comparison is $38 a month for QuickBooks Simple Start against $19 a month for Groundbase, with Stripe's rate on card payments in both cases. Over a year that is $456 against $228, or $199 if you pay Groundbase yearly.

That is only a fair comparison if invoicing is what you use QuickBooks for. If you also use the bank feed and the reports, the right comparison is $38 for QuickBooks against $38 plus $19, because you would be keeping both.

Where QuickBooks is the better choice

• You need books, not just invoices. If your accountant works in QuickBooks, or you want the bank feed to categorise your spending, keep it. Groundbase does not do that part and is not going to.
• You sell products with inventory. Plus tracks stock. Groundbase's items are services and products with prices, not quantities on hand.
• You need expense tracking in the same tool. Receipt capture and mileage are in Simple Start. Groundbase has neither.
• You file sales tax from the tool. QuickBooks calculates and files it. Groundbase puts the tax on the invoice and stops there.
• You want an iPhone app for invoicing. QuickBooks has one. Groundbase is web, Windows and Android; on an iPhone you use the web app in Safari.
• More than one person raises invoices. Essentials gives you three users. Groundbase is one.

Who this swap is for

The person it fits is paying for QuickBooks and using it as an invoice generator: a consultant, a contractor, a therapist, a coach, a freelancer with a dozen clients, who sends invoices, chases the late ones, and hands a spreadsheet or an export to an accountant once a year. For that person, QuickBooks is $38 a month for a feature Groundbase includes alongside the CRM, texting, bookings and campaigns.

If you want to check the arithmetic for your own stack, the pricing page has a calculator that adds up what you pay now against the one subscription. The other two posts in this series cover Calendly and Mailchimp.

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Questions about this one? Email me directly: blog-quickbooks@groundbasecrm.com — I read every one.