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New Member
September 16, 2026
Question

I am finding Quickbooks online extremely complicated to use compared with the Quickbooks Self Employed app. Is there a different app that is simpler for me to use?

  • September 16, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 18 views
I recently was told I needed to move to Quickbooks Online because the Self Employed app was no longer being supported. Quickbooks Online is massively complicated compared to the Self Employed app and everything takes me 3X longer to do. Invoices are so much more difficult, especially because I do my invoices weekly and have many clients to send them out to. I also do not understand how to make a rule for a transaction. In Self Employed I simply swiped the transaction right or left to add it as part of my business or not. It would then ask me to make a rule and I just clicked yes and it did it for me. It now takes me forever to go through my transactions and it keeps "matching" the transactions to my invoices when I don't want it to or it adds an expense that isn't a business expense. I hate this app.

2 replies

QuickBooks Team
September 16, 2026

I completely understand the difference between QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Self-Employed. In QuickBooks Online, you can quickly send multiple invoices at once using Batch actions.

 

Here’s how:

 

  1. Go to All apps, choose Sales & Get Paid, and select Invoices.
  2. Check the box next to the date for each invoice you want to send.
  3. Click the Batch actions menu and choose Send.

 

You can also set up bank rules in QuickBooks Online to save time. Here is the easiest way to do it:

 

  1. Go to All apps, choose Accounting, and select Rules.
  2. Click New rule.
  3. Name your rule in the What do you want to call this rule? box.
  4. Under Apply this to transactions that are, pick Money in or Money out, then select your bank account.
  5. In the include the following menu, choose All or Any.
  6. Click + Add a condition.
    Note: You can set a single rule with up to 5 conditions.
  7. Specify whether the rule looks at the Bank text or Amount. Then, choose Contains, Doesn't contain, or Is exactly, and enter the text or number QuickBooks should look for.
  8. Set the transaction details by picking the Transaction type, Category, and Payee from the menus.
  9. Select Save.

 

QuickBooks will automatically apply these rules to new transactions in your Pending tab. Make sure to review this tab every day.

 

If QuickBooks matches a transaction automatically, you can always review it and undo the match if something looks wrong. Here’s how:

 

  1. Go to Bank transactions and select the Posted tab.
  2. Choose the account you want to look at.
  3. Find the transaction and click Undo in the Action column. This moves the transaction back to the Pending tab so you can make changes.

 

You can also use this guide to explore more features in QuickBooks Online: Get started with QuickBooks Online.

 

Let me know if you need additional guidance.

New Member
September 16, 2026

That seems ridiculously complicated in order to just apply a rule when the previous app was just a swipe. Why do I have to do all of that in order to just apply a rule to a transaction? All I did on the previous app was swipe to make a rule and it did. Why do I have to name the rule? I just want it to recognise that a bank transfer from a client is always business income without it taking me 15 minutes to do so. I'm only a sole trader and don't need most of the features in this app. Is there a simpler one I can download?