Poof vs QuickBooks
Both platforms handle core bookkeeping. Poof is one plan at $79/mo — 44% less than the $140/mo QuickBooks Plus tier that carries job costing and budgets — and every change its AI proposes waits for your approval, with the evidence on the card.
Poof
After a 30-day free trial: 50% off your first 3 paid months, then $79/mo. All features included.
- 172 features included
- AI transaction categorization
- Built-in AI assistant
- 30-day free trial
QuickBooks Plus
The tier that carries job costing and budgets. Up 22% on August 1, 2026 — from $115.
- Core bookkeeping, budgets, and project tracking
- Intuit Assist AI agents
- Fixed-asset depreciation needs Advanced ($340/mo)
- Custom roles and permissions need Advanced ($340/mo)
The difference isn't that Poof has rules. It's what happens when one is wrong.
QuickBooks has bank rules, and they auto-post. That is the whole design: you write a rule from a blank form, guess at the conditions, and QuickBooks applies it from then on. A QuickBooks bank rule that is wrong keeps being wrong until somebody notices — often at year-end, in a category that has been quietly collecting the wrong transactions for eight months.
Poof works the other way round. Nothing an AI proposes reaches your books until a person approves it, and each proposal shows the evidence behind it — the merchant, the prior transactions, whether they were all categorized the same way. A standing rule is then derived from work you just reviewed, not authored from scratch, and shown to you in plain sentences with your own 30-day record before you grant it. Four things then apply that no bank rule has:
- •A dollar ceiling, separate from the match. A rule that writes to the ledger must carry a limit. One without does not run.
- •A daily cap — and the overflow goes to your inbox for review rather than being silently dropped.
- •A requirement that prior human decisions agreed. A rule cannot be granted over work your own history contradicts.
- •It stops itself. Correct anything the rule is about — not only the rows it happened to touch — and it pauses, tells you which correction stopped it, and waits for you to resume or revoke it.
Autonomy is off until you grant it, one rule at a time — there is no global switch, and no ledger rule can ever send anything to a customer. Invoices and credit notes stay a human's decision whatever a rule says. And “what did AI change this month, and who allowed it” is a single page, which is the question your accountant will ask.
Why we compare against Plus, not Simple Start
QuickBooks Simple Start is $38/mo, and it is the number every comparison page reaches for. But it is single-user, with no team roles, no budgets, and a fraction of the reporting — a business that needs what Poof does can't run on it. Plus, at $140/mo, is the tier that actually matches this feature set. That is the honest comparison, and it is the one where the numbers favor Poof:
- •$79 flat vs $140. Poof is 44% cheaper — and adds the AI assistant, budgeting, forecasting, and per-job labor allocation that Plus doesn't have at any price.
- •Roles and audit logging are Advanced-tier at QuickBooks. Poof's 5 roles, 26 granular permissions, and SOC 2 audit logging with PII masking are included — QuickBooks puts that class of capability on its $340/mo plan.
- •Intuit raised prices on August 1, 2026. Plus went from $115 to $140 (+22%) and Advanced from $275 to $340 (+24%), with no new capability attached. Poof is $79, flat, everything included.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | Poof | QuickBooks |
|---|---|---|
| Approvals & AI Autonomy | ||
| Every AI Write Staged for Approval Before It Posts | ||
| The Evidence Shown on the Card (What It Looked Up, Not Just What It Decided) | ||
| Approve Part of a Batch, Leave the Rest Waiting | ||
| Rejection Reason Recorded and Fed Back Into the Rules | ||
| Automated Rules (Bank Rules) | ||
| Rules Derived From Work You Just Reviewed, Not a Blank Form | ||
| Mandatory Dollar Ceiling on Any Rule That Writes to the Ledger | ||
| Daily Cap, With the Overflow Sent to Review Rather Than Dropped | ||
| A Rule That Pauses Itself the First Time You Correct It | ||
| Rules Offered From Your Own Approvals, Granted Only When You Say Yes | ||
| Everything Your Rules Did, Grouped by Rule, With Undo on Each Change | ||
| “What AI Changed This Month, and Who Allowed It” on One Page | ||
| AI & Automation | ||
| AI Transaction Categorization | ||
| Built-in AI Assistant | ||
| Chart of Accounts Set Up for Your Business | ||
| AI Recurring Charge Detection | ||
| Receipt Scanning & OCR | ||
| Smart Transaction Matching | ||
| AI Budget & Forecast Generation | ||
| AI Depreciation & Recurring Entry Setup | ||
| Budgeting & Forecasting | ||
| AI-Powered Budget Creation | ||
| Budget Lifecycle (Draft, Active, Locked, Archived) | ||
| Budget vs Actual | ||
| AI Cash Flow Forecasting (12-month) | ||
| Budget Alerts | ||
| Core Bookkeeping | ||
| Invoicing & Credit Notes | ||
| Estimates with One-Click Invoice Conversion | ||
| Recurring Invoices with Auto-Send | ||
| Automatic Invoice Reminders | ||
| Expense Tracking & Receipt Uploads | ||
| Bill & Vendor Management | ||
| Double-Entry Accounting | ||
| Bank Reconciliation | ||
| Scheduled Auto-Reconciliation That Signs Only When It Ties to the Penny | ||
| Accrual & Cash Basis Toggle | ||
| Recurring Journal Entries | ||
| Banking & Reports | ||
| Bank Connection (Plaid) | ||
| Bank Statement Import (CSV) | ||
| Bank Statement PDF Import via AI Chat | ||
| 13 Financial Reports | ||
| Report Drill-Down | ||
| Shareable Report URLs | ||
| Scheduled Report Emails | ||
| Reconciliation Carries Outstanding Items Forward (a July check clears in August) | ||
| Uncertain Auto-Matches Become Approval Cards | ||
| Security & Team | ||
| Custom Roles With 26 Granular Permissions (Advanced-only at QuickBooks) | ||
| Audit Log | ||
| PII Masked in the Audit Log and in Every AI Call | ||
| Two-Factor Auth (TOTP) | ||
| Productivity & UX | ||
| Personalized Dashboard with AI Daily Briefing | ||
| Command Bar (Cmd+K) | ||
| AI Chat Folders & Multi-Session Conversations | ||
| One Plan, Every Feature ($79/mo) | ||
| Job Costing & Close | ||
| Job Costing & Per-Job Profitability | ||
| Per-Job Labor Allocation | ||
| Financing Gross-Up (Dealer Fees Costed to the Job) | ||
| Peer Benchmarks on the Per-Job P&L | ||
| Period Close & Locking with Tie-Out Checks | ||
| Close Checklist With Due Dates, Ticked by the Books | ||
| The Close as a Record (who, when, what it took) | ||
| Late Close Tasks Nudge You (Telegram, SMS, Slack, Email) | ||
| AI Close Narrative | ||
| Customer Deposits Held as a Liability, Released to the Job on Completion | ||
| Prepaid Maintenance Plans Earned Per Completed Visit | ||
| AI Phone Receptionist + Dispatch | ||
| Payroll, Tax & Assets | ||
| 1099s Prepared From the Year’s Payments | ||
| Fixed-Asset Register With Monthly Depreciation | ||
| Vehicle Loans Split Into Principal and Interest, Trade-Ins in One Entry | ||
| Pay Runs From Your Payroll Provider Tied to the 941s, W-2s and State Returns | ||
| Sales Tax Rates by Location | ||
| Exemption Certificates on File With Expiry Dates | ||
| Truck Stock by Van, Counted From a Phone | ||
| Field Service & Job Handoff | ||
| Technician Field Link (no account, no app install) | ||
| Arrival Tracking (on-my-way, arrived, completed) | ||
| Field Report & Equipment on File (per address) | ||
| Jobsite Photos, Opted In Per Photo | ||
| Parts & Labor Logged in the Field | ||
| Invoice Drafted From the Completed Visit | ||
| Trade-Format Invoice (diagnosis, work performed, warranty) | ||
| A Completed Service Call Becomes a Job | ||
| Office Review of the Field Report Before Send | ||
| Even Work Distribution Across Technicians | ||
| Unassigned-Job Escalation Before Start Time | ||
Compared against QuickBooks Online Plus at $140/mo — the plan that matches Poof's capability set. QuickBooks list prices as of August 2026, following Intuit's August 1, 2026 increase: Simple Start $38, Essentials $85, Plus $140, Advanced $340. Features and pricing may vary; re-check before relying on these figures. A cross in the QuickBooks column means the capability is not built in: deposit release and per-visit plan revenue, for example, are manual journal entries there, and a QuickBooks bank rule has no dollar ceiling, no daily cap, and no way to pause itself when it gets something wrong.
The work disappears. The evidence doesn't.
Thirty days free, then half price for three months. Every feature. Or book a demo and bring your books.