# Why is QuickBooks Online so different in appearance from desktop QuickBooks?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-quickbooks-online-so-different-in-appearance-from-desktop-quickbooks/745385>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 7, 2016, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-quickbooks-online-so-different-in-appearance-from-desktop-quickbooks/745385 "2016-02-07T04:13:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2016, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-quickbooks-online-so-different-in-appearance-from-desktop-quickbooks/745385/1 "2016-02-07T04:13:29Z")

</div>

Having trained in desktop QuickBooks, I nearly panicked when called upon to work with QuickBooks online and at first didn’t even recognize what the hell I was looking at. Fortunately there was enough commonality that with a basic understanding of accounting I was able to figure it out. But still, why did Intuit do this?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2016, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-quickbooks-online-so-different-in-appearance-from-desktop-quickbooks/745385/2 "2016-02-07T09:30:44Z")

</div>

A web application is necessarily different from an installed bit of desktop software, it actually takes great effort to try to make them similar.

I think quickbooks has used an off-the-shelf template and framework for their online version (I think I recognise it as the same one my web dev has ueed for a customer portal at my work). The template contains lots of lovely components such as graphs, charts and menus, but tgey come as a package - when developing content this way, you choose a theme and you get elements that have been tailored to fut it (or you have to invest effort in customising it, which sometimes breaks it, or looks horrible)