You have a second LLC, or a fourth, and the question is what to do about QuickBooks. There are four honest answers: a separate subscription for each company, one file with classes, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, or a different kind of tool. Each has a cost and a failure mode, and the right one depends less on how many businesses you have than on whether they transact with each other. This guide lays out all four with prices, then explains why the loans between your businesses are the thing to decide on.
QuickBooks prices are Intuit's published list prices as of September 2026; introductory discounts change and are not counted.
In QuickBooks Online, each company is a separate file with its own subscription, its own bank connections, its own chart of accounts and its own login, and Intuit's own guidance says so plainly: each company you create requires its own paid subscription. You can switch between them from one user account, and your accountant can see all of them through QuickBooks Online Accountant, but nothing crosses between files. There is no native intercompany transaction feature in QuickBooks Online (that feature exists in Desktop Enterprise), and no consolidated report across companies without exporting to spreadsheets, which Advanced supports through its Spreadsheet Sync tool.
The by-the-book answer. Each legal entity has its own file, which is what a lender, a buyer, an auditor or a court wants to see: clean books for that entity alone. The cost is the plan price times the number of entities, at list $38 a month each on Simple Start, $85 on Essentials, $140 on Plus and $340 on Advanced, and the operational cost is a login per company, a bank reconciliation per company, and every transaction between two companies entered twice by hand. Works well up to two or three entities that rarely transact with each other; strains after that.
The cheap answer, and the one most CPAs will refuse to sign off on for separate legal entities. One subscription (Plus or Advanced, for class tracking), one chart of accounts, with each business as a class or location so the P&L can be filtered. It is fine for divisions of one legal entity, such as two DBAs under one LLC, or two rental properties inside one LLC. For separate LLCs it produces one set of books for several legal persons: the balance sheet cannot be split by class cleanly, one bank reconciliation covers accounts belonging to different owners, and the entity separation that the LLC exists to provide is undermined by the records themselves. If a lender asks for the rental LLC's balance sheet, there is not one.
Intuit's real multi-company product. Desktop Enterprise (Platinum and Diamond editions) supports multiple company files, intercompany transactions between them with due-to and due-from accounts maintained automatically, and consolidated reporting. It is desktop software, licensed annually per user at prices that start well above Online's and rise with users and edition; it is built for a business with an accounting department rather than an owner with a laptop, and the day-to-day experience is a different product from Online. For a group of operating companies with staff and inventory, it is a serious option. For an owner of rentals and holding companies, it is more system than the situation warrants.
Between "one QuickBooks per company" and "an ERP" sits a category of tools built around the entity rather than the company file: several entities in one login, each with its own books, with money that crosses between them recorded once and reflected on both sides. For companies with finance teams those tools are SoftLedger and its peers. For an owner, HaraPro is that tool: every entity in one account with its own books, personal accounts beside them, AI classification per entity, loans between entities tracked as instruments with each payment linked to the note and both entities updated from one transaction, a live tax forecast across the entities, and consolidated net worth with intercompany balances eliminated. What it does not do is invoicing, payroll or inventory, which is why an operating company with those needs often keeps QuickBooks for that one entity and HaraPro for the structure around it. The comparison page for HaraPro vs QuickBooks goes feature by feature.
The question that decides among the four is not how many businesses you have; it is how often money moves between them. If the answer is never, separate subscriptions are fine and the only cost is the price. If the holding company lends to the rental LLC, the management company charges the operating company a fee, or the owner pays one company's bill from another's account, every one of those events is two entries in two files, and the two files will disagree by year end. That disagreement is the single most expensive line in a multi-entity CPA engagement, and it is the reason the question comes up at all. Our guide to recording a loan between two LLCs shows exactly what has to be posted where, and our guide to bookkeeping for multiple LLCs covers the rest of the setup.
| Option | 3 businesses | 5 businesses | 8 businesses | Intercompany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Online, Simple Start each | $114 a month | $190 | $304 | Manual, both files |
| QuickBooks Online, Plus each | $420 a month | $700 | $1,120 | Manual, both files |
| One file with classes (Plus) | $140 a month | $140 | $140 | Not separate entities; CPAs advise against it |
| Desktop Enterprise | Annual per-user licensing, from the low thousands a year | Same | Same | Native |
| HaraPro | Starter, $29 a month or $284 a year | Pro, $79 a month or $789 a year | Pro, $79 a month or $789 a year | Native: one loan, both sides |
The QuickBooks figures exclude payroll and payments add-ons and any introductory discount. The HaraPro figures include the owner's personal accounts, the tax forecast and net worth, which have no QuickBooks equivalent. One business on HaraPro is free, and statements can be uploaded as PDFs where a bank connection is not wanted.
No. Each company file requires its own paid subscription. You can switch between companies from one login, but data, bank connections and reports stay separate.
You can, but it puts several legal entities into one set of books, which undermines the separation the LLCs exist for and makes entity-level balance sheets unreliable. Classes are appropriate for divisions of one legal entity, not for separate LLCs.
No. Intercompany transactions are a QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise feature. In Online, a transaction between two companies is entered by hand in both files using due-to and due-from accounts.
At list prices, three subscriptions: $114 a month on Simple Start, $255 on Essentials, $420 on Plus, before payroll or payments add-ons.
A multi-entity tool that keeps every entity in one login with its own books and records intercompany money once for both sides. For owners, HaraPro does this from $29 a month for three entities, with tax forecast and net worth included; operating companies that need invoicing and payroll can keep QuickBooks for that one entity.