Introducing QuickBooks Online Step-by-Step
Our QuickBooks textbook is now an interactive course. For the past few years, our printed textbook has struggled to keep up with the constant changes in QuickBooks Online. By the time our print textbook reached students' hands, small (and sometimes major) changes in QBO had already put screenshots and steps out of date. Students got stuck, and those questions landed on you. So we stopped patching the old book, invested, and rebuilt a new online learning experience from the ground up.
Today we're happy to announce our new interactive online learning platform, QuickBooks Online Step-by-Step, by Alicia Katz Pollock. We now monitor QBO releases closely and update the course as changes roll out, so students learn on screens that match their own. It also comes with a QBO smart grader, interactive quizzes and exams, and a teacher dashboard for tracking student grades and activity.
How it works
Students read each chapter in the browser and work the steps in a real QuickBooks Online company. When they upload their reports, the smart grader checks them against the author's answer key before you see them. You only step in for the exceptions.
Instructor access is free and doesn't expire. It includes the whole book, the Instructor's Manual, slide decks, and a demo class with graded work in it. Instructors already on our list have it under the email address they used with us. New to us? Request instructor access.
For screenshots of the whole course, read How QuickBooks Online Step-by-Step Works. Chapter 4 is open to anyone, with no account.
What changes for your course
QuickBooks Online Step-by-Step replaces QuickBooks Online Complete and QuickBooks Online Fundamentals, which are no longer sold.
- Smart grader. Students export the report the book asks for and upload it. The smart grader checks it line by line against the author's answer key and shows which accounts and balances matched. Scores come from rules a person wrote, never from AI, so the same file gets the same score every time. You can override any check. Each miss links to the book step that teaches it. A student stuck on the same check twice can ask for a labeled AI explanation, which you can switch off for your class. More than 50 exercises grade this way. See the smart grader, screen by screen.
- How students pay. Students pay once for 12 months of access, or pay monthly, instead of buying a copy. The print E-Learning Companion can be added to either edition and ships to the student. It isn't sold separately. Prices and class pricing are on the pricing page.
- Lite edition replaces the Fundamentals book. It covers chapters 1 to 8, plus two bonus chapters, all in Craig's Landscaping, the free sample company. Students don't need a QuickBooks Online account.
- Standard edition replaces the Complete book. It covers chapters 1 to 16 in companies students build themselves, including the YinYang Graphic Design case study and the capstone. Students need a QuickBooks Online account, and a free one works: an instructor's Intuit Education invite, a free Intuit Accountant Suite profile, or a 30-day trial.
- Quizzes and exams. Practice quizzes appear right where the chapter covers the material. Most chapters end with an exam that scores itself when the student submits.
- Teacher dashboard. See each student's reading, scores, and who has stalled. Work waiting for you comes with a suggested grade. You can download a grade file for Canvas, Blackboard, or Moodle, and a direct LTI connection is set up with your LMS admin.
What stays
- Same author, same hands-on chapters. Instructor access stays free.
- 2025 eBook students keep reading. The 2026 book opens for them at Standard.
See it for yourself
The fastest way to judge the book is the demo class. It has 18 sample students with graded work already in the queue, so you can see the grader and dashboard in action before your own students arrive.
Then tell us what you teach and which term. If you were planning on either of the old books, tell us which one so we can help you plan the switch. A person reads every message.
The Questiva Learning team