Quickbooks Online is an entirely different animal. It's a browser-based system, so you can run it on any platform. The original post indicated she was running QB on Windows currently and wanted to start using a Mac. Most responses are showing how she can continue using the same (Windows) version on a Mac, due to her presumed familiarity with the look and feel of the product. Things like Parallels, VMWare, Virtual Box, etc. let you do that. But understand, that means you're supporting an entire Windows environment, on your Mac, so that when you're running QB, your computer is in some sense pretending to be a Windows PC. This costs system resources, and will not be as fast and responsive as running it on a PC.
The alternative of course is to switch to the Mac version of QB and not have to do the PC emulation at all. This "sounds good." But the Mac version of QB really has a lot of holes in it, particularly if your functions include analysis of the data in something other than QuickBooks (e.g. exporting it to Excel to do further processing.). QB for Mac just does not export its data nicely or completely (for example, there is a "memo" field at the check level and also at the detail line level. The fields have the same name, and the line-level detail cannot seem to be exported. This is as of my 2016 version which is where I last checked it. If it's been fixed, kudos! It was on a 20-item list of enhancement requests I sent in probably 2012 that have seen no action at all since then, so I'm doubtful).
The Mac version is very definitely a "lite" version of what people think of when they think of Quickbooks. If you're interacting with financial professionals, accountants, etc., the expectation is that you're going to be using the Windows version. Every time I upgrade to the latest version I go through this "should I?" process. But one of my partners is so completely Windows-averse, I never do it. I've struggled along with the Mac version for over a decade, and it is what it is. More or less gets the job done.
