When your company uses software for something as essential as accounting, you need to know that all of the decisions you make are accurate and based on good information. After all, without this certainty, you can find yourself working on incorrect budgets or even paying the wrong taxes.
This is where outgrowing QuickBooks can present a very real worry for a lot of companies. Learn how to tell if your company has outgrown QuickBooks and how you can make a change to keep your business on track for further growth.
What is QuickBooks?
QuickBooks is one of the most popular pieces of accounting software for small businesses available on the market. Intuit’s system grabbed such a large chunk of the market through a combination of high-end marketing campaigns and a low and accessible price point, with lots of small businesses seeing advantages in simplifying the way that they work and reducing the need for accountancy assistance.
Keep in mind that it is primarily an accounting platform rather than a comprehensive ERP, keeping it more appropriate for smaller businesses and startups.
Signs your Business has Outgrown QuickBooks
With QuickBooks being ideal for small businesses rather than complex enterprises, there is always the potential for you to outgrow the platform. Some of the main signs that your business has outgrown QuickBooks include:
Growing ERP Requirement
Companies that grow become more and more complex and can benefit from pulling all of their data and processes into one system. After all, if you can automate the costs that you expect from ordering a new batch of products, you remove human error whilst speeding up the process.
These growing Enterprise Resource Planning requirements mean that QuickBooks falls behind, and either needs to be bolted onto another platform to increase efficiency or completely replaced.
Complex Relational Databases
QuickBooks’ database is completely proprietary, using its own data and format when creating payroll, going through billing processes and completing accounts receivable. Whilst this is ideal for QuickBooks retaining its customers, it is incredibly difficult for businesses, as you can’t quickly integrate different platforms and software packages.
When a company gets more complex and needs to create more and more functionality across a range of platforms, choosing something with more simple integration and functionality is a must.
Increasingly Confusing Finances
When a business gets older and processes become more familiar to you, in theory, the speed at which you complete some of the more basic tasks increases. However, as QuickBooks develops with your growing business, it can be difficult to understand some of the basics.
For example, finding your cash balance is much more complicated with QuickBooks if you are working with multiple accounts across several companies or divisions. A more mature and complex ERP software is a must for businesses with increasingly challenging structures and multiple companies.
Exponential User Growth
Companies grow, and as they do, they hire more people. This includes people in production roles, management positions and – importantly – accounting jobs. Intuit has a relatively tight limit on the number of people allowed to use a QuickBooks licence, permitting just thirty from each individual company.
If your organisation has grown to the extent that it needs an entire department for its accounting tasks, then you will very quickly run out of spots on your licence and need to change the software to keep your accounting as efficient as it can be.
Burdensome Manual Processes
QuickBooks is good at what it does, but there is a lot of work that it does not do that fundamentally harms the efficiency of a company. At the end of a financial period such as a financial year or month, there are a lot of tasks that you need to complete such as data entry that the software doesn’t pull through from other sources.
Whilst other platforms complete these tasks without any trouble, the sheer pressure that the tool places on the average financial employee leads to a risk of human error or even simply burnout.
NetSuite as an Alternative
One of the main alternative platforms that companies are turning to as QuickBooks is becoming more of a challenge is NetSuite. There are plenty of benefits of turning to NetSuite as a finance and accounting option, including:
Modular Software
NetSuite is a modular business solution. This means that there is much more than simply accounting support available, extending to modules such as inventory management to track the goods that you have available, customer relationship management that helps you to track interactions with customers and human capital management to support your recruitment work. As this is modular you can add or remove any aspects that are required, making your organisation far more flexible and responding to ongoing changes in the levels of demand that your company sees. When your business grows, NetSuite grows with you.
Ecommerce Capability
NetSuite allows companies to have a much easier time configuring and creating an eCommerce presence. The majority of people shop online in this day and age, and by limiting yourself to physical sales only you are losing out on a serious opportunity to increase your market.
Transitioning to NetSuite means that you integrate your eCommerce into your physical business more smoothly, keeping better track of the stock you have available and the financial condition of the company without having to jump through the hoops of proprietary data.
Transitional Support
Making the switch from QuickBooks to another platform is understandably daunting, as you are jumping into a relative unknown. Thankfully, NetSuite SuiteSuccess is designed to get businesses started on NetSuite ERP within 100 days and how to properly thrive. This is achievable because SuiteSuccess is already preconfigured to a wide range of industries, allowing companies to simply choose their industry and avoid the trouble of configuring the software from scratch.
The end result is a transition that is relatively stress-free, offering more programs and support than you had access to before whilst you don’t lose anything of value in the switch.
Conclusions
Whilst QuickBooks is a great accounting tool for smaller businesses, inevitably it has a shelf life when business requirements become more complex as a result of growth. ERP software such as NetSuite is the next logical step for companies in this situation.
Because NetSuite is cloud-based and modular, businesses can choose the functionality they need right now, and then add additional functionality as they grow, making the solution highly scalable. You can learn more about the differences between NetSuite and QuickBook in our article Eventura Compares – NetSuite vs QuickBooks.
Alternatively, if you would like to have a much deeper look at NetSuite and its functionality you can read our informative article What is NetSuite and how does it work?
Why choose Eventura to deliver your NetSuite Project?
As an official NetSuite partner, we have successfully delivered countless NetSuite implementations. Our expert team of business analysts, developers, consultants, technicians and support staff can guide you through your entire project, from initial scoping through to implementation and on-going support.
If you would like to speak to one of our NetSuite experts, you can request a free call back here.
