Top 4 Signs You’re Outgrowing QuickBooks

When meeting with prospective customers, we are often asked: “When is the right time to move from QuickBooks to cloud financials?” QuickBooks is an excellent and cost-effective solution when companies are getting started; however, many of our customers found it was not the right choice for them long term.  Once companies start experiencing accelerated growth, the limitations of QuickBooks become more apparent.  Based on conversations with company leaders over the last 25 years, I put together a list of issues that many of them face before making the switch to a cloud ERP solution.

QuickBooks is an Accounting Only Solution (and you Need More)

In order to address specific operational needs, business owners end up purchasing separate applications (such as CRM) or implementing manual processes in spreadsheets to keep the business running.  We found that our customers were wasting valuable time re-keying data (many times double entry in different systems), which can sometimes lead to mistakes or delays in reporting. The manual processes work fine when organizations have a small customer base and few transactions, but when the volumes grow, companies are then faced with a decision between hiring more employees to maintain the manual processes or investing in a technology solution that can grow and scale with them.  NetSuite is a full ERP cloud solution with many fully integrated modules - including CRM, complex billing, inventory, distributioMn, e-commerce, and more on a single data source. No more re-keying or compiling data from system to system.

Too Many “Work Arounds” Must be Created Every Time There is a Small Change in the Business

QuickBooks was designed to automate just a few core accounting functions.  As our customers’ businesses grew, they were finding that the limited functionality wasn’t scaling with their business. Some of the features needed by our clients such as revenue recognition, employee expense reimbursements, and consolidated reporting were requiring manual processes or add-on tools. The lack of advanced features was creating frustrations in their accounting teams and slowing down growth potential.

Inability to View Real-Time Data, on Demand

Since many of our clients' operations were run using disparate spreadsheets and applications, it was difficult to view real-time data when needed.  Our clients were spending too much time collecting, distributing, and analyzing data in spreadsheets – which quickly became outdated.  Account managers didn’t have visibility on project or billing statuses and executives had to wait until month end to view financials and performance KPIs. With NetSuite, all data is real-time and all aspects of the business are connected and available (based on role permissions) on-demand to end users.  Business owners are able to monitor metrics from their KPI dashboards all day – and notifications can also be set up based on user-defined parameters. With the timely data access in NetSuite, our clients are now able to react quickly to market events or internal alerts.

Too Many Unnecessary Difficulties Managing Updates, Back-Ups, and Database Performance

We had a client who was pushing QuickBooks way past its limits that the QuickBooks database was crashing regularly. Their business was booming, yet, they were put at risk by the limitations of their accounting database technology. Luckily, they always had good back-ups and never experienced loss of data (but that can happen), but they knew the time had come to make a move.  QuickBooks support was getting more and more arduous. NetSuite’s cloud software platform is built from the ground up to be agile and flexible, without the additional overhead complexities of maintaining the underlying platform.  When our customer moved to the cloud, they had no more servers or databases to maintain, security patches to implement, or heavy reliance on IT.  They were able to focus on moving the business forward.

If you are experiencing some of the issues above, contact us and we can discuss if a move to the cloud is the right move for you. Don't be left behind. Once you move your business systems to the cloud, your team can become more efficient and effective.  Employees won’t spend time entering data into multiple systems, instead, they can focus on reacting to customers, the market, and their business.

In the past few years, we have moved several growing companies from QuickBooks to NetSuite, and we believe its the perfect next move when prospects start to outgrow QuickBooks. Test driving NetSuite is the best way to visualize how this powerful ERP system can take your business to the next level by automating processes, increasing efficiencies, and lowering operating costs. Schedule a live NetSuite demo to learn more.

At Kraft Enterprise Systems, our experienced NetSuite consulting team has an extensive background in areas including accounting, technology, and business management and has implemented over 450 system implementations since 1996.

View our QuickBooks Resource page.