If you know ‘Murph’ you know that I’ve been a fan of QuickBooks since ‘Day 1’… but you also know that I believe that there comes a time when a small business is no longer small enough to stick with QuickBooks. Intuit knew this too, that’s why they created QuickBooks Enterprise for Desktop users, and then they created QuickBooks Advanced for QuickBooks Online users.
Of course, a lot of QuickBooks consultants found other options to make QuickBooks work with their clients that started stretching the products too thin… they connected add-ons. It didn’t matter if they used add-on programs for Desktop, or add-on Apps for the Online version, the result was the same, extra cost and extra effort to make more than one product work smoothly. Before long, some businesses had not just one add-on, but multiple add-on products… an add-on for CRM, an add-on for Inventory, an add-on for A/P, and an add-on for analytics and reporting (or maybe more).
The result is the same, sooner or later, a growing small business will out-grow QuickBooks no matter how many add-ons you plug into it. It doesn’t matter if you are using Desktop on a local server, have your Desktop version hosted in the cloud, or you are using one of the Online versions… you simply can’t do everything that a fully mature business needs done with QuickBooks alone no matter what the version.
Most of you also know that I have a pretty good understanding of the QuickBooks ‘database’, and while it has come a long way, in terms of the desktop version, there will always come a time in the life of a growing company when they simply exceed the functional ‘working’ capacity of their Company file. You have either too many ‘targets’, or ‘too many list elements’, or the complexity of your transactions has resulted in too many ‘links’, such that QuickBooks is always bogged down for both day-to-day work, and complex reporting. Have you ever called up a QuickBooks report only to find that it runs all night long and the next morning it still hasn’t printed?
QuickBooks might have been the answer for all of your business clients when they first started, and you have done your best to try to keep them working in the financial software they have grown accustomed to, but if you are seeing any of the problems like those I have just described then it’s time for you to consider an alternative for your clients. You might be saying, “Murph, my clients are not that bad yet… I don’t think they are ready to leave QuickBooks.”
You might be right, so I would ask you a few other questions:
- Do they use Excel for company information based on data from either QuickBooks or other sources, or to manage fairly recent changes to their organization or business offering(s)?
- Is management (or external accounting personnel) concerned with a lack of ‘internal controls’ including insufficient approval workflows or segregation of authorities?
- Are you presently exploring a 3rd-party add-on solution for either QuickBooks Desktop or QBO?
- Is your client considering migration from ‘their local server environment’ for Desktop to either a hosted environment or migrating to the Cloud via QuickBooks Online?
If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these four questions, then it is at least time to begin considering an alternative solution for clients that are starting to outgrow QuickBooks in my way of thinking. After all, it never hurts to consider your options.
And one of those options is NetSuite by Oracle.
I've recommended NetSuite over the past several years for growing QuickBooks users. Just within the last six months, I recommended NetSuite to one of my long-standing QuickBooks clients… they simply had outgrown QuickBooks and the various add-ons they had working with it. Things were bogging down, reports were taking too long, and they felt they just weren’t getting the information they needed from the system they had been using for years. Changing from QuickBooks to Oracle NetSuite was going to be a big step for this client, but it started with a ‘demo’ and they soon made the decision that it was the right way to go.
You can help your QuickBooks clients that may be reaching the point of needing to take the next step by learning more about NetSuite by Oracle. A great way is by attending the upcoming webinar titled, ‘Insightful Accountant’s Sr. Editor William Murphy Discusses QuickBooks vs. NetSuite for Outsourcing’. The webinar will be held on June 15th at 2:00 PM Eastern. I will be joined by Michael Kulisch, the BPO Program Leader at NetSuite to discuss clients who may be right for NetSuite, along with when it’s right for you to add NetSuite to your outsourcing practice. I think you will find this webinar informative and useful for both your growing clients, as well as for opportunities to grow your own practice.
TradeName disclosures:
QuickBooks, QuickBooks (Desktop), QuickBooks Enterprise, QuickBooks Online, QBO and QuickBooks Advanced refer to products and registered trademarks of Intuit.
NetSuite, Oracle NetSuite and NetSuite by Oracle refer to registered trademarked products of Oracle.