When you support clients on QuickBooks, do you find yourself wrestling with a multitude of solutions? Some of your clients insist on staying on their favorite version of QuickBooks Desktop (Pro, Premier, or Enterprise, running on their workstations and servers). Some of them may be using QuickBooks Online Essentials or Plus billed under your Accountant wholesale subscription. I would venture to guess that you probably have some QuickBooks Desktop clients who are running in a hosted environment, and please don’t tell me that you are also acting as a ‘QuickBooks Hosting Service’ as part of offering Business Process Outsourcing. You may also have some clients who are using QuickBooks Online Advanced as their solution of choice.
I haven’t even begun to discuss the various year versions you may have to be supporting of QuickBooks Desktop because some clients refuse to stay on the most current release. Nor am I going to attempt to discuss the 3rd-party software that your clients might have integrated with their QuickBooks Desktop or the multitude of Apps that they have connected to any of the QuickBooks Online options they might be using.
My question to you is a simple one… “how do you do it, how do you manage to support so much variability in accounting and third-party connected software?” Over the years I have heard a lot of the best people in the industry, ‘QuickBooks leaders’ preach about the need to set a standard in your practice and establish a ‘tech stack’, but when I have talked to ProAdvisors with large BPO practices it always comes back that they pretty much take on clients, especially larger clients, with whatever solutions they already have in place just so long as they are one form of QuickBooks and something that works with QuickBooks. One ProAdvisor, I respect, once told me… “I almost always have to learn either a new 3rd-party software or a new App, whenever I take on a new client because they are using something I have never supported before.”
There has to be a better way, and I have come to believe that unless you are going to stick with only one size client and one type of QuickBooks, then QuickBooks is not the answer if you are building a Business Outsourcing (BPO) Practice. If you have clients who are looking to grow, and clients who need more than QuickBooks offers within their core products, then it’s time to look to a solution and partner program designed for Business Practice Outsourcing. That solution is NetSuite by Oracle and the NetSuite BPO Partner Program.
Now I know what you are thinking… “First, you think, NetSuite is too expensive for a BPO solution for my QuickBooks clients?” Well, the reality Is that the NetSuite BPO Partner Program offers pricing that is competitive to the solutions commonly used as BPO platforms while offering even greater capabilities.
You may also be thinking that “NetSuite is too complicated for your clients who have been using QuickBooks, or maybe even yourself?” I would say, I don’t believe that one moment. First, if you can keep track of all those different versions and add-ons, then you can easily manage NetSuite. And if your client can have mastered QuickBooks, and probably one or two add-ons or Apps, they will love the all-in-one approach that NetSuite offers.
From a purely BPO standpoint, you may wonder how quickly you can get a client going with the NetSuite BPO solution. It takes only days for successful implementation including leading practices across workflows with dashboards, KPIs, permissions, and industry-specific capabilities. You will be surprised just how quickly you can be ready to rock-n-roll the transition of a new or existing client to the NetSuite BPO solution.
So, if you are ready to expand or transform your BPO practice, you can take the next step by learning more about the NetSuite BPO Partner Program. Another 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 when it’s right for you to add NetSuite to your outsourcing practice, along with clients who may be right for transitioning to NetSuite from QuickBooks. I think you will find this webinar informative and useful for both your growing clients, as well as for opportunities to grow your practice.
Trade Name disclosures:
QuickBooks, QuickBooks (Desktop), QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, QuickBooks Enterprise, QuickBooks Online (Essentials or Plus), QBO and QuickBooks Advanced refer to products and registered trademarks of Intuit.
NetSuite, Oracle NetSuite, NetSuite by Oracle and the NetSuite BPO Partner Program refer to registered trademarked products (or services) of Oracle.