NetSuite emerges as a superior alternative to QuickBooks when it comes to addressing the needs of small businesses and entrepreneurs seeking a straightforward method of monitoring fundamental financial activities. While QuickBooks initially serves its purpose, it eventually presents time-consuming challenges, leading to lost hours and missed opportunities for many organizations. As a result, it’s become crucial for companies to concentrate on identifying potential risks and growth prospects using software that’s actually built to do that job and more. To that end, let’s talk about the key indicators that suggest QuickBooks is jeopardizing your business and delve into the importance of adopting a more advanced and comprehensive solution like NetSuite.
1. Lack of Customization Options
QuickBooks offers a certain level of customization, but it has its limitations. As your business evolves, you may require tailored financial workflows, specialized reporting, or integrations with other systems. QuickBooks may not provide the flexibility you need, leading to inefficiencies and workaround that can impact productivity and accuracy.
QuickBooks may suffice for a growing business, but only for a limited time. With this said, achieving its full potential often requires a multitude of consultants or a complex web of workarounds, which can come at a substantial cost. Generally speaking, there comes a point where existing systems simply cannot meet the required functionality of organizations, necessitating a transition to a more capable solution. Keeping pace with necessary customizations tends to necessitate additional consultants or convoluted side paths—both of which can be delivered at a considerable expense. There’s usually a tipping point when companies realize they need a platform like NetSuite, which is built to be highly customizable.
2. Security Vulnerabilities
Data security is a paramount concern for businesses of all sizes. However, QuickBooks’ security features may not meet the rigorous standards required to safeguard your financial information adequately. Cyberattacks, data breaches, or unauthorized access could put your business at risk, potentially leading to financial losses or damage to your reputation.
3. Limited Collaboration Capabilities
Modern businesses thrive on collaboration, and relying on QuickBooks alone may hinder effective teamwork. QuickBooks’ collaboration features are often limited, making it difficult for multiple users to work simultaneously or share real-time financial information. This can result in delays, miscommunication, and reduced productivity.
In the current business landscape, the ability to make timely and informed decisions is vital for companies of all sizes. Therefore, effective forecasting and budgeting have gained heightened importance. However, without accurate data, leaders are unable to carry out these critical tasks successfully.
With error-prone data entry processes and disconnected systems, obtaining comprehensive and valuable business insights becomes nearly impossible. QuickBooks’ reporting capabilities are significantly limited, requiring additional workarounds to adapt existing reports to specific goals or create new ones. In contrast, NetSuite allows easy reporting on any data entered into the system.
4. Compliance Challenges
Staying compliant with ever-changing regulations and tax requirements is crucial for businesses. However, QuickBooks might not keep pace with evolving compliance standards, leaving you vulnerable to errors and penalties. A comprehensive solution with built-in compliance features can help mitigate these risks and ensure adherence to the latest regulations.
QuickBooks raises concerns regarding auditability due to the lack of adequate internal controls, approval workflows, separate roles, and audit logs This deficiency hampers your ability to take the necessary steps for business growth. For instance, when seeking a bank loan, pursuing funding from investors, or considering going public, having a solid and traceable set of numbers becomes essential.
QuickBooks’ limited auditability capabilities underscore the need for a more robust solution like NetSuite. NetSuite’s financial controls enable businesses to align their books for audits, maintain audit trails, access relevant logs and workflows, and simplify compliance-related processes. This ensures a smoother and more efficient audit process while providing confidence in the accuracy and reliability of financial data.
5. Inadequate Reporting and Analytics
Effective decision making relies on accurate and timely financial insights. QuickBooks offers basic reporting and analytics, but as your business grow, you may require more advanced capabilities. Without robust reporting and analytics tools, you might miss out on valuable insights, hindering your ability to make informed strategic decisions.
6. Lack of Integration with Business Systems
In today’s interconnected business landscape, seamless integration between different systems is vital. However, QuickBooks’ integration capabilities are often limited, making it challenging to synchronize data with other critical business tolls like customer relationship management (CRM) or inventory management systems. This can result in manual data entry, errors, and inefficiencies.
Manual data entry not only consumes a significant amount of time, but it also introduces a higher risk of human errors, often leading to end-of-month crises. A prominent source of delays in QuickBooks is revenue recognition—or the lack thereof.
The presence of formula errors in your spreadsheets further undermines the reliability of your data. Consequently, month-end reconciliation becomes a time-consuming process left to chance. QuickBooks’ heavy reliance on spreadsheets makes it difficult, if not impossible, to locate the most up-to-date information. When you can’t trust that your numbers are accurate and up to date, you can’t rely on your system to effectively manage your business.
QuickBooks organizations often find their data is fragmented and scattered across multiple locations and systems, thus forcing employees to lean on Excel files for bookkeeping. However, with NetSuite, all of this data can converge into a single point of truth, allowing leaders to better analyze customer interactions, inventory details, and shipment information from a single application.
7. Outdated Technology
QuickBooks, although widely used, is not immune to becoming outdated. As technology advances, newer accounting solutions offer more advanced features, enhanced security, and better user experiences. Sticking with QuickBooks might prevent your business from leveraging the latest innovations and staying ahead of the competition.
Beyond this, QuickBooks users often find themselves working outside of the platform anyway, frequently entering data manually into spreadsheets to solve their needs. This usually leads to employees investing significant amounts of time each week in tasks that could otherwise be automated, such as generating invoices. Accountants who rely on QuickBooks tend to find themselves resorting to workarounds to adapt the system to their organization’s needs. Additionally, many accountants have to turn to spreadsheets to track deferred revenue, accrued expenses, and depreciation.
For instance, if a customer pays a yearly upfront subscription fee of $1,200, accountants must remember to create a monthly journal entry of $100. When multiplied by the total number of customers, these workarounds become impractical to scale. Consequently, your finance and accounting teams end up spending more time adjusting various systems, rather than focusing on their core responsibilities. Moreover, this situation deprives leadership of timely and crucial data for making impactful business decisions because the available information can quickly become outdated.
8. Limited Scalability
One of the primary risks of sticking with QuickBooks is its limited scalability. As your business expands and your financial needs become more complex, QuickBooks may struggle to keep up. Its capacity for managing larger data volumes, multiple entities, or more advanced reporting and analysis may not be sufficient, hindering your business’s growth potential.
Get the Full Guide: Eight Signs QuickBooks is Holding Your Business Back
For many businesses, QuickBooks can create time-intensive problems that add up to hours lost and opportunities missed. And now, more than ever, is the time to focus on increasing efficiency in your operations.
Download our guide, Eight Signs QuickBooks is Holding Your Business Back, to discover the top signs that QuickBooks is limiting your business and that it’s time to leverage a better, more comprehensive tool.
Let MIBAR Help You Transition Away from QuickBooks
Relying solely on QuickBooks exposes businesses to various risks that can impede growth and hinder decision making. The limitations of QuickBooks in terms of customization, security, collaboration, compliance, reporting, and analytics highlight the need for a more comprehensive solution like NetSuite. By transitioning to NetSuite’s robust platform, your business can mitigate risks and unlock its full potential.
At MIBAR, we understand the challenges associated with continuing to use QuickBooks and the need for a more advanced solution. As an experienced provider of ERP and business management solutions, we can help you navigate the transition to NetSuite, ensuring a smooth and successful implementation tailored to your unique business requirements. Don’t let QuickBooks hold your company back! Contact us today to learn how MIBAR can assist you in harnessing the power of NetSuite to drive growth and success!
Additional QuickBooks Migration Resources
QuickBooks Migrations: 4 Cautions Before You Take the Plunge
4 Critical Things to Consider Before You Replace QuickBooks
Why QuickBooks Financials Are Holding Your Growing Business Back
