QuickBooks is one of the leading accounting software platforms in the market for small businesses. It’s an acceptable solution for companies that anticipate staying a certain size with mild growth ambitions.
However, suppose your company is ambitious, anticipating fast or strategic growth, or has complicated financials. In that case, the Oracle NetSuite ERP platform will be better suited for and can be tailored to your needs.
Consider the key differences between NetSuite vs. QuickBooks to help you understand which accounting solution is best for your size company and anticipated growth plans.
An Overview of QuickBooks Online for Small Businesses
QuickBooks Online is designed for the needs of small businesses that require basic-to-intermediate accounting support and would like to become more efficient in how they run their business.
There are four subscription tiers: Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced. At the Simple Start level, the basic functionality of QuickBooks Online includes the ability to:
- Track income and expenses
- Invoice and accept payments
- Maximize tax deductions
- Run general reports
- Capture and organize receipts
- Track mileage
- Manage cash flow
- Track sales tax
- Send estimates
- Manage 1099 contractors
QuickBooks offers additional features and functionality as you advance through their next subscription tiers. Some of the additional capabilities at the Essentials and Plus levels include:
- Increased user access
- Manage and pay bills
- Time tracking
- Inventory tracking
- Project profitability tracking
Then, at the Advanced level, you gain access to additional user access, as well as these tools:
- Business analytics and insights
- Employee expense management
- Batch invoicing and expensing
- Custom access by role
- App integrations
- Dedicated account team
- On-demand online training
- Automations for processes and tasks
- Ability to restore company data
Thousands of small businesses utilize QuickBooks on a daily basis to support their needs. And, QuickBooks continues to add new features and functionality at the Advanced level to attempt to provide greater business insights and advanced features to support growing companies.
But, the QuickBooks platform still has limitations. At some point, there will be a moment where you realize that you need a more robust solution that can help your company realize its full growth potential.
When Is It Time to Switch to NetSuite ERP?
Oracle has identified five clear signs that it’s time to advance from QuickBooks to the Oracle NetSuite ERP platform. Do these signs apply to your current business situation?
1. You’re not sure what’s happening across the business. The limitations of QuickBooks can often lead to a siloed approach to accounting, financial, and business processes where individual users do not share information. The mentality becomes, “I just focus on what I’m supposed to do in QuickBooks.” NetSuite helps break down silos through real-time sharing of data and insights across the company.
2. You are struggling to capture growth. As you add business lines, acquire companies, expand into new markets, or increase sales channels, you will discover that QuickBooks cannot keep up. You need an integrated system that centralizes your business, accounting, and financial processes.
3. Your team is spending too much time on financial consolidations. QuickBooks cannot support the complexity involved in the consolidations process as your company grows and expands. It would be best to have a solution that automates financial processes so that your team is not spending all of their time manually consolidating financial data from multiple sources. NetSuite ERP is that solution.
4. You are dependent on manual processes or third-party tools. During growth, companies often try to perform some activity in QuickBooks and other activity in spreadsheets or other pieces of software that require manual entry or manual translation of data from one location to another. This approach leads to inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and wasted time. NetSuite ERP can handle all of your processes, eliminating the need for additional tools.
5. Financial reporting has become more difficult. QuickBooks can produce basic financial reports. However, during growth and expansion, your financial reporting requirements will easily outpace the capabilities of QuickBooks. You need a solution that better supports revenue recognition, allocations, planning, and budgeting so that you can produce necessary reports in an efficient manner.
NetSuite ERP is the Ideal Solution for Growing Companies
Imagine the power of running your entire business in one location. The cloud-based NetSuite ERP platform increases certainty, reduces risk, and creates efficiencies across the entire business.
You gain complete control over accounting, billing, planning, budgeting, revenue recognition, financial reporting, financial consolidation, order management, supply chain, customer relations, and compliance. Plus, NetSuite is known for its scalability so that you don’t have to worry about whether the platform can keep up with your company’s growth plans.
Through NetSuite, you have the power to:
- Efficiently manage financial processes
- Streamline business processes
- Drive business strategy and growth
- Automate financial processes
- Accelerate the financial close
- Produce accurate financial reports
- Gain visibility into each business unit/segment/market
- View business performance in real-time to drive decision-making
When migrating to NetSuite, you pay an annual license fee. The fee is made up of three main components: core platform, optional modules, and the number of users. Then, as your business grows, you can easily activate new modules and add users within the cloud platform.
At Finlyte, we can help you complete the migration process through our industry-leading NetSuite ERP Implementation service for growing companies.
Let Finlyte Support Your Growth Path
Each company that we work with has unique needs and timeline requirements for migrating from QuickBooks to NetSuite ERP. We support companies from across multiple industries to ensure complete customer success.
To support smooth implementation, we identify roadblocks and create a roadmap for success so that we are aligned with your company’s migration requirements, technology setup, current appetite for change, and growth objectives.
This roadmap enables us to hit each key project milestone during NetSuite implementation so that we can help your team get up to speed while minimizing disruption. By reducing time to value, we’ll help you quickly realize a positive ROI on your investment in the platform.
If you are growing faster than your current software can keep up, then let’s end the conversation about NetSuite vs. QuickBooks. NetSuite is the clear choice for growing companies. Contact us today to discuss an implementation solution that fits your need!
