Has QuickBooks lived its life in your organization?

Running a small business in 2021 will be a very challenging job. Markets and economies are highly dynamic, and business leaders have realized the need for changing plans and policies at different points. Unfortunately for some, the learning has come the hard way. Either way, leaders have understood the need for absolute flexibility. Understanding the need of the hour for your business in terms of technology is critical. Businesses using QuickBooks are often faced with the question of whether they should move on to another solution. Comparisons between QuickBooks and Dynamics 365 are often drawn. However, it is very important to understand the following points:

1. They can both provide the core functionality you need to handle basic accounting in a small business. But beyond that, the two solutions are worlds apart.
2. Overall, QuickBooks tends to be more suitable for simple small businesses or micro-businesses, whereas Dynamics 365 Business Central fulfills the more complex needs of growing small businesses and mid-size businesses. In fact, many businesses start on QuickBooks and then transition to Business Central once their needs grow. It’s like it starts to slow as you start to grow.

Here’s a quick look at a few important points that will help you understand more about QuickBooks and its alternatives, and also help you in making a decision.

QuickBooks

1. Owned by Intuit.
2. For small businesses.
3. QuickBooks Online Plus; as well as QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Platinum, Gold, and Silver. you get increased functionality as you move up the chain, including advanced reporting, payroll, inventory, and pricing.

QuickBooks Strengths

1. You can run the solution in a “single-tenant” configuration, which means you can move the app from hosting in a private cloud to a public cloud if necessary. It is also quite easy to buy and set up QuickBooks without any help.
2. Easy to use and learn.
3. Affordable price.
4. Easy-to-look-up customer information.
5. Easy to find and fix errors/mistakes.
6. Easily integrate payroll and payment processing. As I mentioned, core areas of Intuit’s business include payroll and merchant services add-ons.

QuickBooks Considerations

1. Weak user roles and security options—it’s too easy for mistakes to be made and for users to have improper access to data. It’s easy to fix errors and mistakes, which makes it easy for someone to manipulate your books.
2. Not-so-robust audit trails—no record of logins/logoffs, and no record of changes to master records.
3. Limited/inconvenient reporting options and no inter-company reporting.
4. QuickBooks is not scalable.
5. Limitations on the number of users.
6. Lack of direct professional support.
7. Instability/system crashes.
8. Data is not always backed up, so you risk losing information.
9. When you approach 1000 transactions/month or multiple users accessing the system at the same time, QuickBooks gets slower and slower.
10. QuickBooks doesn’t have multi-lingual functionality, which limits international growth.
11. have limited options for billing formats, and you will have difficulty billing third parties or different client locations.
12. You also can’t work with deferred revenue or expenses in QuickBooks.
13. The inventory management module is not good.

QuickBooks & Business Central

1. Both provide accounting functionality.
2. Each can provide the core functionality you need to handle basic accounting in a small business. But beyond that, the two solutions are worlds apart.
3. Overall, QuickBooks tends to be more suitable for simple small businesses or micro-businesses, whereas Dynamics 365 Business Central fulfills the more complex needs of growing small businesses and mid-size businesses. In fact, many businesses start on QuickBooks and then transition to Business Central once their needs grow. It’s like it starts to slow as you start to grow.
4. In this video I’m going to break down some of the differences between the two products and discuss when you might choose QuickBooks vs Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Microsoft Dynamics

1. Owned by Microsoft.
2. For growing small businesses.
3. ERP system to manage finances, operations, sales, payroll, and customer service.

Strengths

1. 800 features that QuickBooks Online Plus does not have.
2. Business Central’s audit trail is much more robust, better protecting businesses against errors and employee theft.
3. See open purchase orders and purchase comparisons in accounts payable.
4. Connect your data easily to a full reporting solution, Power BI.
5. See salesperson performance analysis in order to enter reports.
6. Give different data access permissions to different users.
7. Business Central Integration with Microsoft Office.

Considerations

1. Larger investment.
2. Requires more frequent attention from your IT team.
3. On-premise means paying for your own servers, plus a place to store them and electricity to power them.
4. Will have to pay for future updates instead of receiving them freely and automatically from Microsoft.

When to choose QuickBooks?

1. Your company has five or fewer staff members.
2. You only have one or two accounting staff members (and you plan to keep it that way).
3. You or your accountant is deeply knowledgeable in QuickBooks, and you’re willing to continue training for new versions of QuickBooks rather than learning a new tool.
4. When you don’t have manufacturing, warehouses, or transportation.
5. If inventory management is not needed.

When to choose Dynamics?

You do more than 1000 transactions/month (or might get there in the next 6-12 months).

1. Do you have plans to expand to more than one country, or do you currently operate in multiple countries?
2. You need to handle deferred revenue and/or expenses.
3. You place a premium on the reporting ability of a system.
4. You want your information to be auditable.
5. Security is a concern for you.
6. You want the efficiency gains from having your accounting solution truly integrated with Outlook and the rest of your Office suite.

Are you looking for an ERP implementation?

Captivix helps organizations select the right ERP system to connect their organization and improve productivity while easing the cultural changes required to not just implement but also adopt the new software throughout their enterprise and ensure a smooth transition in case of a partner change.