Many individuals or entrepreneurs begin with a simple idea that soon evolves into a tangible business. To get their ventures off the ground, they often need basic tools. For standard business technology, many of these new small and midsize businesses (SMBs) turn to QuickBooks.
QuickBooks is a straightforward, entry-level business system that small organizations use to manage their basic accounting and core financial needs. It eliminates paper-based processes, integrates reports, and simplifies payroll and tax requirements from the start. However, as businesses grow in size and complexity, QuickBooks may no longer suffice.
Today, we’ll address the top four pain points you’re likely experiencing if you’re still relying on QuickBooks—and why transitioning to a modern, innovative ERP system designed for SMBs (like Acumatica) is crucial for your future growth and success.
Top 4 Challenges for QuickBooks Users
1. Limited Capabilities
QuickBooks is sufficient as an initial accounting package, with many users praising its ease of use, efficiency, affordability, and time savings. However, its limited capabilities become apparent as businesses grow. For instance, it struggles to accommodate businesses with a growing workforce, especially when this growth involves international expansion and managing multiple business entities.
QuickBooks Online offers different plans to fit various needs, but these plans also limit the number of users. For growing companies, having a set user limit can seriously hinder progress.
When you reach your user limits, your options are limited to upgrading your plan or purchasing additional licenses. If neither option is feasible, you might resort to workarounds like sharing login credentials (a security and data integrity risk) and manually gathering and inputting data, often using Excel for reporting. Unfortunately, these workarounds are inefficient, leading to reduced productivity and increased errors.
2. Increasing Complexities
As businesses grow, they inevitably become more complex, requiring new tools, additional employees, and more data management. QuickBooks often amplifies these complexities due to its limitations.
These limitations include:
- Manual workarounds, such as using error-prone spreadsheets to connect data from separate applications or multiple QuickBooks instances within the business.
- Delayed order and inventory fulfillment.
- Lengthy budget cycles.
- Inefficient workflows and processes.
- A lack of industry-specific capabilities.
These constraints consume time, slow down processes, waste resources, and limit your organization’s potential.
3. Ongoing and Unpredictable Costs
While affordability is a common selling point for QuickBooks, many long-time users find that the standalone accounting solution quickly becomes expensive. The limited capabilities often force businesses to add costly third-party applications, which may require time-consuming and pricey custom integrations to manage expanding payroll, inventory management, and CRM requirements. Additionally, keeping these additional applications synchronized through QuickBooks upgrades adds a significant burden to small businesses operating without critical IT support.
The lack of industry-specific features in basic accounting software may force you to implement additional software to meet your unique needs. It also requires you to rely on manual processes to get the job done. QuickBooks’ inability to scale with your growing business puts additional strain on your finances.
Moreover, if you’re a QuickBooks Desktop user, you may face hardware maintenance costs, manual upgrades, and the need for customization. Your affordable accounting solution may no longer be as cost-effective as it once seemed.
4. Fragmented Data
SMBs are the backbone of the US economy, and data is the fuel that drives their growth. For strategic decision-making and business growth, you need instant access to updated and accurate data, along with the ability to gather, store, and analyze it.
Unfortunately, QuickBooks, as a standalone application with limited features, doesn’t provide a centralized database and often requires integration with additional applications. These applications don’t always integrate seamlessly, causing data to be trapped in each application. This requires expensive and time-consuming efforts to extract and consolidate data into a single, comprehensive report.
This separation of data, known as “data silos,” hinders your ability to gain real-time insights and make swift, informed decisions.
What Can Be Done?
One way to improve operational efficiency is through technology and digital transformation. Moving to a modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution like Acumatica can help streamline operations, improve communication, and automate routine tasks.
Acumatica enables customers to save hours upon hours of time gathering data, completing quarterly statements, processing shipping, invoicing, and more. It shaves days off of closing the books! That frees up your employees to focus on higher-order tasks instead of tedious, repetitive manual processes. And don’t forget that you’re also reducing the risk of manual errors being introduced.
Ready to Make the Switch?
If your business has outgrown your QuickBooks software, we’re here to help! We can help implement, integrate, and personalize your Acumatica installation to give you the best software resources possible. We can also provide more specialized software solutions depending on your company’s needs. Contact us or schedule a free consultation today to learn more!