What To Do When QuickBooks Doesn’t Have the Horsepower?

Many companies start out using QuickBooks because it is inexpensive; it lets them pay their bills and invoice their customers. Additional features such as generating financials, accounts payable, accounts receivables, and basic inventory control make it a popular solution for startups and small businesses. As companies grow, they soon discover QuickBooks lacks the horsepower needed to scale.

What if?

• QuickBooks slows down because you have too many items or transactions.
• You’ve generated more serial numbers than QuickBooks can verify without the risk of duplication.
• You need to manage your manufacturing processes, raw materials, or finished goods.
• Your customers ask you to use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for orders.

You may be in one of the above-mentioned situations right now. Or maybe you’re checking out options for your expanding business.

Many of our clients came to us when they were looking for a solution. As a result, we helped them move to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and they are seeing positive results.

It’s easy to stick with what you know

You’re comfortable with the software. You can write checks and create invoices, but what about all the additional software or manual processes you rely on to complete the task? Like most companies, you probably have more “fixes” than you realize; spreadsheets, notebooks, whiteboards, and yellow sticky notes, to name a few. So how will you know if your growth is being stunted?

Do any of these situations apply to you?

1. Your system can’t keep up with the level of growth you’re experiencing.

2. Can’t manage multiple locations in your current software.

3. Excel and other separate software programs are used to manage data and fill the gaps.

4. Inventory management is inefficient, inaccurate, and cumbersome.

5. Fishbowl was added to manage your inventory.

6. You need the ability to connect your accounting to additional websites and third-party sellers.

7. You need better planning, budgeting, and forecasting.

8. Unable to track all your business transactions.

9. Can’t trace transactions back to their source or person who performed them.

10. Increased security risk due to the inability to establish employee permissions.

11. Software support is difficult and

12. Need Credit Card processing.

For example: One of our clients has over 170,000 customers and another client has more than 40,000 inventory items.

Explore the details of how Business Central solves the problems growing businesses face with QuickBooks.

1. Your Business is Growing and QuickBooks Can’t Keep Up

QuickBooks’ simplicity becomes a liability by limiting the number of records the system can process and maintain. Growing companies find QuickBooks too rigid to adapt to their needs.

As you increase the number of products you sell, customers, vendors, and users, you may notice QuickBooks response time slowing down.

Do you find yourself trying these fixes?

• Close your file and exit the application to try to speed up the processing.
• Limit the number of users who access a module simultaneously.
• Avoid printing a massive report when others are accessing the system.

If so, you’ve likely reached your limits with QuickBooks. As you need more licenses, user access, and computing capacity, QuickBooks becomes very expensive. Moving to ‘QuickBooks Enterprise’, their most powerful version, is a migration and can more than double your annual subscription costs. QuickBooks Enterprise can also be slow to incorporate advanced functionality.

Business Central – Simple numbers to give you an idea of how Business Central can grow with you from startup to full scale.

• 1 or 400 users
• $1,000,000 or $1,000,000,000 of annual revenue
• 10 or 100,000 inventory items
• 20 or 200,000 customers
• 10MB or 2,000 GB of data
• 100 or 20,000 Sales orders per month

Business Central is completely functional straight out of the box.

In addition, it is designed with built in “hooks” so any of over 4,000 third-party apps can be added to meet your company’s unique requirements. Another way Microsoft and Business Central answer the call. Start and stay in the cloud or keep it on your server; it’s your choice.

Business Central’s simplicity is great for smaller companies. Turn on more functionality as you need it. Warehouse management; manage your new manufacturing processes; you name it Business Central can handle it.

2. You have expanded to multiple locations and can’t manage them

If you plan to expand your business to include multiple locations, companies, or even multiple currencies, Business Central is your answer. QuickBooks is unable to track intercompany transactions or consolidate financial statements for multiple entities.

Business Central easily scales as your business grows so it can handle whether you have four or four hundred employees, multiple locations, and legal entities. With Business Central, you receive comprehensive consolidation and intercompany functionality and reporting.

3. QuickBooks Doesn’t Have the Functionality You Need

Many companies require higher functioning capabilities to manage purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, distribution, audit control, and advanced reporting than QuickBooks can provide.

When business systems don’t have the capabilities your staff needs, they start turning to manual processes, spreadsheets, and other non-integrated software. The problems associated with manual processes and systems that don’t talk to one another are delays, and inaccurate data, causing poor results.

Another option is to hire consultants to write custom applications to use with their QuickBooks. This is an added expense to create and support.

Business Central, out of the box, has far more functionality than QuickBooks. In addition, Business Central is easily customizable and can be explicitly configured for your business. This is especially necessary and helpful for manufacturers and distributors. Business Central’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system has complete BOM, work-center, and routing capabilities in addition to solid planning capabilities for MRP and MPS. Scheduling production jobs or purchase orders are simple to execute.

It’s a Tangled Web

Spreadsheets, notebooks, Word documents, QuickBooks, Fishbowl – or any other systems your staff uses – all have different information and reliability. Your people will use whatever they need to get their job done. Problems arise because the individual systems are not tied together, offering no way of updating them in tandem. QuickBooks cannot manage all the data, and the bigger you grow, the more inefficient you become and the less likely you are to manage your growth and business.

4. Inventory Management is Difficult and Inaccurate

For growing companies, managing inventory can become a nightmare. On its own, QuickBooks is not equipped to keep track of serialized or lot-controlled inventory, and it can’t communicate between all your different warehouses. Lost revenue opportunities can easily occur without an inventory control system.

Business Central has robust inventory control and warehouse management capabilities built in. You can quickly check inventory within the warehouse and between locations. You can track orders and review profitability because all your business functions are connected. Your inventory data are centralized and can be shared across tasks without manual intervention. More inventory data leads to a better picture of your costs and allow you to improve profitability.

5. You added Fishbowl to manage your inventory

You can get additional inventory tracking functionality if you use QuickBooks Enterprise Platinum with the optional Advanced Inventory module; however, this isn’t always enough. Some QuickBooks users turn to Fishbowl, a separate inventory system. Additional systems add expense. Moreover, the data between these systems may not be synchronized which can cause errors.

We have helped multiple clients move their business from the QuickBooks/Fishbowl combination because it was not adequate for their inventory management needs.

Business Central has robust inventory control and warehouse management capabilities built in. You can quickly check inventory within the warehouse and between locations. You can track orders and review profitability because all your business functions are connected. Your inventory data are centralized and can be shared across tasks without manual intervention. More inventory data leads to a better picture of your costs and allow you to improve profitability.

6. You Need Connections to Additional Applications

In today’s online and global business environment, connections to e-commerce websites and third-party sellers are necessary for growing companies. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are essential to maximizing client relationships. Integrating these systems saves time and money, removes duplication of effort, and cuts opportunities for errors.

QuickBooks doesn’t make connecting these critical systems easy. Accessing data in QuickBooks can be frustrating due to its closed database architecture. Obtaining open and unlimited access to QuickBooks often requires additional applications or custom programming. Yes, you can do it, but at what cost?

Meanwhile, Business Central’s open, architecture makes its data accessible to external applications. Because of its popularity, Business Central has API connections to e-commerce carts, marketplaces, and CRM systems such as Microsoft and Salesforce, so there is no need for custom development.

7. You Need Advanced Reporting that’s Easy to Use

As QuickBooks users grow, many spend excessive time manually updating spreadsheets, finding and resolving discrepancies, and generating accurate reports for management. You need better planning, budgeting, and forecasting.

If you migrate to QuickBooks Enterprise, you can add an Advanced Reporting feature that includes interactive dashboards and a customizable reporting tool. However, Advanced Reporting can be difficult to learn and get set up. It may require a consultant to ensure your data is being tracked correctly.

Meanwhile, Business Central has broad reporting capabilities available across multiple locations, companies, and legal entities. There are numerous builtin reports that supply visibility across the organization. Business Central is integrated with Excel if you want more flexibility. In addition, data can be accessed through Power BI inside Business Central.

Power BI is an industry-leading business intelligence tool that securely lets your users analyze real-time data without needing technical support. Since Power BI runs in the cloud, users can access data, dashboards, and reports online and across mobile devices.