When your business was just starting out, you didn’t need the most robust tools on the market. Not only did you not yet have the volume of business to create the need, you may also not have had the budget to afford the more complex tools—and that’s okay! Tools like QuickBooks are excellent and cost-effective solutions for small businesses, and even some midsize businesses. With basic bookkeeping functionality that is simple, inexpensive, and flexible, QuickBooks is a gold standard solution. 

But then as business takes off (as we all hope it does!) and things begin to boom, you might find that QuickBooks is feeling a little more snug around the middle than you’d like and isn’t quite fitting your business the way it used to. 

And guess what: That’s okay, too! 

Is It Time to Leave QuickBooks?

Adopting new software and applications can be a daunting process, perhaps one you’d like to put off as long as possible. We get that. Who wants to go through the hassle of a new software implementation unless you really have to do it? 

So: Is it time for you to move off of QuickBooks or not? Take a look at these signs. If any of these have you nodding your head, then you should start looking for a new solution in fairly short order.

• It’s hard to manage and consolidate data from multiple entities. You need multi-entity integration to complete month-end close as well as generate reports that pull data across multiple entities. If you’re using separate instances of QuickBooks for each entity, gathering and aggregating the data for your reports is going to take a lot of manual hours to complete.
• Your audit trail needs to be documented better. The QuickBooks audit trail is lackluster at best, which can be a significant challenge if you’re looking at an outside investment that requires a financial statement audit, or you’re being audited by the IRS. While no software is perfect, QuickBooks has a few loopholes that allow information to be changed without documentation, which can open your business up to fraud, error, and even security risks. 
• You’re hitting the max limit on users and storage. QuickBooks has a 30-user cap limit. This is fine for smaller businesses; not so much for a growing business. QuickBooks can’t scale with your organization. As far as data storage, once your file size exceeds 1 GB, you’ll start to see performance diminish. Exceeding limits can also lead to costly and problematic system outages. 
• You need real-time data to run the business. Making good business decisions relies on reporting that features real-time data. If you can automate that real-time data, you’ll save a bunch of time on reporting and empower leaders with the best data for their decision-making process.
• Workarounds are a standard thing. Is your team using too many add-ons or managing multiple tasks manually to get things done in the face of limited functionality from QuickBooks? There goes your efficiency, and the speed at which you’re able to do business.
• Month- and year-end reporting takes forever. Shuffling through multiple data sources? Blending information by hand to get what you need? That’s a tiresome and time-consuming task that nobody needs in their growing business, least of all you.

Did all of that sound uncomfortably familiar? It’s okay: This is all normal stuff for a company that is successful and growing—and growing out of the software that worked when you were smaller and just starting out. Now it’s time to look at what’s next after QuickBooks. 

Taking the Fear Factor out of Moving to ERP

It’s clear that your growing business needs a more powerful option than QuickBooks. The next logical step for most organizations is a cloud-based ERP system. It sounds like a big leap from your QuickBooks accounting system to a big ERP, especially since ERPs have a reputation of being large-scale projects used mainly by large companies. ERPs today are significantly less intimidating, though, allowing companies to start small and add functionality as they grow. 

In fact, that’s exactly how NetSuite was designed. Just like we all build customization on our cell phones now with the apps that serve us best in our specific day-to-day lives, NetSuite is built on the idea that organizations can customize with apps and integrations to craft a day-to-day experience in the ERP that exactly matches the organization’s processes and needs. 

(Hear more about customizing NetSuite for your organization by listening in to this on-demand webinar with ERP consultant Adam Chaikin on Building the Best NetSuite Experience for Your Team.)

Once you have a comprehensive ERP like NetSuite in place, you can ditch manual processes in exchange for automation, which will free up your teams to do more analysis, along with other tasks that will benefit your business more than manual processes do. When you hold NetSuite ERP up against QuickBooks, you’ll see that moving to an ERP will give you intuitive and flexible customization that lets your business adapt the system to your unique needs while offering baked-in industry leading practices. 

Set NetSuite up for Success with CloudExtend

Now the scary part: Getting all that data from QuickBooks into NetSuite. And then reporting on it. Don’t panic, there’s an easy solution, and it starts with Excel. Well, ExtendInsights for NetSuite by CloudExtend, to be precise.

As a purpose-built NetSuite integration application that connects Excel with NetSuite, ExtendInsights is perfectly situated to let you do everything you need to do with reporting right in the familiar interface of Excel. But the feature we really want to highlight for you here is the ability to upsert data into NetSuite directly from Excel. No need for CSV exports and imports. Run it all directly from Excel with real-time data validation. It’s the fastest—and most accurate—way to get your data over from QuickBooks to NetSuite. 

Then once your data is upserted to NetSuite, ExtendInsights lets you run one or more saved searches right in Excel on a schedule or on demand for easy, to-the-moment reporting that empowers leadership with the information they need to make the best decisions at the right time. 

If you’re ready to move on from QuickBooks to the power of NetSuite, let CloudExtend help. We’ll even let you try ExtendInsights completely FREE for two weeks, no credit card required. Get started here.