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Why do businesses outgrow QuickBooks?

6 Minute Read | The following blog post is based on Sage’s eBook titled ‘Life After QuickBooks: Why It’s Time For Your Financial Services Firm to Step Up to Sage Intacct’.

 

Why are businesses outgrowing QuickBooks so rapidly?

Many SMEs opt for Intuit QuickBooks as their financial software solution in their early days due to its ease of use and basic functionality known for getting businesses get off the ground.

However, as the business grows, the limitations and compromises of QuickBooks become more evident and quickly become a short-term solution to a long-term problem, with businesses resorting to using several spreadsheets alongside the system.

With multiple points of data entry comes a much higher risk of errors, and as the business’ demands grow, so does the pressure on finance leaders to come up with a proper solution and free up much-needed time and resources for allocation to tasks elsewhere across the business.

Put simply, QuickBooks is not designed for scale; businesses find that they quickly outgrow what was once the perfect solution for their small business and is now a serious hindrance.

 

Is now the right time to leave QuickBooks?

Investing in a new financial management solution might seem terrifying, especially if it feels like you’ve not been using QuickBooks for all that long.

But what many finance leaders don’t realise is their business is at greater risk if they do nothing to rectify the issues created by outgrowing QuickBooks.

Think of it this way: if your team has had to adopt manual workarounds and use several spreadsheets alongside the QuickBooks system, they’re wasting hours each week on manually inputting data between spreadsheets and QuickBooks.

These inefficiencies become standard procedure for the business, but when you look at the bigger picture, it has a knock-on effect on business efficiencies and prevents growth.

A recent TechValidate study (TechValidate TVID: 94C-D40-7D5) of QuickBooks users who made the switch to Sage Intacct found that they had been struggling with a long list of challenges prior to the move.

The five biggest limitations were:

  • Over-reliance on spreadsheets for financial processes and reporting
  • Excess manual data entry and re-entry
  • Limited access to reports and business metrics
  • Difficulties in adapting to new business requirements
  • Inadequate control over finance processes

5 Biggest limitations of QuickBooks

Take a look at the limitations identified as the five biggest struggles businesses faced when using QuickBooks prior to their switch to Intacct below.

1. Over-reliance on spreadsheets for financial processes and reporting

What a nightmare!

Errors in manual processes is certainly one of the most common reasons for smaller, growing businesses looking for a more sophisticated and reliable solution to financial management.

QuickBooks doesn’t provide the built-in capabilities required for the complex processes involved in manipulating data for reporting and drilling down into data sets, resulting in monotonous workarounds for so many finance teams!

2. Excess manual data entry and re-entry

Most businesses using QuickBooks don’t bother to integrate the software with other key business applications. Instead, they tend to manually transfer data between them using CSVs and manual data re-entry.

It’s tedious and so unnecessary, but many QuickBooks users feel it’s less hassle at the start as they have small volumes of data to work with.

But as the business grows, so does the volume of data and this method of working becomes a real headache, increasing the risk of errors and wasting a lot of time.

Of course, once you’ve been working with these methods for a while, integration of the software isn’t really a plausible solution either as the user would have to filter and sort data to identify and remove duplicate data.

3. Limited access to reports and business metrics

“Rather than constantly struggling to keep up with incoming requests for data and specific reports, Sage Intacct lets us consistently report financials in a timely manner and feel confident that we can easily respond.”

Real-time access and visibility of the latest data for your businesses is paramount for timely decision making and boosting business performance.

QuickBooks doesn’t offer this functionality, forcing finance leaders to make decisions based on old data, which doesn’t accurately reflect the business’ progress or state of affairs.

 

4. Difficulties in adapting to new business requirements

If you’ve read this far, it’s likely that you’ve noticed some signs that QuickBooks is no longer fit to serve your business effectively.

For many businesses, the solution begins to lag behind, and struggles to load data due to the increase in volume. As a result, basic tasks like simple reports take much too long and queries could even result in the system crashing and loss of recent data entries.

No business can run efficiently with these problems looming over it!

5. Inadequate control over finance processes

Ouch! Errors of this scale could sink a business if left unaddressed.

QuickBooks’ limited functionality requires a lot of manual workarounds, increasing risks of errors and data duplication, and providing incorrect data and insights (when you eventually get them working!).

Despite its popularity as a solution for small businesses, QuickBooks has limitations which result in the application becoming a money pit for businesses once they’ve hit a certain size.

What’s the solution?

Sage Intacct – the industry’s #1 voted true cloud financial management solution for customer satisfaction – offers sophisticated functionality including global multi-entity consolidations, multi-currency support, and intuitive reporting and dashboards.

Businesses using QuickBooks often look to Sage Intacct when they’re ready to make the move for several reasons.

The solution is available in two versions: Sage Intacct and Sage Intacct Starter Edition.

Sage Intacct provides businesses with all the features they require for their business’ current level of growth, as well as broader capabilities to ensure they have everything they’ll need for the future.

For businesses looking for a solution that provides all the core functionality of Sage Intacct, without additional complexities such as global consolidation for more than five entities, Start Edition is the ideal solution.

Learn more about the differences between Sage Intacct & Starter Edition

Discover the solutions

Want to discuss the possibility of implementing Sage Intacct or Starter Edition within your business? Or maybe you’re not sure which option is best suited to your business?

Get in touch via the form below and one of our experts will get back to you to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation: