10 Signs You Need to Upgrade From Quickbooks

1. Too Many Spreadsheets

Are you managing your business through spreadsheets? Do you look at your sales and revenue performance by opening up multiple spreadsheets? Do you often wonder why you have so many spreadsheets outside of Quickbooks? Spreadsheets often contain out of date information and it is hard to make a decision on your business without the full picture. Doing data entry twice or multiple times seem to be the norm. It is time to put a stop to that.

2. Slow Application and Random Crashes

Is this a typical activity? Do you open Quickbooks, run a report, go for a coffee and come back 5 minutes later and the report is still being generated? As your company grows and the number of transactions and data you record increase, you probably have noticed that it takes longer to do any activities in Quickbooks. Don’t get me wrong, its a great problem to have if your business is growing and Quickbooks is getting slower because of it, but, really – its still a problem. If your database file is in the gigabytes, and you do upgrade your version of Quickbooks, you will probably still find that performance is slow. Getting data out of your accounting system should not be this hard.

Oh, and do you often get cryptic messages from Quickbooks during the time when you most need it to be working? Yup.

3. Integration with Other Systems is Hard

Let’s face it, as your business grows, the number of systems you use will grow. Integrated these systems to talk with your accounting solution seems like the most efficient way to manage your business. So naturally, you hire a developer who seems to understand Quickbooks API really well..but unfortunately, integrating business systems is as much about your business processes as they are about the accounting applications. So at the end of the day, it feels like you got a half-baked solution primarily due to the lack of understanding of your business processes as well as the limitations of an on-premise solution.

4. Tracking Shipments and Status

You need to manage an increasing number of incoming and outgoing shipments and track your goods in transit. Information is scattered in multiple systems and it is hard to get a handle on when orders will be shipped or arrived. Orders are often misplaced and customers are complaining. You are losing revenue and paying for the stock that isn’t turning over. Your staff is handicapped by incomplete and inconsistent data.

Collaboration and data sharing are keys to increased efficiency in an organization. If you commonly need to send Quickbooks data back and forth to your accountants or colleagues in a different location, it is a good time to stop and wonder if there is a better way to do this. Your businesses cannot stop while your data is in transit. You need a system where multiple users in different locations can access the same data in real time. You thought you found the perfect solution when you set up a terminal server to share one instance of Quickbooks but the slowness of the screen refreshes totally annoys your users every day.

6. Putting More Users on the System is Expensive

As you grow, you realize that you need to put more users on Quickbooks but there is a cost of adding additional users to Quickbooks. You should be able to grow your business and not your costs.

7. Multi-Currency Costs You More Than Just Rate Losses

Your business is a global business and you do business in multiple currencies. As exchange rates fluctuate, you need to understand the impacts of these changes in order to understand the impact on your invoices and inventories. Repeat business means you may need to bill the same customer in different currencies but cannot do so in Quickbooks. Your controller or accountant spends 2-3 days doing currency conversion, adjustments and reconciling the gains/losses of the currency fluctuations to your GL. Oh – and month end reporting data doesn’t really happen at month end – it happens in the middle of the next month.

8. You Are Unable to Lock Down Closed Periods

You often have transactions that have occurred in the past modified by your users and no one seems to remember why the change was made. Your accountant is complaining about the amount of cleanup that has to be done at year end. You wish there is a way to stop users from posting to closed periods.

9. I Need to Customize My Accounting System

You found that you have needs to customize your accounting system to fit your workflow and processes but Quickbooks doesn’t customize – you get what they have and you do workarounds to make it work for your business. You need your accounting system to be customizable so you can continue to grow your business.

10. Tracking Profitability of Projects

As you take on bigger clients, you want to be able to see the profitability of each client for each project. You also need to bill in stages but you often lost track of what has been billed or what still needs to be billed. You want to be able to track profit/loss of projects across multiple reporting periods in order to identify the long-term ROI of your investments.