QuickBooks Online is one of the most well-known financial management solutions for small businesses on the market today. It offers a wide range of products and functionality that can meet the requirements of your business. Many small to medium-sized companies find that QuickBooks Online provides the financial and customer management they need. However, QuickBooks Online has limited functionality that helps you as your business grows.
Comparing a full-fledged ERP system like Acumatica Cloud ERP and a basic accounting system like QuickBooks Online may seem odd. Still, most organizations remain too long on a basic accounting system they originally purchased because it was low cost. So when you need to shift to a larger system that handles more operations than just customer data and invoicing and the back-office financials, how do you know? This guide will identify when you’ve outgrown QuickBooks Online and why Acumatica outperforms it, even if your business is still small and growing.
QuickBooks Online is a valuable asset if you’re a micro or small business offering a small product or professional services list and operating under ten employees. Another way to look at this is if all your customer transactions are within a 25-mile radius and your monthly sales ledger is about two pages long, and you store your inventory in a small warehouse attached to your office, QuickBooks Online likely provides all the functionality you need.
However, as your business grows, it's time to consider moving to a more robust platform. When considering the leap from QuickBooks Online to Acumatica, it's crucial to look at these two performance indicators that let you know it's time.
As QuickBooks Online has evolved, its developed integrations with third-party systems that promise ERP-like capabilities. But these often fall short of the full functionality you get from a complete ERP system. That’s because these third-party integrations are “resources-lite” business systems. These integrations work fine if you can execute your resource management processes on slow and reactive responses. But, when your business needs real-time decision-making that matches the speed of your business, QuickBooks Online third-party integrations fall short. When speed becomes critical to your operations, it’s time to look for a more dynamic operations control system.
Just like your speed-of-response aids or limits the efficiency of your enterprise resource management, the inability to add additional database elements for a particular business process can be the difference between gaining and losing business. For example, suppose you find yourself losing businesses to your competitors. In that case, it’s time to upgrade your system to capture those opportunities in real-time and make decisions to improve your business processes quickly. Unfortunately, QuickBooks Online doesn’t give you the flexibility to add additional database elements to help you during the decision-making process. As a result, problems you don’t know about can fall through the cracks.
Even if you’re not facing the plateau with QuickBooks Online, you need to consider distinct differences between Acumatica Cloud ERP and QuickBooks Online.
QuickBooks Online is designed to be a basic accounting solution rather than a complete business management system. It is made to be a one-size-fits-all solution and doesn't consider the multiple facets of a larger business model.
Acumatica Cloud ERP provides more than just financial management tools. It is tailor-made for specific industries and verticals, providing a complete business solution. As a result, you have the tools you need at your fingertips, from customer management to fulfillment. In addition, it combines a full-scale ERP with MRP and Customer Resource Management (CRM) to go beyond basic accounting and provides all the tools to manage tasks, processes, and operations across your company. As your business grows, these functions are essential to enable data flow across departments, streamline processes, centralize data, and allow you to manage everything in one system.
QuickBooks Online licensing is user-based. This means that you’ll need to add or redistribute licenses for additional users over time as your business grows. In addition, QuickBooks Online limits personnel using the system simultaneously without additional licensing, and even that is limited to the maximum number of licenses you can buy.
Acumatica takes a different approach to its licensing. Instead of limiting users, licenses are priced based on your business's resource usage and computing power. As a result, you can add or remove applications anytime without worrying about the number of users in the system, creating an ideal model for growth.
QuickBooks Online is limited to a maximum of 30 users. So, while it may be the right solution initially, once you grow past a specific size, you're forced to evaluate and implement a new solution to manage your business. In addition, QuickBooks Online doesn’t support multiple companies/branches. So if you need to operate multiple locations, you can’t use QuickBooks Online to manage all areas in one centralized system.
Acumatica is built with growth in mind. It offers multi-currency and multi-company business operations and has unlimited users. The user structure sets Acumatica apart from QuickBooks Online and other business management solutions. You can have as few as five employees or over 250 and still have access to all the tools and integrations you need to manage your entire business, not just your financial reporting.
QuickBooks Online may be a good starting point if you’re a small business with few employees, but if you anticipate any long-term growth, you’ll move past QuickBooks Online at some point. Investing in an ERP provides a robust set of tools to empower your business to grow without limitations. The complete solution that Acumatica Cloud ERP offers and the ability to easily integrate with other systems helps you increase the speed at which you succeed because it includes marketing, customer support case management, warehouse management, manufacturing, and so much more.
Spending the money now helps you avoid costly workaround solutions to complete day-to-day tasks and provides the growth potential you need to succeed in the competitive ecommerce market.
Kensium is the preferred commerce partner with Acumatica. We comprehensively analyze your business needs and build the right ERP solution for your business. Acumatica Cloud ERP offers future-proof tools and solutions built with growth in mind from small businesses to large enterprise corporations. Our expert designers, developers, and engineers help you realize the potential for growth and set you up for success. So contact us today and find out how we can help grow your business and keep it running smoothly.
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