Acumatica ERP vs QuickBooks

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.

How You Know You’ve Outgrown QuickBooks Online

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, if you find these business elements creating issues and see your business moving from small to mid-sized, then moving from QuickBooks Online to an ERP system may give you the functions you need to expand your sales radius and realize the growth potential. There are two performance indicators to look at when thinking of moving from QuickBooks Online to an ERP system. 

The Difference Between Acumatica and QuickBooks Online

Even if you’re not facing the plateau with QuickBooks Online, you need to consider distinct differences between Acumatica Cloud ERP and QuickBooks Online. 

Functionality	Acumatica ERP	QuickBooks Online
True Mobility
Full Relational Database Export
Customization using industry-standard tools
Flexible Licensing based on customer requirements
Multiple Deployment Options
Scale as you grow
Superior Return on Investment

Accounting Solution vs. Full-Service Financial Management

QuickBooks Online Is An Accounting Solution

QuickBooks Online is designed to be a basic accounting solution rather than a complete business management system.

Acumatica Is A Full-Service Solution

Acumatica Cloud ERP provides not only financial management tools, instead it is tailored to specific industries to provide a complete business software solution for customer management, inventory, warehouse management, manufacturing, field service management, equipment maintenance, project accounting, contracts recurring billings, payroll, and more. 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.

Functionality	Acumatica ERP	QuickBooks Online
Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable
Accounts Receivable
General Ledger
Cash Management
Payroll
Job Costing
Fixed Assets
Inter-Company Accounting
Multi-Currency and Multi-Language Support
PCI-Compliant Payments
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
User-Defined Workflows
Customizable, Role-Based Dashboards
Document Management
Open APIs and Web Services Integrations
Mobile Device Access (anywhere, anytime)
Unlimited Users

User Licensing vs. Unlimited Licensing

QuickBooks Online Licensing Limitations

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 a maximum number of licenses you can buy. 

Acumatica Licensing

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. 

Growth and Scalability

QuickBooks Online Growth Is Limited

With QuickBooks Online, you’re 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 Growth-Centric

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. 

Choose Long-Term Growth Over Short-Term Solutions

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 grow because it includes marketing, customer support case management, warehouse management, manufacturing, and so much more.

Spending a bit more 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.