The Alternative to QuickBooks

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When QuickBooks No Longer Fits Your Business Software Needs

Your company is growing. With productivity and profits comes the challenge of greater financial management. Give yourself more control over your financial future. What got you here won’t get you where you want to grow.

Don’t feel ready for the complications of ERP, but need a QuickBooks alternative?

Here is a list of nine (9) problems to help you determine if you’ve outgrown QuickBooks.

What is the best solution for your business growth?

9 Signs Your Manufacturing Business is Outgrowing QuickBooks

1. User and database size limits

Once you hit the ceiling of maximum current users with QuickBooks, you need a way to keep the good things you like about the system, while supporting additional users in your growing organization. When you're in growth mode, the last thing you want to deal with is whether your financial software can handle adding another user. Naturally you don’t want to sacrifice performance or speed either, you just want to lose the limitations tied to a constricted number of users, data sets, items, history, inventory, etc.

xTuple is enterprise-class software powered by a transaction-oriented database, so you can achieve growth and scale your operations, with the added benefit of gaining a better overall solution.

2. Insufficient controls for operational checks and balances

With QuickBooks, ease of use is a good thing; however, the lack of auditability attached to users (any user) making a transactional change can be a real problem later. Without historical context, identifying and fixing errors can be nearly impossible, which is an organizational — and legal — disaster in a highly regulated business.

xTuple is an application with accessible audit trails throughout, with particular emphasis on changes made to the General Ledger. The trailing history cannot be deleted and changes can be viewed contextually, by author and by date.

3. Narrow inventory options and support

With QuickBooks. your growth is suffering the inability to support serialized inventory, barcoding, demand forecasting or multiple warehouses often leads manufacturers to layer on additional technologies. This may provide some organizational relief in the short run, but eventually, the lack of proper integration between these add-on solutions can turn into a nightmare of inflexibility and inaccuracy that lead to an entirely new set of problems.

xTuple is a software program where inventory can be serialized, lots can be tracked, and you gain end-end traceability throughout your supply chain. In fact, every transaction, screen or report should be available for barcode processing. Other important functionality to consider are:

  • Master Production Scheduling (MPS/Forecasting)
  • Multi-level/Multi-facility Materials Requirement Planning
  • Distribution Requirements Planning
  • Make-to-Order work order, sales order, drop shipping, and purchase order automation
  • Multi-Layer Pricing
  • Return Material Authorization (RMA)/Returns
  • Service Management

4. Regional / geographical limitations

QuickBooks currency and language constrictions might work fine when you are a very small, geographically confined organization, but it’s a real impediment as your business grows.

If you plan to expand your business to any non-English speakers, individuals or countries, you'll need xTuple which allows you to do business in as many currencies and as many supported languages as you like.

5. Finite reporting features and periods

With QuickBooks, you're restricted to 12 fiscal periods; there is no ability to define custom reporting periods.

xTuple software allows users to define periods as needed, e.g., a flexible 4-4-5 reporting calendar option.

6. Inequitable price to product value ratio

A common problem with basic, single purpose solutions such as QuickBooks is that the add-ons add up. Big time, especially once you add in the annual upgrades, custom work-arounds to fix its limitations, and the additional technologies required to splice in additional technologies that will still not be integratable.

Your best bet is xTuple, one great interfaced solution at a known price point — upfront — that can do it all as your business grows.

7. Lack of scalability and data migration options

With QuickBooks, data cannot be imported to or exported from the desktop version of QuickBooks to QuickBooks Online. Worse, getting your data out of QuickBooks is a piecemeal process that can be messy, error-prone and time consuming.

Your better choice is to select xTuple, the right integrated application to work with your QuickBooks solution. xTuple has interfaces that are easy and documented, so you gain what you need, and you have a transparent view of costs and complete auditability of every process.

8. Accessibility constraints

We live in a mobile, multi-device, multi-networked world, but you won’t get that with QuickBooks alone. Today, QuickBooks on-premise or local area network access is going to put you behind what your competitors can do.

xTuple has capabilities that empower your organization to do business anywhere, at any time, because you'll want relevant data to be easily accessible when and where you need it.

9. Lackluster reporting

With QuickBooks, reporting is limited to standard data grouping, which severely limits how your data can be seen, utilized, analyzed and communicated. You can’t consolidate specified statistical Information, nor customize complex data sets.

To gain reporting flexibility, you will want (and need!) xTuple as your business grows, a solution that's flexible and user defined. xTuple offers interactive role-defined user dashboards for at-a-glance business intelligence, too.

Featured Case Study

Romey, Inc.

Frustrated with QuickBooks

Who We Are

International family-owned and -operated beauty products distribution business with multiple facilities in Puerto Rico and the continental United States.

Problems

The Romey brothers initially chose QuickBooks when they started their beauty supply distribution business. However, they were quickly frustrated by the inaccessibility of their data. Their reporting requirements could not be met by QuickBooks, and they were forced to create numerous spreadsheets to manage inventory and customer information, since there was no place for this data in QuickBooks.

They needed better accounting software and room for business growth.

Solutions

The Romeys needed to combine multiple functions into one integrated database, which would provide data accessibility across multiple areas within their company.

They didn’t want to spend tens of thousands of dollars, and they needed a solution to work with their Mac and Windows-based operating systems at the company.

Results | Benefits

xTuple delivered a complete solution that addressed the company's financial and business requirements of Inventory Management, Accounting and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) — all in one database. Mac and Windows users alike could access the same system, and data.

Migration of data from QuickBooks to xTuple was simple. The company uses the software modules it needs now, with more functionality available when ready to grow into more sophisticated processes, such as manufacturing.

Low cost of xTuple’s software solution allowed for investment in other facets of the company, namely to build distribution facilities in both Puerto Rico and Miami, Florida (USA).

Difficulty getting information in and out

"We really were trying to just get more information. We were working with QuickBooks, and we were having a hard time getting information in and out, and being able to do anything other than just our accounting, and generating invoices."

— Vice President, Romey, Inc.

 

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Beyond Implementation: Leveraging Your ERP to Make More Money

Join our in-house manufacturing/ERP subject matter expert, Wally Tonra and special guest Robert Lund, to better understand the KPIs manufacturers should be measuring and why.

 

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