QuickBooks is the preferred accounting solution for over five million users. It’s the industry standard for start-up businesses looking for a user-friendly, low-cost accounting solution. QuickBooks was likely your first purchase when you started your business, and you may still be using it.

Many businesses are quick to learn that as your company grows and you develop more demanding and varied business requirements like multi-currency and multiple entity businesses, QuickBooks is limited and no longer meets your business needs.

Suppose your business can identify with the following situations listed below. In that case, you are probably at a point where you have outgrown QuickBooks and need to consider shifting to a cloud-based accounting solution to handle the complexities of your growing business.

Financial Reporting

QuickBooks customers generally agree that QuickBooks is a good tool for financial reporting, but like most tools, it has limitations. While you can create reports in QuickBooks, it’s challenging to turn on and use features like classes or locations or add custom entries like inventory management information or revenue projections into your reports.

These limitations make QuickBooks report generation a tedious and time-consuming process that you can’t afford as your company continues to grow. Cloud-based accounting solutions can solve more complicated reporting issues like visibility across entities, multi-currency transactions, and compliance.

Lack Of Integration Causes Inefficiencies And Reduces Visibility Into Your Business

QuickBooks lacks the ability to integrate with most third-party software, which means users don’t have access to a single, unified database from which to pull and analyze all of their critical data. When you use spreadsheets or other non-integrated software with QuickBooks, those disconnected databases require users to input data manually, which causes data entry errors and also forces a lot of duplicate data entry in multiple databases, wasting time and effort. This is an inefficient approach, and as a business grows, it diverts resources away from more pressing concerns such as customer service, marketing initiatives, or in-depth financial analysis.

A lack of integration also eliminates instant access to data across the enterprise. If you need real-time visibility into your operations on a daily basis, then you can benefit from the automation a cloud-based accounting solution can offer. It will streamline your processes, eliminate duplicate entry, provide that real-time visibility at all levels of your business and across entities and save hours of time and productivity that can be better utilized in other activities.

Your Personnel Is Growing, And Access Issues Are Becoming More Frequent

As your business grows, so does your staffing. Unfortunately, QuickBooks has an upper limitation on the number of concurrent users who can access the QuickBooks Enterprise system, and that number is 30. If your business is near, at, or exceeding 30, then it is definitely time to look for a solution without that limitation and a cloud-based accounting solution that allows access anytime from anywhere.

Your Industry-Specific Niche Requires More Flexibility from Your Software

QuickBooks is a generic product. It was not built to handle the unique requirements of a specific industry.

Industries like Construction require project management capability, or manufacturing companies or restaurants with multiple locations require integration with 3rd party software in order to track inventory and expenses by specific criteria and across entities. These are things a cloud-based accounting solution like Sage Intacct can do with ease that QuickBooks cannot handle.

Multi-Currency

Although QuickBooks added Multi-currency functionality, it is a very limited application, and it is strange in the way it works. Some US versions cannot access this functionality, and once it is turned on, it cannot be turned off. The other issue with QuickBooks multi-currency is that your home currency cannot be changed.

If your business is global and you engage in many multi-currency transactions, that is a sure sign you need a more flexible cloud-based accounting solution that can handle all of your multi-currency transactions and provide accurate reporting and compliance.

If your company can identify with any of these scenarios, it is time to look for a cloud-based accounting solution that can scale with your company as it grows and deliver the automation and real-time visibility and reporting you to need to remain competitive. Sage Intacct has the flexibility and integrations you need to keep your company growing, whatever your niche or industry.