Top 5 Limitations You Can Overcome with QuickBooks Online Alternatives

As your business starts out, QuickBooks is the typical entry-level choice for erp software in the organization’s early days – and for many reasons. QuickBooks offers the basic functionality that almost businesses will need to get off the ground.

But, if you successfully grow your business, it's quickly obvious that what was sufficient when you started out is now a tangle of limitations and compromises. These are the five limitations that CFOs say gets them thinking about QuickBooks Online alternatives.

Limitation 1 Reliance on Spreadsheets

“After spending over one week sifting through massive spreadsheets, we discovered that we have a calculation error in how we had been recognizing revenue for the past three years.”

If this sounds familiar, you're like many organizations that organically and gradually develop increasingly complex accounting requirements (e.g., revenue recognition and/or multi-entity consolidation). If QuickBooks is your ERP foundation, that often means cumbersome workarounds like these:

• Are you exporting data to multiple Excel spreadsheets?
• Are you creating additional journal entries each month?
• Have you created home-grown or used other external applications for recording revenue or expenses outside of QuickBooks?

These types of workarounds inevitably lead to entry errors, incorrect or outdated data, inefficient processes leading to wasted time and resources, and a lack of control and compliance.

Limitation 2 Duplicated and Manual Data Entry

“I currently spend many hours manually creating invoices in QuickBooks, and there should be a better way.”

Few companies integrate their QuickBooks with other business applications, instead they just "manually integrate the systems" with flat files, CSV dumps, and rekeying. That might work when your volumes are small, but ask anyone who’s suffered these workarounds and you’ll see it’s a real productivity killer as the business scales. Why waste time to manually research, re-enter, and verify data that’s already captured in another system? These manual integrations are ripe for errors and lost time.

Limitation 3 No Data for Decision-Making

“Rather than constantly struggling to keep up with incoming requests for data and specific reports, AcctTwo lets us consistently report financials in a timely manner and feel confident that we can easily respond to any new request.”

Real-time visibility into financial and operational metrics is essential for timely decisions that boost performance and avoid loss. QuickBooks offers canned reports, but no dashboards, so you’re often forced to make decisions based on outdated data that's not visually presented. By leveraging a single system that incorporates both a multi-dimensional general ledger and onboard report writer, you can transform your analysis and become a strategic partner who generates insights that answer the bigger questions facing your company.

Limitation 4 Resilience in the Face of New Requirements

“QuickBooks continually crashes, and I lose all our payroll data. I don’t have time to re-enter data for 350 hourly employees…”

Maybe you’ve seen a couple of the classic signs that you’re outgrowing QuickBooks. Those menus and screens you're using frequently now have lengthy delays as the system struggles to keep up with data volume and calculations load. Report printing probably takes forever. And queries seem to bring things to a standstill.

This critical limitation is risky for your business. It can force you to periodically restart QuickBooks just to maintain data files. In a worst case scenario, you’re facing potentially disastrous results: the actual loss of crucial historical data. That’s no way to run a growing business confidently.

Limitation 5 Insufficient Financial Controls

“Errors caused by manual processes and a lack of financial controls resulted in $180,000 of improper expense reimbursements within a six-month period.”

Manual process are an unavoidable fact of life for companies using QuickBooks. Unfortunately, they increase the probability of data duplication and data entry or formula errors, making it difficult to gain an trusted, real-time, financial view of operations. What you may already know is that QuickBooks simply wasn’t designed for growing organizations that need advanced functionality for managing sophisticated processes.

The New Generation

The accounting and finance experts at AcctTwo have helped many businesses move from QuickBooks. Their clients now enjoy real-time data and processes, flexible reporting, and role-based dashboards. They've helped organizations increase productivity through accounting automation, extensive integration, and user-defined workflows. Now, these companies can scale successfully. As their business grows, they can easily increase transaction volume and quickly add new entities, tasks that are impossible with QuickBooks.

AcctTwo's team are ready to help you graduate to a cloud-based, real-time, single source of truth and insights. AcctTwo is the reigning 7-time Sage Intacct Partner of the Year, and 4-time Inc. 5000 List winner, and is top-rated by their customers on G2. Contact AcctTwo today to prepare for tomorrow.