By: Phillip Massey
Blog Series: Moving to the Next Level—Life After QuickBooks (Post 1 of 5)
It’s rare to come across a business that didn’t use QuickBooks™ as its first accounting software solution. It’s cheap, it’s very easy to use, and usually came as a recommendation from your CPA, who was very familiar with how the application worked. All of which explains the 89 percent market share that QuickBooks enjoys.
Some businesses can enjoy years and even decades perfectly serviced by the functionality of QuickBooks—then some things happen which indicate your business has outgrown it.
The first sign is that reporting doesn’t meet the needs of the organization’s stakeholders. After reviewing a report, questions regarding the numbers require setting up spreadsheets in order to view your data in light of a particular business issue. At first, a few extra spreadsheets aren’t a big deal, but in no time, the number of spreadsheets that need to be created and maintained mushroom. That’s one sign that you need to move on.
The move from QuickBooks to your second accounting software solution is a tough move to consider for many reasons, but the initial sticker shock is usually enough to make any accounting manager, controller, CFO, or vice president to say, “Maybe we can live with QuickBooks for a little bit longer.”
As a result, your accounting department continues to limp along, dutifully creating the additional reporting you need, but doing so manually. This takes time and the possibility of errors begins to multiply—a transposed number here, a faulty formula there—and you run the risk of making decisions on inaccurate data.
At the same time, the system performance begins to suffer—the system runs painfully slow, or worse, crashes.
This is an inefficient and costly way to operate a business. The truth is, the cost of investing in a system that is designed to meet your needs is probably far less than suffering with the status quo when you begin to add up the resources required to work around the deficiencies of the system.
For more information on Life After QuickBooks, visit our landing page at www.afterquickbooks.com or visit our corporate page at www.masseyconsulting.net. Also, stay tuned to next weeks’ blog post where we will discuss “Preparing for Life After QuickBooks”.
Philip D. Massey, CPA is the Founder and President of Raleigh, NC-based Massey Consulting, Inc. Philip has been a CPA for nearly twenty years and worked in the accounting software side of the industry for seventeen of those years. After spending a few years working on tax returns, bookkeeping and audits, he decided his love for computers was greater than his love for traditional accounting. Over the years, Philip has worked on a few accounting packages, including QuickBooks, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP and Intacct. Currently, Massey Consulting specializes in cloud-based accounting solutions, although they certainly continue to support on-premise solutions as well. Philip currently resides in Youngsville, NC with his wife and daughter.