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Accounting Systems for small businesses
Posted Thu, 01/28/2010 - 4:48pm by (Managing Partner)
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- Accounting
- Financial Statements
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Accounting Systems for small businesses
I prefer Intacct. It is a complete SaaS accounting system that meets all our needs. It is user friendly and has excellent control features. We also use Adaptive Planning for forecasts and planning.
1 out of 1 members found this useful
Adaptive Planning-Goldstar
I second that emotion on Adaptive. It is a great budgeting tool with out the risks of complicated spreadsheet models. After a review of 5 competitive systems AP came out on top. I have used it with a client that had 300+ cost centers across 12 locations.
4 out of 5 members found this useful
Adaptive Planning-Goldstar
What were the other 4 systems you review?
Accounting for Small Business
If you are a small business Peachtree is a better software for you than Quickbooks. Peachtree has better reporting and tracking capabilities and has a good support team. However, if you are a non profit organization you need to meet a different level of reporting as required by FASB For these organizations I recommend using either Sage MIP Accounting which is easy to use and very professional or Blackbauds The Financial Edge. Both very good software. Difference is pricing and functionality. One has a table driven chart of Accounts the other a linear chart. I recommend either one of the two. For help with any of these software just drop me a line.
1 out of 1 members found this useful
Accounting Systems for small businesses
I agree with Richard. I installed Intacct at my last company back when it first came out (2002) and was always happy with it. I actually still represent them, re-selling the monthly subscription to that company, even though I left my CFO position there in 2008.
In my more recent consulting roles, I still continue to recommend the program, to anyone who has a company that is going to grow to over 500k in revenue, and has sights on reaching between 25 to 75 million within 5-10 years. Another good competitor to Intacct is NetSuite; and I am using them with a new full-time controller role that I recently stepped into. Microsoft Dynamics is a good program also, especially if you are looking to coordinate with their CRM, Exchange, etc.
Intacct and NetSuite are very stable and secure programs and have a large user base now that they are established. If you want your staff to operate with freedom of access (anywhere in the world), and NOT have to deal with server/network issues, that is the way to go. It is also attractive from price standpoint, as you may per user and module, on a monthly basis for Intacct, quarterly with NetSuite.
QuickBooks has its place, but for the very small company; and even then I can't recommend it. I constantly pull my hair out with it; continual bugs. I spend more time fixing peoples problems than getting benefit out of it. I used to be a ProAdvisor with Intuit, but dropped that designation and fee; I can't support a progra...
Evaluation Steps
Hi Paul,
I'm starting to look at replacing QuickBooks with something a little more substantial and would be grateful for any materials you might be able to forward my way to help with the evaluation process. Really enjoyed reading your post.
Thanks!
Jenny
Evaluation Q via Proformative
Jenny,
My apologies - did I ever reply to you on your inquiry; are you still looking for additional insight? If so, please send me an e-mail to my linked account. All the best. - Paul
Netsuite
Netsuite has been a great tool for our company. We've been with them for about three years, and as our business grows and evolves we continue finding new ways to benefit from the functionality the system offers. We use it throughout our organization: accounting, sales, marketing, customer/technical support. I'm always impressed with the amount of new features they add with version upgrades. We've got a fair amount of customization in the application, and upgrades are painless.
2 out of 2 members found this useful
How big does your company need to be for a Netsuite solution?
I'm curious as to how large your company should be in order to consider NetSuite, Intacct or a similar SaaS product. My defaul has always been Quickbooks for the 20 person company, but QB is missing a lot of things that i would like just right out of the box (and believe me, I'm a QB fan, but it's far from perfect). Is it practical to use something like Netsuite for sub-50 employee companies? Does it make sense from a cost or integration/transition effort perspective? Thanks.
What's too small?
In terms of how big a company needs to be to get benefit from Netsuite, I'm not sure of a good employee count to throw out there. I think it's more based on the complexity of your business. We migrated off various legacy systems (some third party, some home-grown). The pain of dealing with those systems was significant - we needed a tool to centralize things like customer records. We were only in the 90-110 employee range at the time, but based on the fact that our needs were a little more complex than average, and we anticipated solid growth in the business, we wanted a system we felt could be flexible enough to grow with us. The Netsuite implementation is the only such implementation I've ever been through. There were some challenges, but over the past three years the aspect of Netsuite I've seen improve the most is their customer support. It went from downright bad, to now very solid.
3 out of 3 members found this useful
NetSuite
I would echo Michael's comment about complexity over user quantity. I've implemented Quickbooks, Deltek Cost Point, Great Plains Dynamics, and NetSuite at different middle market businesses over the past 12 years. While Quickbooks does a great job for the money, there is a point where business becomes too complex. We reached this point when one subsidiary showed all stars in a P&L because Quickbooks reports couldn't handle $10M in sales! I'm sure they've fixed this now but if you have many subsidiaries that consolidate, multi-currency, project based accounting, or require a truly integrated single system, you need to step up from Quickbooks. I really like NetSuite's integrated internet based approach. This isn't for the everyone but it is years ahead of Great Plains core software which dates back to the mid 80's with the Internet functionality sloppily added on top.
2 out of 2 members found this useful
QB & alternatives
I agree that it's not so much the size of the company, either in $ volume or # employees, that limits QB. In my experience it is the complexity of the operation and the need for financial information that quickly puts limits on QB. Our inability to integrate the transaction system with QB is what convinced me that it was just too simplistic and, as someone wrote earlier this year, really nothing more than a bookkeeping system. It cannot provide the financial analysis information that a true accounting system should.
Accounting Systems for Small Businesses
Paul,
Appreciated your insight on Proformative relative to accounting systems. I have a client that is contemplating a systems change from a version of Microsoft Dynamics GP that is no longer being supported. They did $120M in sales last year and are growing rapidly. Any materials that you could send me would be greatly appreciated.
Accounting Systems for small businesses
I have read through most of the posts here, but would like to ask your opinions on accounting software options given some specific company information.
Revenues $30 to $50 million. Service based business. Mostly e-commerce with credit cards, pay pal, etc. Has to handle upwards of 20,000 vendors. I definitely prefer a SaaS product. Total number of licenses 4 to 6.
Intacct and NetSuite are mentioned, and I will check their websites. I would appreciate any additional recommendations from the group. I would also appreciate it if you can point me toward sources of relatively independent info on the packages. (The ASA website has some good general info, but I found it dated).
I thank you all for your feedback.
1 out of 1 members found this useful
Don't forget price. One of
Don't forget price. One of Quickbooks' greatest advantages is that you can get a pretty darn full-featured accounting platform for multiple users for a couple of hundred per user per year. That's pretty much free, when it comes right down to it. I have used QB at a number of small companies for years and have passed every audit and raised lots of funding based on those books. And BTW, you can, indeed, control monthly closes on QB and disable the ability for users to make postings in prior months. You can also set up audit trails - so the basic controls are there and if that is really all you need then I'd stick with it. Learn more about audit trails here: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/using-audit-trails-in-quickbooks.html.
No doubt both Netsuite and Intacct do more, are more powerful and more like "big company" systems, but they can get expensive very quickly (don't forget that there is pretty much always some customization and that costs a lot up front) if you have many users on the platform or if you use a lot of modules. The costs will certainly be in the tens of thousands per year and can run to the hundreds of thousands. Now that is still "cheap" relative to Oracle and SAP, but the ROI for QB in a company that can use it is very high.
3 out of 3 members found this useful
QuickBooks second look
I have to disclose that I may be little biased here because I am advance QuickBooks (QB) Proadvisor.
Jim, you are talking in your question about startups and usually those companies don’t have large accounting department and one or two people do everything. It’s difficult to have any internal controls no matter what software you are using.
QB Premier has some better user rights setup and Enterprise has pretty good security setup.
I was a user of MS Dynamics (previously Great Plains) and it’s good application but it’s not easy. Bryan made great point about the price. Dynamics is expensive – in thousands, and the setup cannot be really done by you. Definitely not a software for a startup.
I disagree with Paul’s comment. Intuit (parent company of QB) created a product that can really take a company from one employee to 500. I have manufacturing clients on QB with 300 employees and good internal controls practice. I would suggest you give another look into QB. Here is the link that can provide a review of different Intuit products http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting-software/quickbooks-comparison-chart.jsp and make sure you read what’s new in 2010 version You must register or login to see the complete details
quickbooks second look
Just wanted to send you a little info about quickbooks. Until a few years ago a merchant that wanted to process directly on quickbooks was forced to use IMS (Innovative Merchant Solutions) which is and was overcharging merchants and giving poor customer service. They had an agreement with quikbooks and received and still do receive a portion of the residual income from merchant accounts opened with them. It has always been my philosophy that a merchant should have a choice what processor they want to use regardless of what POS, etc. they are using. For IMS info see below hyperlinks
http://www.ripoffreport.com/Credit-Card-Processing-ACH-Companies/Innovative-Merchant/innovative-merchant-solutions-59qq5.htm
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_I/threadview?m=tm&bn=9632&tid=28268&mid=28268&tof=1&rt=2&frt=2&off=1You must register or login to see the complete details
QuickBooks User, Not an Advisor
I have done accounting on many platforms; including the off-the-shelf like QuickBooks. QuickBooks is by far one of the best that I have seen. Quite frankly, when one says $25M to $75M, it is all relative. I ran a multi-site produce distribution company on QuickBooks that had over $50M. This really isn't that big of a deal since each trailer of produce was worth $10K - $15K. It adds up fast. And, QuickBooks had a closed period date also. If I had a beef, it was that I could only show the Balance Sheet, P/L etc in certain pre-determined (changeable) columns. Other than that, it went well. One last thought, many municipalities and public agencies in PA have gotten some cheap or free copies of QuickBooks and will only accept a backup copy of QuickBooks as the required financials. Because of the audit steps, they can tell if you tried to fudge the numbers. Best wishes on finding the right software for you! We all need to do the search. Carl L. Snyder, Jr.
1 out of 1 members found this useful
Accounting Systems for small businesses
Jim et al;
My experience has a different perspective, Quickbooks is not a scaleable platform for an entity with revenues in excess of $10M USD. It certainly isn't a true mult-entity ERP system and the reporting capability is not very robust.
Considering that business today operates on a global scale, Quickbooks is not the long term answer rather a short term phase I solution in an early growth model.
I have administered and worked with all the 'A' tiered and most of the 'B' tiered ERP systems, in my opinion SysPro is one of the best alternatives. It is one of the only platforms that is truly multi-currency capable and can handle multi-entity models in either manufacturing and/or non-manufacturing environments. The reporting is extremely user centric and the implementation is less of an exercise in customization and more 'out of the box' functionality implementation.
Hope this helps.
John
Accounting Advisors: Accounting/Finance/Tax Advisory.
Small Business Accounting Applications
A couple of comments. First, I and others have found the following website useful when researching accounting and ERP platforms for companies.
The major ERP applications (Oracle, SAP, etal) are now coming out with service offerings for smaller-mid sized businesses.
Depending on what hardware structure or intends to invest in, the company has should weighing this capital cost vs. having web-based accounting applications that have taken hold in the marketplace. Significantly less capital cost up front, typically pay licensing and transaction fees.
www.accountingsoftwareadvisor.com
It has small-mid-large applications being reviewed in the context of price/value, pros/cons, industry preferences, etc.
1 out of 4 members found this useful
Website recommendation
Hi Randal,
Thanks for the referral to www.accountingsoftwareadvisor.com. What a great site!
Just be careful with the
Just be careful with the information from that site. They have not updated a number of the products on there in 5+ years and software has changed significantly over that time.
Agreed. In fact if you look
Agreed. In fact if you look at their "top 40 systems" it lists QB 2003! Honestly, I just don't think you could trust info that is this old.
Quickbooks Cost
May I know how much is the cost of 100 licenses of quick books.
Rajesh
0 out of 2 members found this useful
you'll have to call them.
you'll have to call them. they only list costs for the first few licenses on their site. http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting-software/small-business-software.jsp
100 Licenses?
Intuit says only 5 people can simultaneously use QuickBooks Pro or Premier. Enterprise takes that up to 30. Maybe its me, but I can't see any use for 100 licenses unless you're going to resell them.
Also, I agree with the others, QB does not scale well, and Enterprise comes no where close to MAS 90 or MS Dynamics as the next step beyond QuickBooks.
2 out of 2 members found this useful
Quickbooks Cost
I know a person at Intuit that can give you that information;
Corey Spear 214 387 2393
He'll be in 8:00 am Mon.
100 users?
Seriously, if you have 100 users, you are WAAAAYYY too big for Quickbooks. Get away from the bookkeeping level systems and get yourself a true accounting/ERP system.
3 out of 3 members found this useful
Does anyone have knowledge or
Does anyone have knowledge or experience with Epicore software?
Epicor user
James,
I wasn't a direct user but I supervised a department that used it and all they did was complain until we switched to oracle.
Epicor Software
Epicor was the parent company of a manufacturing software that we used called Vista (before Miscrosoft's Vista)and I had to order all my forms, etc. from them. Vista was just one of the products offered by Epicor.
Epicor
I've used Epicor's Vantage ERP platform for 11 years. It's a solid system. A few deficiencies but nothing game stopping.
0 out of 1 members found this useful
Epicor
We considered Epicor along with a group of its competitors for our $50M company with 8 subs and FX. The winner was Solomon, now known as MS Dynamics. It was less costly and seemed more robust/flexible for our needs.
Enterprise
Consider Quickbooks Enterprise as a migration up from QB and QB Pro. Enterprise has an audit trail, has some support for consolidated f/s. I am a certified Enterprise proAdvisor and I have used it to produce audited public company f/s and I believe it can be used in a manner that complies with SOX404. However Enterprise does not enforce the close as strictly as one might like therefore it is essential to run a full backup every time f/s are generated. It does include new and improved builtin tools for detecting prior period entries. Enterprise only supports weighted average inventory, the user count and transaction volume limits may be problematic for businesses above several million $ in revenue, and the maximum data field entry is $99M.
Enterprise really offers
Enterprise really offers nothing over QB or QB Pro except for the additional users. And having been through a SOX audit with several clients, all versions of QB - including Enterprise - would fail miserably. There simply is not enough accounting control built in to the product. QB really is nothing more than a glorified bookkeeping system. If your company is in a position to need a SOX audit, you are way beyond QB.
QB for Non-Profits?
How well would QB work for a non-profit banking system of a university that tracks financials for over 100 budgeted campus organizations, committees, etc. where allocated and nonallocated funding needs constant updating?
QB for Non-Profit
It would not work very well. Accpac and MIP work very good in that type of environment.
1 out of 1 members found this useful
QB for Non-Profits
It would work VERY well with the proper setup, training and use. Same as any software system.
0 out of 1 members found this useful
Dynamics vs Online Edition
This topic has obviously struck a chord with lots of folks. I'll throw my two cents in as someone that is in the middle of converting off of the online edition of QB over to Microsoft Dynamics. I looked long and hard at several solutions (Netsuite, Intacct, Epicor) before deciding on Dynamics. I have been paying $45/month for the last 3 years and its been ok. I finally got to the point that I was spending more time managing data in external spreadsheets that should be housed in a real ERP that I had to switch, along with a host of other reasons mentioned above.
In my opinion, Dynamics has very good bang for the buck. Solid network of resources to call on if necessary. Good 3rd party network of application. All key when trying to keep pace in today's environment.
Anyone who wants to discuss the points that lead me here, let me know. Happy to share.
2 out of 2 members found this useful
Is Dynamics fully server
Is Dynamics fully server based or is any SAAS available?
Look at the total costs for
Look at the total costs for SAAS based products. They sound good at first, but pricing isn't always as good as it seems up front. SAAS is IMHO just a way for software companies to develop a nice continual revenue stream. The 2 most important things to look at when you look for an ERP system are 1) Quality and reputation of the VAR (yes, this is absolutely #1), and 2) How well does the software fit your business/solve your business issues. Don't limit yourself to SAAS based products - just find what fits best with the VAR that has great referrals (insist on some site visits to their existing clients).
1 out of 1 members found this useful
fully server
fully server. that being said, there are lots of people that will host the server for you or can be hosted in a vm (which is what we are doing).
1 out of 1 members found this useful
Dynamics Nav
My former company implemented Nav (major integration with Saleforce.com to automate and integrate order management, billing, etc.) even knowing that we would have to deal with the hardware side of things. However, since the system was to be used by folks around the world, we decided to find a Tier 1 hosting site to manage the uptime, essentially making it an SAAS experience for the company. Think cloud.
BTW, it took over a year to customize and integrate and probably the better part of $1 million but the end result is fabulous.
1 out of 1 members found this useful
Dynamics NAV
Although growing rapidly, NAV suffers from a lack of popularity in the U.S. For example, when implementing a NAV system in the SF Bay/Sacramento area a couple of years ago, we found only one qualified independent consultant within the area. In contrast, there were dozens who knew Great Plains (now Dynamics-GP).
If I were making a choice, local support would be something I would consider. While many of the less popular programs are very good, support may not be as quick or easy as with more popular applications.
Accounting software
I agree with Mark, this topic has struck a chord.
Before you can plan your trip, you need to know where you are going and what's your budget. Even if Dynamics is your answer, if your budget is $2,500, you cannot get there. If you are facing budget limitations, your only decision might be which flavor of QuickBooks do I purchase. But for about the same money, you can get Peachtree, which does offer an audit trail and a flexible chart of accounts. It is a bit more difficult to implement than QB, but a superior product in my opinion.
One additional suggestion would be to plan, plan, plan. The more time you spend planning your chart of accounts and the reports you need from an accounting system, the happier you will be with the results. Hey, you can always purchase a migration tool and move to something else in six months.
1 out of 1 members found this useful
Accounting Software PT v QB
Picking up on Randy's mention of Peachtree, my Company was able to use Peachtree Complete Accounting up until we outgrew it, which for us, meant 6-8 users, and 8 or so companies within the consolidated group. From my experience, Peachtree was similar to slightly superior to QuickBooks, however, if you require consolidations, robust reporting, and/or have foreign currencies involved, Peachtree is NOT the answer. Very efficient but not intended for FX and Consolidations. When we moved from Peachtree we migrated to MS Solomon (now called MS Dynamics). It is far more costly and much more robust than Peachtree. Depending on your Dynamic module selections => GL, AP, Budgeting, etc... you can easily spend $10k to $30k + installation.
Peachtree is a much better alternative
I have over 10 years experience with Peachtree. For the money it is much better than the "competitively priced spread", has significantly better controls and is not more difficult to implement(sorry, but I disagree with Randy). It also has significantly better upside growth. I have small one or two person shops as well as 15+ multi-user clients on the various versions.
PEACHTREE VS QUICKBOOKS
I agree with Randy that Peachtree is superior to Quickbooks. I am a Peachtree Certified Consultant and a Quickbooks Pro Advisor, who has worked with both products for years. In my experience, Peachtree is not any more difficult to implement than Quickbooks.They both do basic bookkeeping, but if you have advanced needs, e.g.departments, job costing, inventory, POS, importing data,custom checks and forms, etc.,you should review both products (or any other you consider) to see if they work the way you do and have features that accomodate your business. Both Peachtree and Quickbooks have free trial versions available throgh their website.
1 out of 1 members found this useful
Small Non-Profit Software
I would recommend Sage software. Their MIP package is great. It integrates with their Sage Fundraising 50 smoothly and has many sophisticated reporting options are an inexpensive price. I also got the allocations module that is a life saver.
1 out of 1 members found this useful
Cost vs Benefit
QB has audit trails and can be closed on a monthly basis. I have passed many audits with big 4 firms with QB and we were over $10M and growing with international currency consolidations using FASB52. I worked for another company and wanted to try Netsuite. The old bait and switch were it sounded like it was going to cost about $1,000/month and it turned out to be over $100k/year vs $1,000 one time payment for QB. I also like QB since I can install, backup and do most sys admin items on my own.