Outgrown QuickBooks? Find Out If You’re a Good Fit for Business Central
As a business grows, it's common for the system to get overwhelmed. Here are 3 signs it’s time to switch from Quickbooks to Dynamics 365 BC.
QuickBooks can work well for start-ups, but as a business grows and accounting transactions increase rapidly, the system can get overwhelmed. Expanding businesses also start to realize the necessity of integrating financial processes with fulfillment processes to operate profitably and keep customers happy.
What’s needed is a holistic solution with deep ERP functionality and sophisticated reporting to streamline complex business processes.
If you’re not sure whether your business has outgrown QuickBooks, here are three tell-telltale signs it’s time to make a change:
#1 – Disconnected Data
Given the limited capabilities of QuickBooks, you have likely added third-party applications for functions like inventory management. But the data doesn’t automatically feed into QuickBooks, which forces you into rekeying data and wasting time chasing down the information you need to run the business. Your internal team will also lack access to real-time data. With more customers, products, revenue, and sales channels, they can’t make informed, data-driven decisions.
#2 – Reliance on Spreadsheets
As your managers realize QuickBooks does not generate the data they need fast enough to run the business, so they build their own spreadsheets. This manual process isolates information from the rest of the company and creates countless hours of consolidating, importing, and exporting data among spreadsheets and other applications. A lot of time is also spent correcting data input errors. Data stored in spreadsheets is also susceptible to cybersecurity attacks and will make it difficult to comply with any regulations and standards you need to meet as you grow. You simply won’t have the necessary audit controls.
#3 – Multiple Business Entities
Your growth may have led you to launch new brands or acquire other businesses. You may also reorganize into business units, subsidiaries, or divisions. Giving each entity financial control over its operations with the ability to roll up all the results into a centralized tool for managing the entire corporation requires an enterprise-class ERP solution.
The Next Step in the Evolution of Your Business
If these challenges resonate with what’s taking place at your business, look at it on the positive side, and congratulations on your success! You’re now ready for the next step in your growth journey.
Many businesses that outgrow their QuickBooks solutions transition to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, a comprehensive cloud-based ERP solution that offers several key capabilities:
- Financial, supply chain, human resource, customer relationship, and project management functionality.
- Reporting and analytics of consolidated data from across your enterprise.
- Log audit trails to streamline regulatory and standards compliance.
- Cybersecurity measures with control over user access to information.
You also benefit from easy integration with other Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 applications as well as a wide range of third-party applications authorized by Microsoft. With data automatically flowing among all your applications, you avoid having to rekey information, which reduces data errors. More importantly, your team has immediate access to information no matter which application they are working in.
Making the Transition Successfully
A key factor in successfully transitioning from QuickBooks to Dynamics 365 is to make the change quickly and to instill confidence in your team that Business Central will help your business run more efficiently. That’s exactly why we offer Velosio Express for Dynamics 365 implementations.
As a rapid deployment package, Velosio Express delivers low-risk, low-cost, deployments for fast-growing companies:
- Realize value faster with a pre-packaged implementation plan.
- Implement best practices with models for your industry and business types.
- Enhance your ERP functionality with additional features customized by Velosio.
- Reduce investment risk through a flat fixed fee or a subscription service to avoid a large capital outlay.
- Facilitate user adoption through training and support tailored to your needs.
With Velosio Express, we accelerate your Dynamics 365 implementations through deployment best practices and a pre-defined scope of services. We also enable you to take advantage of the Microsoft cloud platform within a condensed reduced discovery and implementation timeline and at a reduced cost.
Dynamics 365 Business Central vs. QuickBooks Comparison
| Feature | Business Central | QuickBooks |
| Scalability
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Grows with your business to handle business processes such as inventory management, project management, reporting, and forecasting. Also scales easily and is customizable to serve unique business and industry requirements. | Once a company grows and adds new products, services, employees, or additional business entities, the software is unable to handle the complexities of additional business processes.
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| Automation & Integration
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Integrates with other Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 (Office) applications to connect and automate workflows across accounting, sales, purchasing, inventory, and distribution. Also supports third-party integrations authorized by Microsoft that are built on a common data model to eliminate compatibility issues, complex configurations, and middleware when non-standard features are needed. | Lacks capabilities and connectivity. With limited accounting functionality, businesses must rely on third-party add-ons that increase the cost of the overall solution, require additional maintenance and training, and further complicates business processes.
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| Security & Audit Controls
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Granular options enable limiting function access by permission, groups, dimensions, or accounts. Also offers audit trail to track changes to data with a historical log of activities—protecting against errors and employee mismanagement.
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Limited to fewer accounting and audit controls, and as more users require access to the system, weak user permissions limit users or provide too much access. Also fails to keep a consistent audit trail of changes to master records or user logins. Activities conducted outside the system in spreadsheets or other applications create regulatory compliance issues. |
| Reporting & Analytics
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Consolidates data from multiple sources and includes embedded Microsoft Power BI for customized advanced reporting dashboards and real-time data visualizations.
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Provides basic reporting and generic insights but requires third-party add-ons to extend reporting capabilities.
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Take Our Quiz to Find Out for Sure
To discover if your business is a fit for Velosio Express, complete this questionnaire. By providing a few high-level details about your organization, we can provide information on licensing costs, implementation price points, and implementation expectations. And if you’re not sure if Dynamics 365 Business Central is the right ERP for your business, contact us today to explore your requirements.