If you have ever worried about a black cat crossing your path or a mirror breaking and causing you seven years of bad luck, then you know your bad omens. These superstitions do not make a lot of logical sense. In contrast, accountants and finance teams have their own set of omens – for example, constant struggles with inter-entity transactions and usage licenses – that they should be looking out for and taking much more seriously.
What are these omens telling your professional services organization? Usually, it is not "you are going to be cursed," but instead "it is past time to move on from QuickBooks and Excel sheets." Let's dive into the tell-tale signs of an outdated QuickBooks implementation:
1. You rely on a bunch of legacy tools to create reports and close your books
A 2011 white paper from BCG Systems cited "complex and hard-to-use tools" as one of the top five challenges inprofessional services. QuickBooks and Excel are often used in tandem (the latter to shore up the former's limited reporting capabilities), and both were introduced in the 1980s and fit comfortably into this category.
Many professional services firms also struggle with inflexible legacy IT systems that contain numerous bolted-on features. The overall mix of old, difficult and ad hoc software solutions makes it hard to generate reports and complete the monthly closes of your books.
2. You waste too much time managing multiple business entities
QuickBooks does not account for more than one company per database file. This means that if you, say, offer financial services to multiple related entities, then you will be frequently logging in and out of different files.
Similarly, QuickBooks does not report across more than one company database. So Excel is often used to do the consolidations that QuickBooks cannot perform. Accordingly, there is plenty of room for error here during all of the cutting, pasting, exporting and printing involved in manual spreadsheet-driven processes.
"QuickBooks does not account for more than one company per database file."
3. You lack a clear plan for transitioning to new rev rec standards
The amount of manual work required to maintain a QuickBooks deployment means that it is not well-suited to company growth and evolution. For example, the impending arrival of the updated ASC 606 rules for revenue recognition will make the age-old QuickBooks/Excel combo even less efficient as a financial coping mechanism.
These tell-tale signs that it's time to move on from QuickBooks might as well be a black cat crossing your path.
Handling all of the deferrals, reallocations, and complexities of the new rules is difficult without access to true automation and easy side-by-side dual reporting. Moving on from QuickBooks is essential for making a smooth transition to the updated standards.
Cloud accounting software is your best response to a bad omen
Someone who sees a black cat will usually just move on. An accountant noticing the above bad omens of QuickBooks has a better course of action: adopting a cloud-based solution such as Sage Intacct.
Sage Intacct has deep automation, sophisticated and flexible reporting options and a modern cloud infrastructure. With its extensive expertise in professional services, RKLeSolutions can help you get started on a Sage Intacct implementation that will propel your organization into the future.
