Everyone is afraid of something, whether it is spiders, heights, or the dark. During the Halloween season, plenty of other possible bugaboos emerge, including people dressed up as clowns and surprise-laden haunted houses. If you are an SMB accountant, maybe all of these ghoulish decorations and trick-or-treating each October also bring to mind another nightmare: having to use QuickBooks to process all of your company's accounts.
QuickBooks is like a ghost that won't leave you alone. It is clearly from the past, it is hard to wrestle with, and it can create a lot of mischief. Finance teams need their own version of the Ghostbusters to put this type of problem away. Fortunately, they can get this in the form of modern cloud ERP software.
The main issue with QuickBooks is that it is severely limited in functionality, yet widespread in usage. More specifically, it can set back your accountants on several key fronts:
1.) It lacks true automation
For routine tasks such as making loans between interrelated companies and updating balance to/due from accounts, QuickBooks makes life tedious. It only associates one company with each database file, which requires teams to log in and out in order to manage multiple entities. Time is wasted and errors become more likely as accountants repeat the same old processes again and again.
2.) It cannot stand on its own
It is common for QuickBooks to be utilized in conjunction with numerous Microsoft Excel sheets. These spreadsheets are often used for reporting purposes. However, they can quickly multiply, leading to sprawl as well as trouble in locating a single version of the truth. Reliance on the QuickBooks-Excel combo frequently results in frenzied activity at the end of each month as you try to find critical entries, avoid errors, and update redundant documents.
3.) It creates migration problems
A messy QuickBooks ledger can turn into a seemingly immovable obstacle to a better financial future. Items in it may be incomplete, missing, or wrongly formatted. Extensive data cleansing may be needed to standardize your data. Plus, you have to account for the end of life for specific versions of QuickBooks when determining your migration timeline.
The good news this Halloween is that QuickBooks does not have to loom over your financial processes. Cloud financial software such as Sage Intacct enables you to automate, streamline and scale your accounting operations as your SMB grows.
Sage Intacct gives you a broad range of automated reporting options so you do not have to rely on Excel anymore. Entity setup and consolidation are straightforward, such that each one can be given its own attributes or configured to inherit existing lists and charts of account.
Supported by cloud infrastructure, Sage Intacct is also easy to integrate with many other industry-leading applications, such as Salesforce.com for customer relationship management. To get started on your implementation of Sage Intacct, contact RKLeSolutions today. RKL has the industry-specific expertise and deep experience that you need to plan your project from start to finish.