Get the Functionality and Flexibility You Need — for $1,000s Less
When your business has outgrown your QuickBooks Pro or Premier and you are looking for accounting solutions that can meet your new needs, an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution can integrate all the different facets of your business’s operation and provide more control, more information and better insights into your business’s performance.
Naturally, because an ERP solution is a complete business management system, it’s going to cost more. But moving to an alternative powerful accounting system may be less costly than you think for two reasons.
1) Some accounting systems are less costly than others.
That’s what Brett Wassell, owner of Film & Vinyl Design LLC, found. When his company used Sage MAS 90, there were separate solutions for shipping, inventory, payroll and payments and the expenses for maintaining and supporting the system piled up.
Switching to Intuit’s QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions allowed him to integrate all facets of his business and save $10,000 annually on maintenance, upgrades and support. The transition was trouble-free and only took two days.
For Rick Rolater, customization was the critical factor. By Nature Gallery sells minerals, petrified wood and other fossils. With over 85,000 items on file and a multitude of suppliers, Rick needed a system that could fit his unique needs.
Being able to customize reports in QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions made staying on top of his business’s complex inventory much less challenging. He calls QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions “a highly affordable solution that does as much as we did with the $100,000 retail system we used at my previous business”.
It was the expense of using Great Plains Software (now Microsoft Dynamics GP) that caused Don Hackman, Sr. to move his business, North American Electric Motors, over to QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions.
“It cost $9,000 just to purchase the product, but then we had to put an additional $45,000 into it over several years to have their engineers redo certain aspects of the program to accommodate our changing business,” he says.
The cost of technical support was especially aggravating; software glitches couldn’t be fixed without help and technical phone support for Great Plains Software cost $100 an hour.
Since installing QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, Don’s business has had a sizable reduction in software-related expenses and loves that the few phone calls he’s had to make to QuickBooks Technical Support have been covered without charge.
2) Using an advanced accounting system can increase your revenue.
An advanced accounting solution can also improve your business’s bottom line. First, tighter controls can provide you a detailed picture of exactly where the money is going.
Second, the increased efficiency of the QuickBooks Enterprise system can save you and your employees time that can then be spent on making money rather than keeping track of it.
For instance, Xenex Health Solutions, reduced the time spent managing inventory by 8-10 hours per week and reduced the time spent on order placement by 75% when they moved from using Intuit QuickBooks Online to using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions.
“We’ve seen 600% revenue growth, and haven’t required new staff,” says Juan Gutierrez, CFO for Xenex.
Jason Haddock, CFO of Redmond Trading Company, a distributor of table salt products to natural and health food stores, also started using Enterprise because it was less complex, cost less, and didn’t require a significant time investment to maintain.
But he was especially thrilled to find that the new system made it so much easier for employees that his customer service reps were suddenly able to spend their time helping customers and selling instead of fighting an accounting system, which led to higher revenue.
The Bottom Line Is Your Bottom Line
If you’re thinking of moving up to an ERP system, compare the potential cost of QuickBooks Enterprise to the ERP accounting solutions available for small businesses, such as Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics GP and Sage MAS 90.
Besides the initial cost of the accounting package, you also have to take into account the cost of upgrades, maintenance and support.
Consider not only how uncomplicated it would be to upgrade into QuickBooks Enterprise, but also how it could improve your business’s efficiency and productivity – and possibly your bottom line.
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