From QuickBooks to NetSuite – When, Why, and How?

Advanced Reporting

7 April, 2020

alphabold

Introduction

In our recent live webinar, “Outgrowing QuickBooks? — Why Companies Are Switching to the Cloud to Fuel Their Growth?” attendees had the opportunity to learn about the advantages of running their business in NetSuite.

Our NetSuite expert, Ilija Budimir, gave a detailed presentation discussing the limitations companies face when using QuickBooks despite having outgrown its functionalities, followed by an exclusive NetSuite OneWorld Demo.

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Ilija explained why AlphaBOLD is the best solution provider with extensive experience managing complex ERP implementation projects. BOLDEnthusiasts are the leading experts in Manufacturing, WD, and AEC Industries, specializing in vertical-specific implementations.

Our webinars always end with a friendly question-and-answer session with our attendees. Many QuickBooks customers put forward their questions to evaluate NetSuite. In this blog, we have packaged a few tips, benefits, and frequently asked questions, as discussed in our webinar, to help you understand when and why you need to migrate to NetSuite!

Learn more about our NetSuite Services!

How Do you Know you Need an Upgrade from QuickBooks to NetSuite?

For new startups, QuickBooks serves as an adequate choice. It is a good starter system and does not put a strain on the company budget. However, as soon as companies start to grow, QuickBooks becomes obsolete, preventing companies from reaching their full potential. If you face any of the problems mentioned below, it is time to bury QuickBooks:

1. Lack of Visibility and Poor Reporting:

Once your organization starts to take on more business, it becomes more important than ever to have complete visibility into your business processes. If you work in QuickBooks, you tend to work in a perpetual fog when it comes to reporting, and you end up spending just as much time in Excel as you do in QuickBooks. If you don’t have the means to share information with your managers, teams, and employees about priority tasks and updates, etc., your business becomes siloed.

2. Reliance on Spreadsheets:

As we mentioned earlier, with outdated accounting software, most of your time will be spent in Excel! While Excel has many uses to date, it is not meant to replace your accounting software! You need to connect/share information with your employees and managers ASAP, and manually entering the data is an outdated, error-prone, and time-consuming!

3. Unbearable Financial Consolidations:

As company practices evolve and you start to take on more business, perhaps even internationally, you will come face to face with multiple challenges that QuickBooks is not equipped for. You might have to work with several subsidiaries, work with foreign currencies and taxation standards, etc. QuickBooks is designed merely as an accounting system meant for one small company with no growing international requirements.

4. Poor Inventory Management:

We have already mentioned that visibility is one of the biggest problems regarding QuickBooks. QuickBooks does not give users real-time visibility when it comes to inventory management; there is no serialized inventory tracking. Users must be present in the warehouse to track updates. Furthermore, QuickBooks has a basic yet overly complicated 3-way matching system.

5. Not Preconfigured for Specific Industries:

QuickBooks was designed to be an accounting system. It has scalability limitations. Due to this, it has no practice methodology to streamline business processes. NetSuite has a more focused methodology, SuiteSuccess, with over 20 years of ERP implementation experience tailored to specific industry requirements.

Learn more about our NetSuite SuiteSuccess Services!

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Why Switch from Quickbooks to NetSuite?

If any of the above problems hit a sore spot, it is time to switch to NetSuite. With NetSuite, you’ll gain a competitive edge due to the following reasons:

1. Complete Visibility and Reporting:

NetSuite is a cloud-based ERP system fully equipped for growing businesses. It provides a 360° view of company processes with real-time data and reporting. NetSuite uses a single dashboard to streamline your business; thus, it is extremely user-friendly! With quick search features, you can quickly parse through vendor lists, customer lists, and invoices! Moreover, NetSuite equips you to consolidate inventory reports from multiple warehouses and consolidate multi-company/multi-entity financials.

2. Quick and Efficient Data Connectivity:

NetSuite empowers users to automatically extract and share data from the cloud with all their departments. Users can access the same data, driven from the same source, without manual intervention. Furthermore, the advanced capabilities of NetSuite allow users to customize permissions; hence, no unnecessary data is shared! With NetSuite’s user-friendly interface, Oracle SmartView makes all data connectivity, supervision, and analyses easy!

3. Smooth Financial Consolidations:

NetSuite is created to size up alongside your company. NetSuite offers sophisticated financial consolidation tools and is fully equipped to handle multiple subsidiaries and international currencies. With NetSuite, your key accounting processes can be automated, thus reducing the risk of manual errors and delays.

4. Advanced Inventory Management:

NetSuite provides a robust warehouse management system with a 360° view of all activities. NetSuite offers complete visibility with real-time analytics, serialized inventory tracking, and real-time reporting. NetSuite also provides a demand planning module that allows users to predict inventory changes based on past trends and future sales forecasts.

5. AlphaBOLD’s BOM Generator – BOLDAssembly:

AlphaBOLD’s BOLDAssembly is another empowering feature built for NetSuite. It allows for the quick generation of Assembly Items / BOM records in NetSuite through a user-friendly interface. BOLDAssembly radically speeds up the often lengthy and complicated ‘Engineer to Order’ process. BOLDAssembly focuses on custom product manufacturers who demand unique specifications with every order.

Learn more about BOLDASSEMBLY

6. Pre-configured for Specific Industries:

NetSuite has a focused methodology, SuiteSuccess, with over 20 years of ERP implementation experience tailored to specific industry requirements. With relevant KPI’s reporting, pre-configured systems with dashboards, and roles and add-ons, NetSuite is pre-configured to meet the growing needs of your scaling business from day one!

Audience Questions About Migration from QuickBooks to NetSuite

1. Can the “Indicator” field be customized?

Yes. NetSuite has many standard KPIs and dashboards. However, the ability to customize and drag and drop your dashboard to make it unique to your organization is available. There are also many options to create your searches and reports and turn them into portlets, KPIs, or views. If you can write or create it, NetSuite will let you display it to your dashboard or pass it on to the rest of your users.

2. Can I have different locations under subsidiaries? For example, I have a subsidiary in the US and Ireland. I have a location in the US, in CA, WA, OR, NY, and TX. Would I be able to get that breakout in NetSuite?

Absolutely! NetSuite is multi-subsidiary, multi-entity, multi-location, multi-currency, multilanguage, and multi-book. Each subsidiary can be assigned multiple locations or warehouses. NetSuite OneWorld can handle all your growing global company can throw at it, then spit it back out at you in nice, neat, sliced-and-diced reports with P&Ls and financial statements for each subsidiary, consolidated entry or parent company with a few clicks of your mouse or taps of a tablet. Did we mention that since NetSuite is cloud-based, it is mobile-enhanced? Many features are available via the NetSuite apps available in the Apple and Google Play Stores.

3. Are we able to keep a separate book for Ireland, for example, to keep it separate from the US reporting?

Yes. NetSuite has features that you can enable on your account to tailor your financial software to the individual multi-book accounting requirements of your organization, as long as you are on the OneWorld version of NetSuite.

In order to enable multi-book accounting for your organization, go to Setup > Company > Enable Features > Accounting > Multi-Book Accounting. Once you go under there, you will see the following options:

Adjustment Only Books: This is essentially a lite version of multi-book accounting for NetSuite. They are quick and painless to enable and require less day-to-day maintenance, as they are typically not a primary source of financial data.
Extended Accounting Period Close Process: This feature enables you to open independently or close the accounting period without necessarily tying them to each other. You may close them together if you so choose; however, this requirement is removed.

You can read more about the features directly here: https://docs.oracle.com/cloud/latest/NetSuitecs_gs/NSMBA/NSMBA.pdf

4. How well does NetSuite integrate with other providers? Quickbooks integrates with almost all applications; I just want to ensure I didn’t lose that ability.

NetSuite has a host of API and EDI integrations available through bundles, suiteapps, scripts, and many third-party connectors, such as FarApp, SPS Commerce, or Celigo. NetSuite can also be integrated into many internal sites and systems, such as Microsoft Power BI, Sharepoint, and Dynamics. AlphaBOLD is a Microsoft Gold Partner, so contact a #BOLDEnthusiast to discuss how we can empower you!

5. Can I integrate NetSuite to an internal application via API? Can I add unique identifiers onto the invoice that are not viewable to the end customer but are a reference to our team internally?

There are many options for integrating your internal applications. Some answers were mentioned above, but our BOLDEnthusiasts can help tailor any connection or integration you need with your internal systems. We can also work with your internal team to put tools in place that will train them and embolden future development in-house.

NetSuite allows you to create many custom fields and segments that the administrator can expose on customer-facing printed or HTML forms and documents. On the other hand, the opposite is also true. There are many options for slicing and segmenting internal metrics, tracking, and reporting only viewable by your financial or sales team members. These identifiers can also be used on automatically generated e-mail reports, desktop reminders, or trigger alert e-mails to selected account representatives, supervisors/managers, or members of the executive team.

6. Does NetSuite handle vendor management and payments (especially global payments)?

NetSuite handles vendors, payables, payments, statements, supply chain management, demand planning, and more. This includes things like payment processing via credit card or ACH or in-house POS system. If there are more complex or global payment features that the native NetSuite OneWorld processes are not equipped for, many partners are available via SquiteApps. You can search and find many of these by going to http://suiteapp.com/. For example, you can use it to locate Veem’s app, which helps to handle payments to global vendors.

Make the Smart Switch from QuickBooks to NetSuite with AlphaBOLD

Are the complexities of QuickBooks holding back your business? It's time to consider NetSuite. With AlphaBOLD, transitioning is seamless. Our experts will guide you every step, ensuring that NetSuite perfectly aligns with your business goals.

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Conclusion

Additionally, NetSuite is not just useful if your business is scaling! NetSuite has its roots in serving small and medium enterprises as much as in serving large, growing companies. NetSuite empowers all businesses to achieve their full potential while preparing for future growth. Another bonus tip I would like to add to this blog is that a good solution provider, like AlphaBOLD, is essential to the migration process. If you want to schedule a demo with us, please click here.

I hope this blog has helped you understand why it has become imperative for businesses to upgrade from QuickBooks to NetSuite. You can also benefit from watching the full video of our latest webinar here.

Happy Implementation!

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