I am in a Love / Hate relationship...

With QuickBooks! QuickBooks is the most popular accounting software when it comes to managing your small business. Its ease of use and affordability make it the ideal accounting software for a small to medium-sized business. But it does have its limitations, and customer support is sub-par.

There are many accounting programs available, and I have experience with a few of them. Another option is Wave. Wave is a free software program for that start-up business that only needs to track income and expenses. It doesn’t do much else, but then again, it’s free! And when you are just starting in business, free is good. But as your business grows, you’ll need to migrate to something else.

Another comparable option to QuickBooks is Xero. Personally, I like QuickBooks better than Xero, but that is a biased opinion only because I am more familiar with QuickBooks. I have only been using Xero for a few months. I am still getting familiar with it. Working with the unknown can be daunting, thus making a task more difficult. My choice, I would go with QuickBooks only because I know the program so much better, and I know how a task will affect others.

QuickBooks is the obvious solution for payroll. Right? Not necessarily! QB payroll is ok but not great. It doesn’t track multiple localities very well, so if your team works in multiple towns or cities, it can be a nightmare. Also, I have huge issues with Payroll Support. They have limited the user’s ability to make changes to payroll, but their customer service team, most of the time, isn’t as knowledgeable about payroll as I am. Their support team will answer the phone and try to get answers from a chat or search. It can take hours to get simple resolutions that I could have done in minutes if given the access. For instance, they told me; something I had requested was complete. Two weeks later, I called back because I still had the same issue, only to find out it was never resolved. I have been waiting for over a month to get a routing number changed for a direct deposit. I should be able to make that change in a matter of minutes. I finally had to go with another payroll provider for this client. I signed him up for Gusto. I have never used Gusto before so, we’ll see in a later blog how that works out.

So, in short, QuickBooks is great for basic accounting (invoicing customers -AR and paying Bills - AP) but is only ok with payroll. And that works if that is all you need for your business. But it isn’t!

Running a business is so much more than AR/AP and payroll. There are other aspects like Human Resource Management, Inventory, Fleet Management / Asset Management, CRM, Project Management, and Sales, to name a few. QuickBooks doesn't have the capability to handle all of these things. You either have to run these things with countless spreadsheets (I currently use SmartSheets - it’s like Excel on steroids) or other Third Party Software. QuickBooks has a select few programs that integrate well with those programs, and they perform well.

I have been researching an All-In-One Platform that can handle all of these things for the medium-sized and growing business. Oracle Netsuite has a host of “Modules” that interact with each other, but it is expensive. It starts at $1500/mo. That is a big jump from the QuickBooks Online Price starting at $35/mo. or QuickBooks Desktop starting at $250/mo. But is it worth the cost to have all of your business aspects under one roof? That is up to the business owner to decide. I, personally, can’t wait to sign a larger company willing to give it a try.

Angie M. Graham

Perfectly Balanced