Side-by-side comparison

Gravity Software vs. QuickBooks

Tell tale signs you’ve outgrown QuickBooks

QuickBooks Online (QBO) is a great starting point for small businesses with basic accounting needs.
However, that can shift quickly once a company starts to grow. View our comparison scorecard to see why Gravity Software is the best alternative to QuickBooks Online.

Built on the Microsoft Power Platform, Gravity increases productivity, efficiencies and eliminates
month-end accounting madness

Feature rich capabilities

  • Multi-entity consolidated financial reporting
  • Open API to integrate to external applications
  • Sophisticated multi-location, department or profit center reporting
  • Eliminate manual work with robust workflow automation
  • Track and report based on user defined dimensions
  • Better internal controls
  • Personalized dashboards with real-time insights that are important to your business
  • Sophisticated multi-currency
  • Better security and complete audit trails
  • Create multi-company journals with a single drag and drop
  • Single entry inter-company transactions (journals, invoices, vouchers)

Better. Smarter. Accounting.

Gravity Software®
QuickBooks Online
Number of users
Unlimited
25
User definable dashboards
Automated integrations, approvals
Personalized data entry screens
Limited
User defined fiscal periods (13 month, 4-4-5)
Intelligent segmented chart of accounts
User defined dimensions
Personalized financial statements (single or multi-company)
User definable security roles
Accept credit cards
Transactional audit trail
Limited
Allow deletion of posted transactions
Payroll
3rd Party
Integrated CRM
Credit limits on customers
1099 control by voucher
Unlimited addresses for customers & vendors
Attach notes, tasks, emails & documents to any record
Limited
Full grid cut & paste on transaction entry
Advanced product pricing by customer / items & class
Automated bank reconciliation
Reversing journal entries
Multi-location inventory
Multi-entity, allocations across multiple companies
Apply customer payments to multiple invoices on one screen
Flexible check selection
Subscription billing
Investment management

SCHEDULE A DEMO

Challenges with QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Enterprise

If you are looking for a Quickbooks alternative, you are not alone. To date, QuickBooks has accounted for some 73% of the U.S. market in general accounting software. It’s a great starting point for small to medium-sized firms with basic accounting needs. However, that can shift quickly once a company starts to grow.

Expanding companies that are using spreadsheets or outside applications to overcome QuickBooks' deficiencies are finding that upgrading from QuickBooks Desktop (QBD) to QuickBooks Online (QBO) or QuickBooks Enterprise (QBE) won't solve their problems.

QuickBooks Online makes multi-entity accounting difficult 

Need to charge one bill to multiple companies? Need to allocate expenses from one account to multiple accounts based on a percentage every month? QuickBooks requires manual intervention and multiple transactions to make that happen, costing you more time.  Consider the time you spend on just one inter-company transaction in QuickBooks. If you’re paying a shared expense from a parent company and recording it as a transaction within a dozen different entities, you need to log in and out of a dozen separate database and create “due to” and “due from” journal entries. 

Why Gravity Software is a better QuickBooks alternative 

With Gravity’s unique multi-company architecture, you can allocate costs across companies and accounts in one transaction. Divide expenses by percentage to different entities — just once, or on a consistent schedule. Once you’ve set up initial parameters, that convenient process repeats itself until you change the account or account percentages.

You can also log into a single database and consolidate data from multiple companies onto one dashboard or set up a transactional relationship between any two companies.It’s a seamless transition from one entity to the next. 

Gravity also offers accounts payable automation using AI technology to save even more time. AI from Microsoft’s Cognitive Services engine extracts relevant data from your invoices and uses this information to create vouchers, reducing manual data entry.

Multi-currency accounting in QuickBooks Online is not GAAP compliant

Within QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online, every entity requires a separate balance sheet, so it’s not possible to set separate currencies for entities located in different countries and compile consolidated financial reports in just one currency. Multi-currency accounting in QuickBooks also does not comply with GAAP. 

Why Gravity Software is a better QuickBooks alternative

Multi-currency accounting in Gravity gives companies more flexibility while ensuring compliance. The three-tiered currency model allows each company to establish a home currency while consolidating all companies into a preferred reporting currency. You can make transactions in any currency and automatically calculate foreign currency gains and losses. You can also administer exchange rates manually or update them automatically with an integrated solution. 

QuickBooks does not have intuitive, personalized business intelligence

QuickBooks dashboards are one-size-fits-all, based on how someone a thousand miles away thinks your business should be run. You’re not able to easily personalize the data based on what’s most important to you and your team. 

Why Gravity is a better QuickBooks alternative

In Gravity, you can asily create relevant dashboards from any piece of data.. If you can create a graph in Excel, you can build one of our dashboards. Access outside data such as UPS tracking on demand, and utilize built-in tools like Microsoft’s Power BI to provide you with that “picture is worth a thousand words” snapshot of information.

QuickBooks’ lack of an audit trail reduces accountability

While QuickBooks allows a user to change any transaction at any time, it lacks a strong trail showing who the user was, how he or she went from one number to another and why he or she made the change.

Why Gravity is a better QuickBooks alternative

Although it’s easy to make corrections in Gravity, all changes are tracked in a full audit trail. Gravity keeps each original transaction, each reversal to that transaction and each replacement transaction. The “correct” button allows you to easily type over and fix any entry, then automatically saves a trail of how your numbers have changed from week to week.

Why Proteus Power chose Gravity Software over QuickBooks

Proteus Power

Renewable Energy Company

Proteus Power manages a dozen different projects that all require their own balance sheet. Expenses for projects in Canada must be tracked in Canadian dollars, while US projects need to retain their own currency. With Gravity Software, the company reduced manual data entry while achieving GAAP compliance, giving them more time to focus on marketing, investor relations, and strategic planning. 

Resources to power your business

If you’re searching for QuickBooks Desktop alternatives, here’s what you need to know.
Read more
Fortunately, Gravity’s multi-company accounting software users can take advantage of AI in accounting right away with new features we’ve released.
Read more
It's been well-documented that QuickBooks is not particularly well-suited for multi-entity businesses, and the most popular...
Read more