When your company first starts out, an entry-level system like QuickBooks makes a lot of sense as your accounting solution. But as you grow, QuickBooks will cost your company money and you won’t even know it. Here are five hidden costs in keeping QuickBooks (or any entry-level system) too long:
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Productivity – It may look like everything in the company is working well, but when you start to look at how your employees are working, you may find a mess of spreadsheets, Access databases, notebooks, etc. that have become your real accounting system. Up to 20% of your staff’s time may be spent just looking in different places for information. That is unproductive time that you’re paying for.
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Accountability – Most entry level systems can allow you to re-write history with a very limited audit trail. Often, when you print a report a week later and the numbers are different, it becomes a significant effort to find out what happened, and who did it. How do you prevent fraud, or know when inventory has disappeared?
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Islands of Information – As your company grows your employees will find holes in their QuickBooks system that they will patch with add-on products. These products will “interface” with QuickBooks through proprietary bridges to share limited amounts of data. Each of these applications has their own database, their own user interface, their own name and passwords etc. Start with QuickBooks for accounting, later add Fishbowl for orders. Now add a sales and marketing systems that stands alone. Throw in a dozen spreadsheets and you have created your own Islands of Information, except these islands don’t have sunny beaches. They just cost you money trying to keep them all in sync.
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Security – You want your company to be transparent, everybody on the same page. What if one of your ex-employees walks off with your customer list? What if your best salesperson finds out they don’t have the best commission plan? What if everybody knows how much the company was making, to the penny? These can be very expensive issues from which to recover.
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Bad Decisions -Today we are taxed with having to make quick decisions all day long. How to treat an upset customer? Should I buy more inventory? Will we have enough cash for payroll? The cost of a bad decision can be expensive, it could even put your company out of business. Using limited or bad information can cause bad decisions to be made by good people. They were not wrong in what they chose to do, based on the bad information they had. Regardless, your business suffers the consequences.
Staying with an entry level system too long can destroy your bottom line, and you won’t even know it. As your company starts to grow past 25 employees, your entry level systems and infrastructure will start to hold you back. This is when you should take a long look under the covers. Most people get fixated on the cost of upgrading, I am asking you to look at the cost from NOT upgrading.
Gravity Software® (Gravity) cloud-based accounting software is built for companies that need more features, security, transparency and horsepower to grow their business. Gravity’s robust business financials are built from the ground up on the Microsoft Power Platform (aka Dynamics 365 CRM). A platform that hosts over 4 million users worldwide. It’s never a bad idea to check out what is out there in the accounting software world. And it’s always a good idea to provide your employees with the latest technology.
Schedule your online demo so you can realize how your business can benefit from Gravity Software’s online accounting solution. My business is connected. Is yours?
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