5 Signs QuickBooks May Be Hindering Your Growth

Are the people in your office wasting valuable time duplicating data entry or trying to configure QuickBooks to do things it wasn't designed to do? You can apply workarounds in the short-term, but the longer you wait, the more traction you lose.

If you identify with any of these scenarios, it's time to graduate from QuickBooks to a more complete business management solution such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

You can't scale operations to support business growth. As you expand product lines and enter new markets, your business processes become more complex. With basic accounting software, even the simplest processes, like invoicing and month-end closing, can take hours--even days--to complete. You need business process automation to handle growth without adding to your payroll.

You can't wrap your arms (or your head) around your business. There used to be a one-to-one correspondence between your employees and the business functions they managed. Now you don't have the controls in place to ensure a detailed and accurate audit trail. If multiple users can make changes to financial entries without proper tracking, it's difficult to trace who has done what. Protect your business with a solution that supports and enforces well-defined roles and processes and gives you tighter control over critical functions like payments, purchasing, and inventory management.

You are reactive when you need to be proactive. Sure, QuickBooks can give you a snapshot of your sales performance for the past quarter, but do you know which products produce the highest margins and which customers are likely to purchase the highest volume of those products? Instead of looking at reports of past performance, you need insight into current activities and developing trends to move your business forward. The right business management solution can give you full visibility into what drives your profitability and the ability to turn those profits into the cash flow that will support your future growth.

You can't support a mobile workforce. The traditional workplace isn't so traditional anymore, and business doesn't stop because you're on the road or working from home. Keep your people connected, productive, and happy with systems that support the mobility and flexibility they expect.

You can't meet customer expectations. Are you using QuickBooks to manage your finances and other systems to track customer interactions, or manage delivery? If you don't have an end-to-end view of your business to track customer interactions, forecast demand, and manage your finances, and if those systems don't talk to each other, you may find yourself unable to meet customer expectations. To succeed an increasingly competitive economy, you need a well-tuned supply chain and the ability to manager customer and vendor requirements.