5 Signs Your Business Should Switch from QuickBooks to NetSuite

Business leaders usually make two critical mistakes regarding their finance stack: first, they fail to realize the strategic impact of finance and accounting on their business. They often only see transactional aspects such as invoicing, reconciliation, and collections. However, choosing the right finance stack is a business decision and a strategic aspect of your business.

The second mistake is thinking only about their immediate needs. As they scale, they realize (often too late) that they are trying to grow with insufficient tools or scrambling to upgrade too often as their needs change. You can avoid such struggles by building a financial stack now, for your future self.

So far, you might have found QuickBooks helpful, but there are signs that seem to indicate it’s time to make the switch. In this article, we will compare QBO and NetSuite to help you decide when you should switch to NetSuite.

Let’s jump in.

QuickBooks vs. NetSuite

Both QuickBooks and NetSuite offer software that is tailored to help businesses manage their accounting processes. However, there is a massive difference between the two solutions.

While QuickBooks is user-friendly and feature-rich accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses, NetSuite is an all-inclusive enterprise-level solution created for larger businesses that need more than a basic accounting tool.

With QuickBooks, you’ll get access to easy financial solutions to manage customers, vendors, finance, and inventory, which makes it a great tool to run a small business. 

However, as your business grows, you might need more customization and advanced features such as a consolidated view of your different entities, which you won’t find in QuickBooks.

Features

QuickBooks online features

QuickBooks online is one of the most feature-rich accounting solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. It comes with four different subscription plans that provide all the tools that SMBs need for accounting. These four plans include simple start, essentials, plus, and advanced.

QuickBooks allows you to easily integrate with over 650 common business tools as your business grows. Popular integrations include those for project management, payment processing, and CRM.

QuickBooks is also pocket-friendly since it is designed for small businesses. This way, you don’t have to pay for advanced features you won’t use as you would with more advanced software.

NetSuite ERP features

NetSuite ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is the financial management branch of the NetSuite product suite. Instead of having different plans that you can choose from, NetSuite ERP comes in one overarching platform that can be tailored and adapted to your business needs.

The platform comprises the following categories:

• Financial management: finance and accounting revenue recognition, global accounting, billing, financial reporting, and consolidation.

• Financial planning: budgeting, planning, forecasting.

• Production management: work order management, planning and scheduling, product data management, and quality assurance.

• Warehouse and fulfillment: inbound logistics, inventory management, outbound logistics, and warehouse solutions.

• Order management: returns management, pricing and promotions, and sales order management.

• Supply chain management: planning, collaboration, execution, and support.

The finance and accounting sections of NetSuite will provide you with all the features you need to manage your taxes, payments, and your accounting books. Some of these features include:

• Customizable general ledger

• Fixed asset management

• Accounts receivable and accounts payable

• Cash management

• Automated domestic and global tax compliance tools

• Payment management with SuitePayments for payment processing

• Recurring bill and subscription management

• Inventory tracking across multiple locations

• Advanced reporting and forecasting tools

• Pricing tools, sales orders, and purchase orders

NetSuite comes with pre-configured KPIs, reminders, workflows, and customizable dashboards that show you exactly how operations and accounting processes align and what you need to do. NetSuite gives you the core finance and accounting functions combined with strong compliance management. You also get real-time access to financial data, allowing you to quickly dig into details and generate statements and disclosures that comply with different financial requirements.

Additionally, NetSuite gives you the ability to customize your accounting stack to suit your needs. Of course, these features will come at a higher price than you would pay for a premium version of QuickBooks, and you will require the help of a third party to integrate the software. However, you will find that once you have installed it, NetSuite lets you go way farther than you would with QuickBooks.

Pricing

QuickBooks pricing

You can either purchase the desktop version of QuickBooks or use QuickBooks online which is a cloud-based online version of QuickBooks.

The self-employed plan goes for $15 per month. This plan is better suited for freelancers and includes basic features such as the ability to track income, connect payment options, send invoices, estimate quarterly taxes, track expenses, and run simple financial reports.

Simple Start Plan goes for $25 per month. This plan better suits contractors and small businesses and allows you to track sales, revenue, expenses, cash flow, sales tax, and send estimates and taxes.

The plus plan goes for $70 per month. You will find this plan useful if you have a team of employees. The plan contains everything in the simple start plus additional features such as time-tracking for employees, and the ability to manage and pay bills within the accounting software. You can also grant access to up to five managers.

The advanced plan goes for $150 per month and is designed for companies that value advanced reporting and personalized support. This plan allows for up to 25 users.

QuickBooks payroll pricing

QuickBooks allows you to add payrolls to your QuickBooks plan or purchase payrolls separately and manage both W-2 and 1099 employees including healthcare benefits, direct deposit, and 401(k).

Payroll core costs $45 per month plus $4 per employee per month. It allows you to manage payrolls and benefits for your contracts and employees.

Payroll premium goes for $75 per month plus $8 per employee per month. It gives you access to worker’s compensation, same-day direct deposit, and mobile employee time tracking for employees in the field.

Payroll elite goes for $125 per month plus $12 per employee per month. It gives you access to a personal HR advisor and personalized support.

NetSuite pricing

As is the case with most enterprise-level business solutions, NetSuite offers a customizable pricing system. Rather than finding a list of their prices on their website, you will have to contact the company directly so they can create a plan specifically tailored to your business and come up with a price for it.

That being said, the price you pay for your NetSuite software will be mostly determined by the size of your business, how many users you need, the features you need, and whether you are bundling different products among other factors.

According to some reviewers, NetSuite charges $100 per user per month. The lowest tier goes for $100 per month and gives access to 10 users.

Due to the high initial price involved, you might be tempted to continue using spreadsheets or add layers to your existing system to meet your financial goals. However, if you consider the amount of time you spend now on manual processes or trying to reconcile data, then imagine how much more time you will need in about two years when your company doubles in size. You will realize that it’s better to implement sooner than later a more suitable system that leaves you with more time to tackle important projects and let you focus on business growth. 

What’s more is that you need a stack that will continue to grow with your business, instead of requiring you to upgrade every few years.

Signs Your Business Is Ready To Switch To NetSuite

At this point, you must be wondering whether or not your growing business is ready to switch to NetSuite.

Businesses usually need to upgrade their system when they reach around $10 million in recurring revenue. If you expect to reach this amount of revenue in a year, you should find some time sooner than later to upgrade to Netsuite.

There are ways to help you determine when your business is ready. Start by examining your business’ needs and your key business requirements. Find out how much you are using QuickBooks, spreadsheets, and other applications. You should also analyze the amount of time and effort your business commits to QuickBooks and determine how and where you want to cut back.

Here are 5 signs it’s time to make the move:

1. Fast growth

Picture your business two years from now. Do you have the accounting tools and systems to meet the needs you are anticipating? Consider what you are already doing manually using your current stack. For example, with QuickBooks, your team might spend a great deal of time manually entering data on excel sheets, which is an outdated, time-consuming, and error-prone process.

How much more time will you spend in the future on the same manual tasks when your business grows bigger?

As Jason Lopez, the Controller at Lattice mentioned in a recent webinar, you need to choose a tech stack that will grow with your business needs. The good thing about NetSuite is that it is already tried and tested and you know right from the start that you are implementing a future-proof technology. You don’t have to keep asking yourself what you can or cannot do when the time comes because you know your stack will expand with your needs.

2. Attracting talent

As a fast-growing company, you know how vital it is to attract and retain the best talents. However, appealing to top executives involves fierce competition.

One way to stand out from your competition is to have the right tech stack. In that sense, Netsuite is also an asset to attract talents. Would you imagine yourself working in a company relying on basic accounting tools and spreadsheets? Or rather choose one that offers top finance and accounting solutions?

3. International expansion

If your business has to work with several subsidiaries, foreign currencies, and taxation standards, you will find that QuickBooks’s accounting system will be inadequate.

NetSuite, on the other hand, comes with sophisticated financial consolidation features that are fully equipped to handle numerous subsidiaries and international currencies. You can use NetSuite to automate your accounting process and minimize the risks of manual errors and delays.

4. Lack of visibility

As your business grows, so does the need for increased visibility into your business processes. If you are using QuickBooks, you must have realized that you work in an endless fog, especially when it comes to reporting. You also lack a way to communicate with your employees, teams, and managers about priority tasks and updates which makes your business siloed.

NetSuite gives you a 360 degrees view of your business processes with real-time data and reporting. You also get a dashboard with everything you need to streamline your business which makes it an extremely user-friendly software.

5. You actually need to do more than accounting

QuickBooks was designed to be just an accounting solution. It, therefore, becomes a hindrance when you want to scale your business and need a complete financial management solution.

NetSuite offers core finance combined with accounting functions and strong compliance management. It comes with real-time access to financial data, and a focused methodology, with all the KPIs, roles, dashboards, and add-ons your business will need.

Summary

QuickBooks is, without a doubt, one of the most cost-effective accounting software you will find on the market today. That being said, it will serve you well when you’re starting, but as your business expands at a steady pace, you will find it limiting.

During the growth period, the qualities of robust software like Netsuite are crucial to managing an increasing number of transactions.

You might be developing cold feet because of the challenges of implementing Netsuite: it requires more resources, it is more expensive, it’s heavy to integrate and your team will probably need training on it. 

However, compare this investment to the outcome of not implementing Netsuite at the right moment. You’ll realize that ​​as you grow, you’ll have to add layers to your existing tools, till you reach a point where your environment will become extremely complex. 

At that time, it will be much more complicated to make the switch. 

Be proactive and not reactive when choosing and implementing accounting software. If you’re considering implementing Netsuite, do it sooner than later!