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QuickBooks™ Upgrade: Questions, Myths, Insights, and Tips

1 QuickBooks™ upgrade: Questions, Myths, insights and tips

QuickBooks, with over 4.5 million users, is one of the most popular small business accounting systems on the market (Source: PCWorld 9/13). While it is sufficient in meeting the needs of small businesses, many growing and larger companies and organizations find that it does not meet their needs due to its limitations.

Thousands of former QuickBooks users have chosen to move to Intacct due to a multitude of situations. Whether it be a single accounting failure, a mandate to improve financial control and visibility, or the need for more sophisticated accounting functionality (including the automation of many financial processes), Intacct is the solution. As more and more businesses outgrow QuickBooks, Intacct is quickly becoming the de facto standard for QuickBooks graduates.

So where should you begin your journey to a best-in-class financial management system?

First, let’s look at 10 questions you should ask to determine if your company or organization is ready to upgrade from QuickBooks. Then, we will share migration myths, compare on-premise and SaaS options, show how Intacct can help save you money, and tell you how to get started with Intacct.

10 Questions To Determine If You Are Ready to Upgrade From QuickBooksThere are many reasons users choose to upgrade from Quickbooks. User count limitations, the need for enhanced internal controls, lack of integration between other software, and the inability to customize for specific needs; are all limitations of QuickBooks that present a challenge for many growing companies. Below are ten questions to determine if you should upgrade from QuickBooks:

1. Is QuickBooks meeting all of your financial and accounting needs? Does it have all of the functionality and control you need today? How about a year from now?

2. Can you provide your management team and board members with the information they need in a timely fashion?

3. Are your auditors concerned about your financial controls or security? Do you have the need to segregate your financial duties to reduce the risk of fraud?

Thousands of QuickBooks users have made the decision to move to Intacct as a result of a variety of situations.

2 QuickBooks™ upgrade: Questions, Myths, insights and tips

4. Does your finance and accounting team spend significant time outside of QuickBooks, using paper or Excel spreadsheets?

5. How much time and money would you save if you could automate your financial processes to free your finance staff from repetitive, manual processing?

6. Do you need to manage complex requirements such as revenue deferral and recognition?

7. Can QuickBooks handle your multi-currency and multi-entity requirements as you add locations and do business in multiple currencies?

8. Have you been able to integrate QuickBooks with your other key business systems, like salesforce automation, to avoid redundancy of data entry or islands of information?

9. Can your team work remotely? Can you access your financial information and perform common tasks like purchasing approvals from anywhere?

10. How are you managing backup and recovery? What would data loss cost your business?

If you couldn’t effectively answer any of these questions, then you are ready to upgrade Quickbooks. Following are some of the myths of migrating from Quickbooks.

3 QuickBooks™ upgrade: Questions, Myths, insights and tips

QuickBooks Migration MythsUpgrading is too expensive – While an upgrade to a best-in-class financial management solution does require an increased investment, sticking with an accounting system that is not meeting your needs can have a devastating effect on the financial well-being of your growing company. Consider the amount of money lost from decreased productivity – manual tasks, expensive workarounds, and more – as a result of the limitations of QuickBooks.

“Intacct has driven at least $50,000 in savings by eliminating non-value added manual processes—transforming our finance department from data collectors and pencil pushers to business analysts who now provide deeper insight to help our business to grow and succeed.” Dan Orlinski, Finance DirectOr, renal Ventures ManageMent

Upgrading will take too long – Often, business owners are resistant to change due to the fear that an upgrade will be a long, complicated process. Typically on-premise systems require months of effort. In contrast, Intacct solutions can be implemented in as little as four to six weeks. To speed up the implementation and conversion process, you can take advantage of automated conversion tools that accelerate the process of upgrading from QuickBooks to Intacct. Simply point the tools at your existing QuickBooks data files, answer a few simple questions, and your data is automatically converted and uploaded into Intacct.

“Lasco Enterprises implemented Intacct in less than two months— despite several complexities in mapping historical data from its QuickBooks instances.” (Case Study)

The learning curve will be too high – Many organizations stick with QuickBooks because they fear a steep learning curve when implementing a new finincial software. Intacct shortens the learning curve with familiar and easy-to-understand reports and dashboards. Intacct QuickStart Financials lets you choose from a library of pre-configured, industry-specific financial templates with built-in best practices charts of accounts, financial processes, reports, dashboards and much more. Once you select your template, QuickStart Financials easily maps your existing charts of accounts to Intacct, automatically creating all of your account hierarchy structures and giving you extensive financial reporting out of the box.

“Intacct is very intuitive, and the reports and dashboards are easy to setup. Intacct makes it much easier to track every piece of information that is crucial to our business. I feel like I have a much better under-standing of how the business is doing and can more easily identify areas for improvement. Intacct enables us to get the daily operational data we need to properly manage and grow the business.” cheri ZanDlO, cFO, tangO2

“Intacct has driven at least $50,000 in savings by eliminating non-value added manual processes —transforming our finance department from data collectors and pencil pushers to business analysts who now provide deeper insight to help our business to grow and succeed.”

Dan Orlinski, Finance Director,Renal Ventures Management

4 QuickBooks™ upgrade: Questions, Myths, insights and tips

Choosing Between SaaS and On-Premise Companies that graduate from QuickBooks have many options, but they primarily fall into two categories— selecting another on-premise software package, or shifting to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) alternative.

On-premise solutions from vendors like Microsoft, Oracle and Sage require customers to purchase an upfront perpetual license; as well as the hardware to support the software. In addition to these significant capital investments, on-premise applications also place the burden of software deployment and management on the user, potentially increasing IT resource needs.

The new breed of SaaS offerings from companies like Intacct permit users to pay on a subscription basis and relieves them of added hardware costs, software deployment and data management hassles. This allows users to focus on leveraging the software functionality rather than worrying about the application availability. The SaaS model also makes it easier for growing companies to add more user licenses as they need them rather than having to purchase them upfront regardless of current need. Unlike on-premise applications, which might be hosted by a software vendor, today’s SaaS solutions have been built to fully leverage the web and permit end-users to utilize the online tools at any time from any location.

Discover the cost savings associated with a cloud computing system like Intacct in the next section.

Ongoing CostsApply Fixes, Patches, Upgrade

Downtime

Performance tuning

Rewrite customizations

Rewrite integrations

Upgrade dependent applications

Maintain/upgrade hardware

Maintain/upgrade network

Maintain/upgrade security

Maintain/upgrade database

Ongoing CostsSubscription fee

Training

Configuration

On-Premises Cloud Computing

*Source: Yankee DecisionNote Technology Analysis

68%Subscription fees

32%Implementation, Customization, and Traininhg

9%Software Licenses

43%Implementation

26%Hardware

14%IT Personnel

7%Maintenance

1%Training

5 QuickBooks™ upgrade: Questions, Myths, insights and tips

Intacct SavingsUsers who should upgrade from QuickBooks typically adapt processes to work around its limitations. The “hidden costs” can be incredibly damaging to a growing organization. Factors such as over-reliance on manual, paper-based processes, a lack of integration between financials and other business critical applications, decreased staff productivity as a result of inefficient and manual processes, and inadequate data; all slow down the monthly accounting process, thereby increasing costs. Increasing productivity by eliminating such processes can result in impressive cost savings for your company or organization.

“Intacct has rich functionality, great reporting and it’s tremendously flexible. Intacct makes us more productive, allowing us to strategically redeploy some of our staff –ultimately saving the company more than $100,000 annually in added salary.”ceO, asP glObal serVices

Intacct savings continue when the need arises to consolidate multiple entities, account for multiple currencies, and integrate with other business solutions. Intacct seemlessly integrates with CRM, business intelligence, expense management and more than 120 partner applications.

Show Me the Money - Beyond significant cost savings for staff and productivity, Intacct delivers best-in-class financial metrics*:

Payback Period return on investment net Present Value (nPV).3 Years or 4 months after

Implementation345% $121,134

*Source: Nucleus Research, financial modeling, revised July, 2013

“Intacct has rich functionality, great reporting and it’s tremendously flexible. Intacct makes us more productive, allowing us to strategically redeploy some of our staff – ultimately saving the company more than $100,000 annually in added salary.”

CEO, ASP Global Services

6 QuickBooks™ upgrade: Questions, Myths, insights and tips

Getting Started With IntacctGetting started with Intacct is easy. After determining that QuickBooks is no longer meeting the needs of your company, there are 6 simple phases of Intacct implementation.

Phase 1: Define You’ll work collaboratively with your project manager to align the capabilities of your Intacct system with current and future business requirements, develop a customized project plan, and finalize the go-live criteria.

Phase 2: EducateGet users up to speed on Intacct using self-paced education through Intacct’s online Education Management Center with both pre-recorded and live web meetings.

Phase 3: BuildBrittenford will work with you to construct a fully working system that reflects the scope, requirements, and processes defined in Phase 1.

Phase 4: ModelYour team will receive access to the completed test Intacct system. Use this replica to test the system before deployment and to make sure you’ve properly connected other critical systems with Intacct.

Phase 5: DeployGo live with your customized Intacct system and officially begin using Intacct as your core financial system. You can immediately make the move to your new Intacct system, or run Intacct in parallel with your current applications for a period of time.

Phase 6: Evolve Congratulations! You’re live on Intacct. As your business needs change and you need additional features, take full advantage of Intacct’s flexibility and adaptability to implement new functionality and update your business processes. You can also contact Brittenford Systems for a Health Check Evaluation, a standard service we provide to periodically evaluate your system and help you get the most from your upgrade to Intacct.

6 Phases of Intacct Implementation

Define

Educate

Build

Model

Deploy

Evolve

PHASE 1

PHASE 2

PHASE 3

PHASE 4

PHASE 5

PHASE 6

7 QuickBooks™ upgrade: Questions, Myths, insights and tips

QuickBooks to Intacct Case StudiesInterested in learning more about graduating from QuickBooks? Discover how the following companies graduated from QuickBooks to Intacct:

1. Platinum Hospitality Streamlines Operations and Simplifies Multi-Entity Financial Management with Intacct

2. Potential Church Uses Intacct to Streamline Financial Processes While Accelerating Growth

3. Renal Ventures Management Streamlines Its Financial Processes and Improves Business Reporting with Intacct

4. The Knowland Group Manages Rapid Growth with Intacct’s Cloud Financial Management Applications

5. Nucleus Research: TOA Technologies Supports Rapid Growth by Automating processes with Intacct

6. Accordia Global Health Foundation Upgrades to Intacct Financial Accounting System

About BrittenfordBrittenford Systems is a nationally recognized consulting firm that specializes in delivering financial management and business intelligence solutions as well as CIO Advisory Services to mid-market companies. Based in the Washington, DC area, we help our clients leverage technology solutions to improve business processes and productivity, reduce operational costs, and get timely financial information so they can run their businesses more efficiently.

At Brittenford, we understand that managing financial information effectively is the backbone of a business. With our extensive industry experience and unique approach, we help non-profit, project-based, and international organizations implement and support cloud-based Intacct and Host Analytics, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Dynamics SL. For more information about Brittenford Systems, please visit www.brittenford.comor call 703-860-6945.