Why Fast-Growing SMBs Are Migrating from QuickBooks to NetSuite

Every business strives for constant growth. However, growth translates to change and the addition of a lot of things such as more transactions, increased demand, new products/services, more employees, a new business line, a new supply chain, etc. When small and mid-sized businesses grow at a rapid pace, they need a system that is robust, scalable, and secure. However, when their current software systems do not match up, bottlenecks arise. For instance, imagine your financial management software failing to optimize your financial processes or it not having the scalability your business needs. Not only can it hinder the coordination between departments in your company but can also put a halt to the speed of your business growth.

That’s where your business needs an upgrade. Most businesses find a trusted companion in QuickBooks when they start. However, as fast-growing SMBs start scaling, they upgrade from QuickBooks to NetSuite. But why is that so? This blog post explores all this and more.

What is QuickBooks?

QuickBooks is a business and financial management suite with tools for accounting, payroll, tax filing, invoicing, expense management, budgeting, and more. It is suitable for small and medium-sized businesses, enabling them to track all financial information and create reports to summarize any aspect of their business.

What is NetSuite?

NetSuite is an all-in-one business management solution that provides real-time visibility into operational and financial performance. It is a single suite of applications for managing accounting, order processing, inventory management, production, supply chain, and warehouse operations. With its wide range of features and functionalities, it enables organizations to simplify their business, make better decisions, and standardize business processes across all divisions and subsidiaries globally.

No wonder both these systems solve similar purposes, however, NetSuite goes beyond finance and carries the extra capabilities that businesses need when they grow. Let’s take a quick look at their features through these comparison charts:

Benefits of Migrating from QuickBooks to NetSuite

• Time-Saving With Automation

  NetSuite reduces much of the manual tasks with its automation functionality, reducing your work on spreadsheets, and saving you countless hours of administrative work. It’s a system that’s designed for the future with its open APIs.

• Real-time Visibility of Accounts and Finances

  NetSuite provides you with a robust picture of finances. It provides real-time information on data, contacts, and invoices. And with its features like mapping cash flow, forecasting budgets, tracking profit margins, and analyzing inventory; you get a clearer picture of your business’ health.

• Scalability

  As your business grows, your market and market locations are likely to expand. So, you have to deal with different accounting regulations, currencies, taxation standards, business requirements, and more. This is where NetSuite provides you with a single source of truth. It automatically consolidates financial data from other systems into one place so that you can have a unified view of your business, spread across multiple geographies.

• Integration

  While NetSuite is used primarily for finance, its usage also extends to other departments such as marketing, sales, human resources, etc. So, if you are already using specific solutions for these functions, you can integrate them into NetSuite and continue using NetSuite as a base system. NetSuite offers seamless integration with platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, Amazon, Shopify, and more.

Why are SMBs Switching to NetSuite?

Just like large companies, small companies also dream of going for an IPO (Initial Public Offering). In fact, governments globally have recognized the role of SMBs in their economy and have created separate bourses for them. This gives businesses an opportunity to list their companies on stock exchanges and have better access to capital. However, in order to be in that high-growth stage, organizations need a powerful valuation and audit process that helps them meet regulatory compliance requirements. This is where NetSuite has emerged as a trusted ally for them and is one of the various reasons why SMBs are switching to NetSuite.

In fact, NetSuite says that their customers make up 66%^[i] of tech IPOs in the US since 2011. But how does it help them bring that critical efficiency and transparency, required for an IPO? Here are three areas of change that NetSuite helps a company with, when the company goes public:

• Legal

  When companies enter the public market, they confront new laws and regulations. For instance, the SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) is a U.S. federal law that protects investors by making corporate disclosures more reliable and accurate. In congruence with SOX, NetSuite provides detailed audit trails of every transaction so that businesses can meet its requirements.

• Compliance

  As most companies operate globally, they require to meet compliances with local regulations. NetSuite provides the functionality that helps them meet regulatory requirements efficiently.

• Shareholders

  When companies go public, they get their new teammates in the form of shareholders. And in exchange for their investments, shareholders expect transparency, timeliness, and consistency from them. This is where NetSuite helps companies with quick account closures and rolling out accurate and timely information to be presented to their shareholders.

Why Should You Choose NetSuite?

With growth and expansion, businesses need extended capabilities to address the needs of their increasing number of customers, employees, and handle the ever-evolving data. So, if you use a system like QuickBooks with its limited capabilities, you will have to put more and more layers of applications on top of it that not only add complexity in managing information through disparate programs but also add cost. Switching to NetSuite can put you in a win-win as it provides a single, integrated view of applications. Sample POWERHOME SOLAR. The company began using QuickBooks Enterprise Edition to manage its financials but later switched to NetSuite. With their growing business, they required an ERP platform that would integrate with their CRM (Salesforce), provide them a cloud-delivery approach, the flexibility to integrate with other applications, and scale up as the company expanded. The company decided to go with NetSuite as they didn’t want static software but the one that could be customized the way they wanted it to work for their business.

The Bottom Line

QuickBooks is definitely a standard software to manage finances for small businesses. However, the organizations that want a solution that sustains growth and scales as their business expands, need a solution like NetSuite – the one that stays with them forever.

Statistics Reference:
^[i] One Pacific