QuickBooks Enterprise

Vorteile

This is a really good all around type software which is anchored in the accounting segment of your business. You can have up to thirty users and the administrator can set up restrictions and controls so the staff can only access segments of your data. This is particularly handy when you have staff that need to be able to enter information on inventory but you don't want them to have the access to your business' accounting information as a whole. The root of of the program is for transparency to your bottom line but it goes much further than that. The software is flexible enough that it would be suitable for pretty much any industry a small business would run in to suffice for all of their software tracking needs. Where the real value is for me in on the Inventory Management workflows.

Some of the more exciting features revolve around the rules that can be set up for expediting business processes. Once such rule is around inventory purchasing. If you have your agreements set up with a vendor you can have the software authorize and cut POs directly when your internal rules dictate that the purchase is necessary. This saves a ton of time from having to have someone manually vette and authorized routine low cost consumable type items.

There is now mobility integration as well and although I haven't had a chance to dive into the different apps that are available they look promising for any company that has a field operational workforce.

Nachteile

Some of the features seemed excessive for the level of detail that a smaller business requires. Perhaps this is to hit a more vast market group but it was a bit encumbering to get used to at first.

Vorteile

QB Enterprise is more than we need for the small company. It's fast and efficient. It's straightforward in how things work, so training isn't intensive for new users. It's easy to upgrade from another version of QB and transfer all the company data into it.

Nachteile

It's limited in what can be displayed or used to sort in many of the windows. For example, the vendor screen displays all the invoices and payments, but doesn't display a running balance column. It's difficult to expand columns to display all of the data in a column. It doesn't remember column widths, so I'm continuously having to adjust the column width every time I open a window with data. Data in some windows can't be exported to Excel. For example, I like to export the bank statement reconciliation screen to a spreadsheet with my bank data download where I can sort and subtract to find a discrepancy between two columns instantly. But, there isn't a way to get the data in that window to export or copy. The reconciliation screen also doesn't allow for display of the cash sub-account or the offset account. So, I'm continuously having to open individual transactions to see which is which if they are similar.

Vorteile

Ease of use, and very quick to learn. This version allows up to 10 concurrent users.

The audit trail and stock reports are very user friendly with plenty of filters. Expect a very quick turnaround training new staff and getting them up to speed, as the interface and functionality is hard not to grasp.

Customer service is located in North America. From my experience, after upgrading to the Enterprise version, our account manager usually responded to any inquiry within 24 hours. There is also a toll free line for any technical/database bug issues

In the Canadian version, plugging in to SQL server is the way to go in order to obtain custom reports.

Nachteile

The role centers, although a step up from the Premier version, "handcuff" users to certain roles. When it comes to the general ledger, the "all-or-nothing" functionality doesn't allow the controller to shut off access to certain parts of the financials. Ideally, the controller should be able to define a role center to allow posting/viewing in certain account groups and not to others.

Inability to approve and subsequently lock down POs and SOs. Once a PO/SO gets issued, a user with basic access can always change unit costs and quantities. This hinders the business' scaleability.

The Canadian version no longer allows the user to compress the data file in previous periods. This may be frustrating for companies who rely on lengthy journal entries, as the database file size will exponentially grow.

If you are a job shop (or project-based company), do not expect much in terms of job-cost reporting. The software is limited to populating a customer field when posting an expense. You will have to manually set up jobs as customers and instruct staff to classify expenses under the proper subgroup.

In my experience, the only real noticeable difference between enterprise and premier is the number of concurrent users (5 vs 10).

Vorteile

Love that you get the upgrades and you can update your system. Love that it is user friendly - I was able to figure it out with basic (very basic) accounting knowledge. It's also pretty forgiving in that if you do a transaction the wrong way, you can delete and redo it.

Nachteile

Two things: 1 it doesn't have an easy way to migrate from POS to Quickbooks for inventory. I am hesitant to change over as there doesn't seem to be an easy transition plan for a small business owner and 2 EVERY TIME there is an upgrade - there is an issue with our bank downloads. It's as if it takes a few days or a few weeks for either Quickbooks to notify the banks to update their code or whether it takes awhile for the adjustments to be made. This can be anything from not being able to download or import AT ALL or whether or not your mouse will even click when selecting a bank transaction. As a result, we wait a few weeks before downloading and upgrading to reduce the impact to our bank transactions. We have too many to hand key.

Vorteile

- Easy to use, intuitive interface. Even non accountants will be able to dive in and use the software.

- Powerful features and reporting allows you to really see where your P&Ls are sitting.

- Tons of training and support available from a wide variety of sources.

- Import and Export ability allows you to interface with other software or pull data into other programs for custom reporting.

- Ability to interface with outside programs to sync data automatically.

- Allows for tracking of inventory and placing/receiving purchase orders from vendors.

- Gives a decent audit trail on item/customer activity so you can see what happened with your financials.

Nachteile

- QuickBooks is truly incredible, but their database architecture and some of their restrictions are incredibly dated. For example, they limit customer names, product names and several other fields to 31 characters. In today's more complex market it is extremely easy to have product names that are longer than 31 characters and QuickBooks will not let you enter them. They will tell you to either cut the product off at 31 (which can create duplicate names which is not allowed) or they will tell you to rename the product. Neither is good option for most companies. This becomes very apparent when you have customers with the same name, for example John Smith. QuickBooks will only let you create one of them and prevent the other from getting added. Their solution again is to rename the customer by giving it extra characters like a space at the end, or adding a 1 or a 2. But when you are limited to 31 total characters and your office staff then has to make sure that they select the right customer when working with a record, well you can see where these solutions are not really workable either. The pros of the software certainly outweigh this issue and it is possible to come up with internal naming conventions to fix these issues, still with a company the size of Intuit and software as popular as QuickBooks these issues should have been addressed years ago.