Charged with sustaining growth, many growing businesses focus on hiring new employees and finding new office space but overlook a critical piece – their accounting software.
Many smaller-growth businesses built their business with QuickBooks and used it successfully for years. But once companies’ business processes become more complex, or they expand into multiple entities or operate globally, QuickBooks no longer provides the key features they need.
So what should a growing company plan to spend when upgrading to a more robust ERP solution like Microsoft Dynamics?
Investing In The Right ERP Software Solution
While most businesses are spending between $1,000 and $1,500 annually for QuickBooks, they don’t take into account all the other tools they need to handle their financial and accounting tasks.
Microsoft Dynamics not only offers your business more robust and diverse features, such as reporting and analytics, it also offers significant time savings through automation.
When implementing an ERP solution, a company with an average of 10 users can expect to spend $50,000 for the solution, including professional services such as discovery, configuration and training.
Before your company makes an investment in an ERP solution, you should consider if your business would benefit from solutions to any of the following problems.
You Need To Consolidate Your Financial Reporting
Managing financial reporting for multiple companies can be nearly impossible in QuickBooks. Many companies use their accounting firm or solutions such as Excel to handle their financial reporting, adding time and expense to the process.
ERP, with its comprehensive access to data, allows your business to pull the relevant reports you need without the lag time or added expense of working with Excel or an outside service.
Your Business Operates Globally
Once a company begins operating internationally, it’s critical that its accounting software solution can handle multiple currencies. In addition, the ability to perform foreign currency translations is becoming a requirement, and having the ability to perform within the ERP provides accuracy and efficiency.
ERP software solutions not only allow your company to manage multiple currencies across the organization, they also provide audit trails that make it easier to follow user actions, restrict access and easily track any changes that are made. Entry-level solutions like QuickBooks offer minor security features, not the comprehensive audit support features of an ERP platform.
You Have A Variety Of Repetitive Tasks
Most accounting departments spend a significant amount of time with repetitive tasks. Automating those recurring banking tasks – wire transfers and electronic fund transfers are two simple examples – saves time, freeing up your employees to focus on tasks that offer more value to the business.
You’re Managing A Lot Of Inventory
For organizations that sell products rather than services, moving from QuickBooks to an ERP software solution can transform their inventory management. The ability to track lots and serial numbers becomes seamless as does the ability to perform inventory ranking and item classing.
Organizations also realize more efficiency when using ERP because the system can pull orders directly from Amazon and populate them into Microsoft Dynamics without the need for duplicate manual entry, saving time and speeding up the order-fulfillment process.
Higher-level functions such as demand planning, tracking sales trends, seasonality and multiple pricing for customers that required either manual tracking or a third-party system are all integrated into an ERP solution.
Ready To Upgrade Your ERP Solution?
If you’re ready to upgrade your accounting software solution, take the time to talk with a professional business software consultant who can help ensure a successful project.
Admiral Consulting Group offers free business software consultations to help growing organizations find the right solutions for their financial and accounting needs.
Schedule your consultation today to learn more about upgrading to an ERP solution.
