What to do when you Outgrow QuickBooks

QuickBooks is the most popular accounting system in the world with a reported 2.4 to 4.6 million users, depending upon the source. For the money, QuickBooks provides a great value and plenty of features to meet the needs of a wide variety of businesses. Current QuickBooks customers include not-for profit, contractors, service companies, manufacturers, law firms, CPA firms, retail point of sale companies, and hundreds of other types of companies. QuickBooks customers also include small, medium, and even larger customers with more than $100 million in revenue. Today millions of companies are very satisfied with QuickBooks.

While QuickBooks has merit, the product falls well short in terms of features and performance. Based on a review of 3,595 features, QuickBooks Premier ranks dead last behind 24 other popular products.

When it comes to performance, the QuickBooks Premier runs atop a database that does not scale very high. According to Intuit, QuickBooks can theoretically handle up to billion transactions, and they claim that the maximum number of transactions is limited more by your computer's hard disk space and memory than by QuickBooks. Intuit also reports that each list in QuickBooks has a maximum number of items it can contain, as shown in the following table:

Given these high transaction limitations, Intuit goes on to admit that there are other practical limitations as follows:

Given this information, it is difficult to determine exactly where to draw the line – when does a company actually outgrow QuickBooks? Consider these options:

• Revenue - Revenue is not necessarily the best way to estimate this limit because there is a big difference between selling big ticket items compared to small ticket items. For example a company may sell 20 airplanes for $20 million each, while another company may sell 200,000 Chia pets for $20 each. In this example, QuickBooks will easily handle the needs of the $400 million company, but not the $4 million company.

• Employees - It is common to estimate QuickBooks’ limitations based on number of employees, but the number of employees can vary widely from one industry to another.

• Transactions – Transaction volume is probably the best way to estimate limits, but all transactions are not created equal. For example one invoice might list 1 item while another invoice lists 50 items. Still another invoice might list assembled items. The more complex invoices, orders, checks, bills, etc. affect the performance of QuickBooks more severally.

It is possible for companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of employees to use QuickBooks successfully, and it is also possible that a company with $100,000 in revenue and just one employee cannot use QuickBooks.

Carlton’s Measure – In my opinion QuickBooks is the Yugo of the accounting software industry and any company that can afford to purchase a more powerful solution should purchase a more powerful solution. Ask yourself, do you drive a Yugo or an equivalent low end automobile? Why or why not? Perhaps you like more power in your automobile? Perhaps you want more features in your automobile? Perhaps you want an automobile that is more dependable? Why would not these same criteria apply to your accounting system?

• In the same way that a V8 engine provides better performance in your automobile, a faster database provides better performance in your automobile.

• In the same way that an automatic transmission, anti-lock brakes, and air bags represent features that you want in your automobile, your accounting system can provide hundreds of additional features such as support for multiple warehouses, bar coding, matrix pricing, customer specific pricing, e-mail billing, event triggered reporting, multi-language and multi-currency support, commission splitting, multi-company consolidations…and the list goes on.

• In the same way that certain automobiles are considered safer and more dependable than others, the same is true for accounting systems. Today many systems are well-proven and widely-deployed while others are unproven with small customer base. Some accounting systems are backed by companies with a strong financial backing while others are supported by companies who have trouble making payroll. Some accounting systems have secure future outlooks while others appear to have an uncertain future. More than any other top product, QuickBooks data has a greater propensity to become inaccurate because the product’s design makes it easier to create duplicate account numbers, vendors, customers, and employees on the fly.

In conclusion, I don’t recommend that you drive a Yugo, and I don’t recommend that you bet your company on a Yugo-caliber accounting system. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the second leading cause of business failure is an inadequate accounting system.

Squeezing The Last few Drops out of QuickBooks

Once you have determined that you have outgrown QuickBooks, there are a few measures that you can take to temporarily relieve the problem until a new accounting system can be selected and implemented. These measures are listed below:

• Faster Computer
• More RAM
• Defragment Your Hard Drive
• Turn off Audit Trail
• Run QuickBooks in single user mode (if necessary run in single user mode during certain times of the day)
• Archive & Purge QuickBooks Data, using the built in File Utilities commands
• Turn off certain QuickBooks preferences such as alerts, reminders, auto refresh reports, check for duplicate numbers, etc to gain a little more speed .
• Make sure Windows settings favor the application
• Save older copies of QuickBooks data on hard drive so you can access them
• Install Faster Cards, Hubs and cables (installed properly)
• Upgrade to QuickBooks Enterprise (faster but not a true networking product)

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