My small business will be switching from Peachtree to
Thank you
What are the pot holes to watch for when Switching from Peachtree to Quickbooks Enterprise?
Answers
Have a concrete understanding of how to use the Item List, and how to maintain it. Items look simple, but in fact they are the behind the scenes workhorses. QuickBooks is not a database, it is a flat file. Maintaining flat file integrity will be your core worry. If you fail to have a Certified Pro Advisor relationship or have one or two on staff, you will not have a successful ongoing relationship with QuickBooks.
I agree with Valerie as to the importance of having strong knowledge of the item list, but there are so many problems with QuickBooks that I would suggest, if your company has the money, you buy a software package which actually has some financial controls built into it. Quickbooks is not a program I would suggest for any seasoned financial executive, let alone the small business person who is going to have a bookkeeper input all their data to generate financial "information". The data is extremely easy to manipulate and it is too easy for non financial people to add inventory items, accounts, vendors and customers to the various lists that exist in QB. QB is an
The biggest problem with QB is the fact that it is so easy to use that business owners assign maintenance and posting responsibilities to bookkeepers who do not understand the implications of their decisions. It is so easy to make mistakes that have implications months down the road. Buy another product.
This is an interesting question, Emily; I look forward to seeing more answers. I agree with Daniel about the core flaws in QuickBooks. Real accountants don't buy programs where you can just delete a GL entry with no audit trail. (Then again, that's one of the favorite features for small accountants and very small business owners.)
The not-so-great features of QuickBooks don't stop there; for me, the way credits work, the reconciling, and the difficulty of finding the entry that causes me to this day to show that I owe NSTAR $1.79. A colleague loathes and execrates the program because of the way Intuit dings him for more money. An upgrade here, usage fee there, pretty soon it's real money.
That said, we all use it. What can you say.
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There is an Audit Trail - It's under the Reporting Functions and is available with Professional and Enterprise.
Emily,
I have used two other financial software programs in the past and Quickbooks is my favorite. Yes it is very simple but that's it's purpose. We have ten locations we are running off of it, with thousands of transactions being imported from a POS system. There is also an Audit Report you can run if you are going to allow other users so you can track who is doing what. I had a girl that didn't know what she was doing; much to the other's points, and when she lied about deleting Journal Entries; I ran the report and showed her.
You say "small business" so that would be my only caveat - I do not think Quickbooks would be great for very large companies with multi-users due to the concerns mentioned above. But I have two users: Myself and my accounting assistant and he is very intelligent and can handle entering payables, paying payroll, bi-weekly payroll taxes, and entering deposits.
I think it may depend on how complex your business is; but I would not be afraid or suggest other software if you have done your homework and understand the functionality of QBs. I'd be happy to give you more information if you are interested.
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