At Daston, we understand that running a business is time-consuming. When companies add in the layer of balancing their books while meeting government financial reporting compliance and regulations, they need help. Often, they turn to QuickBooks due to the software’s ease-of-use and affordability. However, as businesses grow, they soon find gaps in inventory, warehouse, workforce, or production management. Their first response is to begin filling gaps, but doing so creates extra work and decreases efficiency.
Here are some indicative signs that your business requires more functionality than a bookkeeping system such as QuickBooks offers, and that an integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution may be the answer.
- Redundant Data
Perhaps you have found that the customers you have stored in QuickBooks for bookkeeping also exist in your CRM and whatever application or spreadsheet you use to capture orders for your business. You may run into situations where the master file used in QuickBooks is not the same file that defines your product catalogue and drives operations. If your data is scattered between filing cabinets, offline spreadsheets, and applications, and you are manually transferring data from QuickBooks to other applications, you could be introducing errors or inconsistencies.
- Wasting Time
Data scattered among spreadsheets, applications, and filing cabinets leads to more time spent exchanging reports and waiting for data. If you are unable to easily find the necessary information, you may be wasting time working on manual tasks that could be automated. If hours of your day are spent compiling scattered data, there is a chance that uninformed decisions are sending your business efforts in the wrong direction.
- Inaccurate Data
If your financial and operational data is not synchronized, conflicting information can arise, leading you to second-guess both the information and the decision-making around that data. This misalignment can lead to more wasted time in the form of reconciling, replacing, and correcting data. Doing so often creates even more spreadsheets, a noteworthy sign that you need a complete and integrated solution that better suits your needs.
- Not Meeting Customer Demand
If your inventory levels are rising but you are unable to meet customer demand in a timely manner, it is time to graduate from QuickBooks to a solution that can help you better forecast demand, lean inventory, and generate product through integrating financial and operational data.
- Global Expansion
The Internet has helped level the playing field for small businesses that wish to establish a global presence. A new level of complexity is introduced upon global expansion, and this complexity requires a well-integrated solution that can accomplish more than online versions of QuickBooks.
ERP for Growing Businesses
If your business is experiencing any of the above issues, an ERP may be the solution for you. ERP refers to software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business operations through an integrated suite of modules that provides a system of records for your business regarding operations and transactions.
There are many affordable ERP solutions in today’s marketplace, and the barriers that previously prevented implementation–such as lack of capital and lack of technical expertise–have been eliminated with cloud infrastructure, particularly those offered as software as a service (SaaS). At Daston, our SaaS solutions enable management of both accounts and operations without incurring the cost of building out a data center, hiring dedicated IT staff, or consuming unnecessary capital.
Learn how your company could benefit by graduating from QuickBooks to an integrated ERP solution such as Daston’s GovCon Essentials ERP. Contact us today for a free consultation.