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FROM
QUICKBOOKS
TO CLOUD
FINANCIALS
Why Fast-Growing Companies Leave QuickBooks and
Adopt Cloud Financials to Accelerate Growth
Page 2© NetSuite Inc. 2016
Grab a seat and enjoy.
Read Time: 20 minutes
FROM QUICKBOOKS
TO CLOUD FINANCIALS
Why Fast-Growing Companies Leave QuickBooks and Adopt Cloud
Financials to Accelerate Growth
Introduction
Over the years, QuickBooks has become
the de facto standard financial software for
small businesses, with more than 5 million
businesses using it. QuickBooks is the best
fit for many businesses on day one, but is it
the right choice to enable rapidly growing
businesses to sustain and accelerate growth?
In many instances, QuickBooks is inadequate.
It lacks many of the capabilities that growing
businesses need and provides limited
real-time visibility into essential business
information. Because of QuickBooks’
limitations, companies are often forced to
grow by adding more systems or applications
for specific purposes—which often aren’t
integrated with each other—and may revise
or attempt to automate certain business
processes. This can result in a complex
“applications hairball” that’s rife with manual
tasks and bottlenecks, increases the risks of
errors, can hurt the customer experience, and
can limit growth.
Page 3© NetSuite Inc. 2016
For years NetSuite has worked with growing
businesses in all industries and geographies,
and with thousands of finance and IT
professions who are guiding their companies
through different phases of development.
While these businesses are diverse, their
challenges in dealing with reaching the limits
of QuickBooks are often similar.
Following is a summary of many of the issues
that growing companies using QuickBooks
typically face, and why so many have
decided to move to NetSuite—a modern,
integrated, cloud-based solution that
“Splunk is a growing, global company. We are running on one
application [NetSuite], which allows us to spend our time drilling
down into and analysing data, and maximising performance,
instead of copying and combining data from different sources and
systems. I have no idea how we would do this with QuickBooks and
spreadsheets.” — Doug Harr, CIO, Splunk
enables accelerated business growth. Case
studies and quotes from those who have
adopted NetSuite describe why enterprises
have made this decision, how they have
implemented NetSuite, and the benefits they
are experiencing.
If you lead a growing business that is currently
using QuickBooks, and are concerned
that the pain and complexity imposed by
QuickBooks is limiting your business, read on
to discover that you are not alone—and that
there is a better way.
Page 4© NetSuite Inc. 2016
TABLE OF CONTENTS
6
Case Study:
DC Dental, A
Wholesale
Distribution
Company
Page 18
2
When is it Time
to Consider
Cloud Financial
Management?
Page 10
1
Five Triggers That
Indicate QuickBooks
is Failing Our
Business
Page 5
3
Best Practices for
Transitioning Away
from QuickBooks
Page 12
5
Case Study:
Aidapack Services,
A Manufacturing
Company
Page 16
4
Case Study:
Tandemseven,
A Software Company
Page 14
7
Case Study:
Imagine Learning,
an Educational
Software Company
Page 20
Page 5© NetSuite Inc. 2016
Five triggers that indicate
QuickBooks is failing
our business
Running complex business processes across
areas such as financial management, revenue
management, fixed assets, procurement,
order management, billing, inventory
management, services delivery and more
is not possible with QuickBooks, which is a
simple general ledger solution that does not
support your entire company and
business processes.
Moving to a single, integrated cloud-based
system is a better solution (as the quotes
that follow indicate), but companies may not
recognise signs that QuickBooks is limiting
the business due to manual processes, errors,
and lack of real-time data and visibility to
make important business decisions. Here are
five triggers that serve as red flags:
An integrated cloud-
based system overcomes
business limitations both
familiar and still unknown.
1
It’s difficult to find out what’s really
happening across the business
in real-time
QuickBooks was designed for an era when
companies could wait until the end of the
month to get the data they need. That’s not
the case today—consolidated views and
up-to-the minute reporting can make the
difference between thriving and
barely surviving.
Small teams at a single location can
sometimes get by without a fully automated
system because they are close enough to the
action. But as soon as a company expands or
takes on new locations, the information that
has to be exchanged quickly increases out
of control.
In addition, data is buried in QuickBooks, as
well as in other places like the sales force
automation system, inventory management
applications, and customer service systems.
Page 6© NetSuite Inc. 2016
Here are several symptoms that your
QuickBooks management reporting isn’t
meeting the organisation’s needs:
• Team members waste time playing
“Hunt for the Spreadsheet.”
Growing businesses that run QuickBooks
inevitably reach a stage where employees
rely on spreadsheets to fill the information
gap, since data lives in so many disparate
systems. People end up spending
more time hunting for data than actually
analysing it and making decisions.
• Management reports are error prone
and out of date.
As businesses grow, they have to use
multiple manual processes to augment
QuickBooks. They may rekey sales orders
into QuickBooks, reconcile customer
information manually, or manage SKUs
across multiple systems. Errors in reporting
are almost inevitable and decisions
are often made based on out-of-date,
incomplete, or inaccurate information.
• QuickBooks reports take too long to run.
With QuickBooks, it’s easy to hit performance
bottlenecks, but solving them is more
difficult. When reports take too long to run
in QuickBooks, it’s a sign that the amount of
data the business has amassed has grown
too large for QuickBooks to report on it.
• It is impossible to get a comprehensive
view across all business units.
As businesses grow over time, they usually
have one set of financials in QuickBooks,
while financial data for newer geographic
locations or divisions ends up in other
installations or financial products. Moving
data between systems is usually manual
and can result in errors. In addition,
management teams lack insight into how
the business is performing holistically.
2
Manual processes are used to entering
and reconciling data across systems
In today’s networked world, it is frustrating
for suppliers, customers, and business
managers to wait for answers while
information is manually transferred between
systems. Incompatibilities between
systems and imperfect integration have left
employees copying data between systems.
These symptoms are a sign that it may be
time for your business to transition away
from QuickBooks:
• Sales orders, order entry, and invoicing
are paper-based.
Your employees may spend hours every
week manually entering order information
into the invoicing system, while someone
else copies invoice details into a sales
compensation spreadsheet. Data entry
errors lead to invoice queries that must
be resolved, and month-end crises are
on the rise.
Page 7© NetSuite Inc. 2016
• Incorrect customer information results
in customer dissatisfaction.
When some customer information resides
in sales spreadsheets, while some is
stored in QuickBooks and other systems,
there is no way to know which data is
most current, accurate, and reliable.
Bills may be sent to the wrong customer
address or contact information may be out
of date.
• Approval processes are slow
and disjointed.
When people have to pass paperwork
around or match it up to information
stored in separate software applications,
simple processes like expense claim
approvals or routine contract signatures
can take days or weeks to finalise.
Employees may spend time hunting for
lost documents or late approvals, since
no single record exists with the stage that
processes have reached.
• Financial consolidation takes ages.
Cross-posting transactional data between
systems is time-consuming and the
finance team works late every month to
consolidate financial reports. Yet as hard
as they work, managers are still unhappy
because their weekly and monthly reports
are delayed.
• Sales forecasting and budgeting
processes rely on guesswork, rather
than facts.
Since it is difficult to get historic
information in the right format in a timely
manner to do trend analysis, employees
put figures in spreadsheets based on
guesswork. Even though the actual data
exists somewhere, it’s too hard to find
and extract.
3
Sales are lost because employees
can’t get information where it is needed
fast enough
Ecommerce has set the standard for
customers these days. They expect to see
real-time stock levels, confirm delivery
schedules at the same time they place
their order, and call customer service
minutes after placing an order to add an
extra line item. But this level of real-time
responsiveness is impossible with limited
desktop systems like QuickBooks. Growing
businesses can’t expect to creak along,
while others fly at on-demand speed.
Here are some warning signs that reliance
on QuickBooks may be costing you sales:
• Customer service fails because agents
don’t have up-to-date information.
When customers call to place orders or
check order status, it is frustrating to be
kept on hold or called back with an answer.
This often happens when information has
to be retrieved from someone in another
department or location. Customers may
not file direct complaints, but churn and
abandonment figures rise as customers
find other vendors that don’t waste
their time.
Page 8© NetSuite Inc. 2016
• Stock levels are never where customers
want them.
Common symptoms are running out of
stock at some outlets, while the same SKU
sits on shelves elsewhere. It is impossible
to pre-empt outages because it takes too
long to update and consolidate point-of-
sales data. In addition, real-time access
to trend analysis by SKU and outlet isn’t
available.
• Customers and vendors don’t have
access to self-service information on
your website.
Customers have asked for the ability to
look up stock, place orders, and check
status on the web, but you can’t justify the
required investment of time and money.
In addition, your current business system
wasn’t designed to operate 24x7 and it’s
not clear it could be kept secure against
online threats.
• Customer information can’t be easily
collected or filtered for sales campaigns.
Even though the company is sending out
regular email campaigns, the sales team
has no information about responses when
they call prospects, and conversion rates
are low. Unsold inventory is a problem
because there just isn’t time to organise a
sales push or mailshot to clear the
excess products.
4
More accounting is done outside
QuickBooks than in it
QuickBooks was designed to automate a
limited set of core accounting functions. As a
result, it limits how companies run operations.
As businesses grow, companies must
adapt their processes to fit the application,
rather than vice versa. It is easy to run out
of headroom when companies have more
customers, vendors, or inventory items than
QuickBooks can practically handle.
The key to business growth and success is
greater transaction volumes and speed, but
it’s hard for QuickBooks to handle this kind
of pressure. Full audit trails, rich business
planning and reporting, or automated
processes mean having to add systems
and constantly engineer short-term quick
fixes. QuickBooks simply can’t handle
stronger financial controls, better SKU
management, or support for more complex
financial processes, such as recurring billing
and invoicing.
Here are some signals that your organisation
has reached QuickBooks’ limits:
• Finance staff members must use several
different applications to do their jobs.
As the firm’s finance needs have become
more complex, the gaps have been filled
with other software packages, Excel
spreadsheets, or homegrown applications.
Page 9© NetSuite Inc. 2016
For more information on how NetSuite helps organisations accelerate growth, visit
http://www.netsuite.com.au/portal/au/customer-testimonials.shtml#quickbooks.
The finance staff must pay attention to as
many as half a dozen different applications
and the risk exists for errors, especially
when relying on custom-built spreadsheets
and software.
• It is too difficult to add new sales
channels, product lines, or locations.
Every time there is a change in the
business, staff must work overtime or
be added to figure out workarounds to
accommodate it. QuickBooks doesn’t have
built-in support for everyday functions
like making simple changes across
matrix SKUs, adding new sales tax rates,
or handing bills of materials or kits and
assemblies for manufacturing inventory.
Processes that cry out for automation have
to be done manually or from spreadsheets.
• It is impossible to adapt quickly enough
to changing business conditions.
Your company may want to modernise
operations or react to market opportunities
and competitive threats. However,
QuickBooks’ lack of advanced and
specialised functions is holding you
back. Specialised or industry-specific
requirements like contracts and
prepayments, manufacturing inventory,
or warehouse distribution can only be
handled in standalone external packages
that have little or no integration back
to QuickBooks.
5
The business spends too much time
worrying about technology instead of
focusing on business results
Every time a company adds a new layer of
business software, the underlying systems
infrastructure becomes more complicated
and inflexible. Earlier investments in hardware
and software are costly to maintain and fail to
keep pace with technology innovation.
The latest generation of cloud-based,
on-demand business systems is built from
the ground up for flexibility and agility,
without the overhead of maintaining the
underlying technology layer. These products
are designed to stay up-to-date with the
state of the art in business automation,
giving companies the tools needed to stay
ahead of the competition and to seize new
opportunities as they emerge.
Page 10© NetSuite Inc. 2016
When is it time to consider cloud
financial management?
Here are a few signs that indicate that a
business is ready to switch from QuickBooks
to a cloud-based, on-demand service
like NetSuite:
• System upgrades and improvements are
pushed to the back burner, due to the
associated cost and disruption.
All too often, companies realise that their
current business systems fall short of what
the organisation desperately needs to
accelerate growth, but no one can face the
thought of the disruption and expense of
upgrading to the latest versions or adding
more people. The business may also be
falling behind on giving employees and
customers the ability to access information
over the web and from mobile devices
because there aren’t adequate internal
resources to implement and manage the
required technology.
• Backups, server failures, malware, and
data security are constant worries.
It is a major business risk when financial
data is concentrated in a single QuickBooks
Stay connected to
your data anytime,
anywhere.
system, while ancillary information is
scattered around in other software systems
and spreadsheets. Business continuity
would be disrupted if one of the machines
suffered a serious failure or there were a fire
or natural disaster. The company is overly
reliant on fallible backup routines. Other
major concerns are malware attacks and data
theft. A sobering question is how quickly the
business could recover if a server went down
and the company had to revert to a backup.
• A major deterrent to investing in new
technology is the time required to see a
return on investment.
Funding new applications or technology
upgrades requires significant working
capital, but it can be many months before
the organisation sees a return. Even
then, there is no guarantee that the new
technology will deliver the expected results.
When this is the situation, it often feels safer
to just muddle along with existing systems
and processes, even if everyone recognises
that they are holding the organisation back.
William Herrick
VP of Finance, Glassdoor
“We wanted to invest in
streamlining operations and growing
our business, not expanding our IT
infrastructure.
By replacing QuickBooks and
other peripheral systems with
NetSuite’s cloud ERP applications,
we increased our transaction volume
5x without adding staff, and reduced
our monthly close cycle from twenty
days to five days.”
Page 12© NetSuite Inc. 2016
Best practices for transitioning away
from QuickBooks
As small businesses grow, it is clear that
alternatives to QuickBooks are needed, but
the path forward isn’t always well-defined.
Here are several best practices that can
smooth the path to a better solution:
• Adopt a cloud-based solution.
Cloud momentum is accelerating and
the cloud is becoming ubiquitous in the
consumer and business worlds. The cloud
represents a tremendous opportunity
because it enables business leaders to
deliver outcomes faster, cheaper, and with
fewer resources. Cloud solutions are now
the de facto standard
for doing business:
– Gartner reports that the cloud is the
number one technology affecting IT.
– Forrester has found that over 50% of
companies plan to increase their cloud
spending over the next 12 months.
– In 2013, the Cloud Accounting Institute
conducted a national survey of
Let the transition be
your opportunity, not
your obstacle.
financial and accounting professionals.
It revealed that three quarters of
respondents currently use cloud solutions,
technologies, or Software-as-a-Service,
and 82% intend to use cloud or Software-
as-a-Service for accounting solutions in
the future.
– A study by the Institute of Management
Accountants (IMA) found that the most
critical challenges faced by accounting
and finance teams today are integrating
disparate business systems, adding
business intelligence software, and
replacing siloed business systems with a
single business suite and database.
Growing companies typically have limited
IT resources. Cloud solutions eliminate the
need to maintain on-premises hardware and
software. Cloud systems also enable mobility,
since workers can access the application from
any computer or device with Internet access
and a web browser. Cloud solutions are also
highly scalable, enabling growing companies
to accelerate growth without needing to
invest capital in technology or add people.
Page 13© NetSuite Inc. 2016
• Consider a suite.
Rather than perpetuating the “applications
hairball” when replacing QuickBooks, many
companies decide to adopt an integrated
product suite. A suite platform eliminates the
need to piece together different solutions. An
integrated suite makes managing data much
easier. Dual data entry is eliminated, since all
information is stored in a single, centralised
data repository. A suite solution enables
companies to start with the basics and add
complexity over time.
• Take time to understand the business
needs and key business requirements.
Before selecting a solution to replace
QuickBooks, be sure the organisation
understands its business and key business
processes. Growing companies often believe
they are saving money by not spending the
time needed to understand and capture the
business requirements. Unfortunately, this
can lead to building the wrong solution.
• Hire a partner to help with data migration.
Regardless of what platform a company
adopts, it can be helpful to find a suitable
partner who can help migrate data and
perform checks and balances before
the system goes live. This approach will
ensure that the transition to a new system is
consistent with business processes
and objectives.
Conclusion
If your growing enterprise is experiencing any
of the pains discussed where QuickBooks
may be limiting your business growth, it may
be time to consider the cloud-based products
and services that NetSuite offers. Moving your
company to NetSuite’s integrated suite of
cloud-based solutions allows for more efficient
and effective business operations—essential
for growing an organisation and enabling
employees to react to client and organisational
needs in real time.
Case Studies
Four growing businesses in different
geographies and industries—TandemSeven,
AidaPak Services, DC Dental, and Imagine
Learning—shared case studies, summarised
herein, discussing why their organisations
transitioned away from QuickBooks, why they
selected NetSuite, and how NetSuite has
helped improve their effectiveness
and efficiency.
Your optimal
business solution
rests in the clouds.
Page 14© NetSuite Inc. 2016
TANDEMSEVEN,
A SOFTWARE COMPANY
Case Study
TandemSeven
TandemSeven is a user experience company
that provides design and development
services and market-leading user experience
products. The firm was founded in 2003
and its 75 employees work in the Boston
headquarters, as well as in offices in New
York, Chicago, and London.
Before adopting NetSuite, TandemSeven’s
accounting and finance teams used a single
instance of QuickBooks. Challenges for the
business included:
• Access to financial information.
It was very difficult for the team to generate
financial reports in a timely manner.
• QuickBooks’ inability to handle software
revenue recognition rules.
The result was cumbersome manual
processes.
• Manual integration with the OpenAir
project management system.
This process was error prone, time
consuming, and created data reliability
and availability problems.
A cloud-based alternative to QuickBooks was
a natural choice for TandemSeven, due to
the virtual nature of the company. NetSuite’s
cloud solution enabled TandemSeven
to integrate Salesforce.com and offered
seamless integration with the OpenAir
project management system. The integrated,
complete solution reduced cycle times,
created efficiencies, and provided more
reliable staff resource planning.
Since implementing NetSuite, TandemSeven
has seen improvements in their financial
processes, as well as broader
business benefits:
• Information is accessible in real-time, as
soon as it’s entered into the system.
Teams are no longer reliant on multiple sets
of Excel spreadsheets produced centrally
and dispersed in the organisation. With real-
time information, it is possible to analyse
projects and take action immediately.
Page 15© NetSuite Inc. 2016
“Our decision came down to two solutions: NetSuite and a cloud-
based accounting system that would require other integrations.
The choice was clear, since we wanted to avoid multiple points
of integration.” — Jason Cunio, VP of Finance, TandemSeven
• Employees can access the system
and the data in it anywhere, anytime.
As a professional services firm,
TandemSeven has found NetSuite’s cloud-
based solution very helpful. It enables a
broad spectrum of people to do their jobs
anywhere; all they need is an Internet
connection.
• Better budget information and
reporting supports business growth.
During a period of strong growth,
TandemSeven made investments in internal
infrastructure to support additional long-term
growth. The finance side of the company
became a focus, including budgeting,
forecasting, and comparing budget numbers
to actuals. With NetSuite, top management
can easily access budget to actual reporting
and trending. This is an important resource
for monthly shareholder meetings.
Page 16© NetSuite Inc. 2016
AIDAPAK SERVICES,
A MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Case Study
AidaPak Services
AidaPak Services is a custom pharmaceutical
repackager that serves hospitals, medical
clinics, and long-term health care facilities.
The company, founded in 2009, is
headquartered in Vancouver, Washington,
and has 30 employees.
When the company began, it started with
simple manual processes and tracked
information in Excel spreadsheets, Word
documents, and SharePoint. Over time,
AidaPak Services implemented Microsoft
Dynamics for inventory management,
QuickBooks for financials, and numerous
applications for creating labels. The result was
great inefficiency:
• The applications hairball was managed
in a manual, “swivel chair”-type interface
environment with little integration.
• With data entry occurring across multiple
systems, error rates ranged between 15%
and 20%. It was impossible to
prevent mistakes.
• There were employees whose sole job
was data checking to make sure what was
packaged was accurate.
All these factors motivated AidaPak Services
to look for an alternative to QuickBooks.
As AidaPak Services considered different
solutions, the team knew they wanted a
product that would not require significant
in-house resources to manage the
technology infrastructure. The goal was to
maintain the new system without reliance on
expensive, third-party consulting services.
The company’s decision to implement
NetSuite has generated significant benefits,
both for finance and the company as
a whole:
• The integration between NetSuite and the
inventory management system allows the
company to close its books much sooner.
The reconciliation work that used to be
required between Microsoft Dynamics and
QuickBooks has been eliminated.
Page 17© NetSuite Inc. 2016
“When we moved to NetSuite’s integrated cloud-based solution, we
streamlined our processes and cut costs by close to 50 percent.”
— Sean Kerr, VP of Operations, AidaPak Services LLC
• Better manufacturing information is
available internally and for customers.
AidaPak Services’ sales team is now
able to access manufacturing information
and customers can view data directly
through the customer portal. NetSuite
has dramatically changed the nature of
communication across the organisation and
with customers.
• Improved integration has reduced costs.
Moving to NetSuite has allowed AidaPak
Services to streamline its processes and
dramatically reduce costs.
Page 18© NetSuite Inc. 2016
DC DENTAL, A WHOLESALE
DISTRIBUTION COMPANY
Case Study
DC Dental
DC Dental is a distributor of dental products
with offices in Maryland, New York, and Ohio.
The company was established in 2002 and
is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland.
Between 2007 and 2013, DC Dental’s
revenue grew from $10 million to $45 million.
For the past three years, it has been named
an Inc. 500|5000® company and in 2003, DC
Dental was a Future50 Award winner. The
company has 100 employees, 8,000 clients,
and 20,000 products.
As DC Dental grew, the company began to
encounter problems with QuickBooks:
• The 30-user limit on
QuickBooks Enterprise.
As a short-term fix, DC Dental eased the
problem by creating a second QuickBooks
file for the same tax ID and entity.
• Performance issues due to large file sizes.
As DC Dental’s QuickBooks file reached
three gigabytes, it began to encounter
performance problems. According
to QuickBooks customer service, the
recommended file size should never exceed
one gigabyte. Despite trying to optimise the
system, DC Dentals’ QuickBooks system
repeatedly froze and crashed.
• Functionality was inadequate.
Although QuickBooks was sufficient
when DC Dental first adopted it, over time
the company needed more advanced
functionality. QuickBooks had no way to
accommodate user controls, integration with
third-party platforms, or basic customisations
to handle the company’s workflow.
DC Dental recognised that it needed to
purchase a midmarket ERP system to address
these issues and support additional growth.
The team debated between an on-premise
solution that would require additional
hardware and people to manage and a cloud
solution that would eliminate those needs.
The debate was short-lived, since moving
to the cloud seemed like an obvious choice.
The team also wanted an integrated suite,
because having everything on one platform
made managing data much easier. After
evaluating around 30 different systems,
DC Dental settled on NetSuite. There were
several deciding factors:
Page 19© NetSuite Inc. 2016
• A modern look and feel.
Many of the other products that DC Dental
considered had a dated feel. According
to CFO Howie Friedman, several systems
looked like they had been written in the
1980s. As a young company, DC Dental
wanted a solution that had a modern look
and feel on the front and back ends.
• Robust reporting.
NetSuite’s integrated reporting was
appealing to DC Dental. Now anyone in
the company can run reports based on the
information they are allowed to access, and
employees can build reports on their own.
• Cost-effective cloud solution.
After NetSuite, Great Plains was the runner
up for DC Dental. However, the upfront
costs of implementing Great Plains were
very high—on the order of $500,000. Also,
despite this cost, Great Plains isn’t a true
cloud-based solution. NetSuite was the clear
winner based on its architecture and
required investment.
DC Dental worked with a partner in
implementing NetSuite, which made the
implementation very smooth. The team
“Overall, NetSuite is head and shoulders above QuickBooks. Every
part of our company is better after switching to NetSuite and cloud-
based software.” — Howie Friedman, CFO, DC Dental
was impressed with NetSuite’s flexibility.
The system was implemented in a way
that conformed to the company’s business
requirements, rather than NetSuite dictating
how the company’s workflows would have
to change. The company has seen many
benefits after moving away from QuickBooks
and implementing NetSuite:
• Greater data accuracy and data access.
With NetSuite, DC Dental has greater
confidence that what is posted to its
financials is accurate. In addition, it is
possible to easily create alerts that go
to all appropriate parties. Using NetSuite
alerts has improved the company’s financial
reporting processes.
• Advanced reporting.
Financial reports can be run quickly. At the
CFO level, that adds significant value. Rather
than struggling with the system, time can be
spent on other more strategic activities.
• Fast, easy data imports.
Imports are done in seconds rather than
hours. With QuickBooks, imports were a
full-time job for one to two people. Those
processes have been reduced to about one
hour a week.
Page 20© NetSuite Inc. 2016
IMAGINE LEARNING,
AN EDUCATIONAL
SOFTWARE COMPANY
Case Study
Imagine Learning
Imagine Learning is a fast-growing
educational software company in Provo, Utah.
Between 2010 and 2013, the organisation
experienced revenue growth from $16 million
to $46 million and employee growth from 80
to 250. More than 300,000 people
worldwide benefit from Imagine Learning’s
educational software.
One of the company’s primary challenges
with QuickBooks was its lack of support for
software revenue recognition rules. As a
band-aid fix, the company used spreadsheets
that quickly became massive. A limitation
faced by Imagine Learning was the inability to
customise QuickBooks reports.
A cloud solution was attractive because
employees would be able to access it from
any computer or device. In addition, a suite
solution made sense because Imagine
Learning wanted everything in one place.
The team was impressed by NetSuite. They
liked the user controls which provide each
employee with a role that defines access to
different data and reports. Those roles are
easily edited and it is easy to add new roles.
Imagine Learning implemented NetSuite in
mid-2013 and the company has seen
several benefits:
Page 21© NetSuite Inc. 2016
• Easy reporting.
It is simple to generate reports in
NetSuite that can then be sent to the
management team.
• Fast data imports.
With QuickBooks, it could take hours
to enter journal entries manually. Now
CSV files with data can be imported into
NetSuite in minutes.
“The number one reason we implemented NetSuite was to handle
software revenue recognition. Software revenue recognition
rules can get complex. With QuickBooks, we maintained massive
spreadsheets which were too unwieldy.”
— David Southwick, Manager, Tax and Accounting, Imagine Learning
• Efficient month-end close processes.
Now the CFO approves journal entries in the
NetSuite system, the information is posted,
and month-end close is completed. This
process has saved significant time.
Chat with an expert.
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FROM QUICKBOOKS TO CLOUD FINANCIALS
Over the years, QuickBooks has become the de facto standard financial software for small businesses, with more than 5 million businesses using it. QuickBooks is the best fit for many businesses on day one, but is it the right choice to enable rapidly growing businesses to sustain and accelerate growth?