Western Computer works with many businesses that started on QuickBooks for basic accounting and are now growing quickly, leaving them with some serious challenges. While QuickBooks is a wonderful accounting solution for startups and small businesses, it’s a natural progression to eventually need more capabilities and control with your financial management as you grow. Dynamics 365 Business Central is proving to be an excellent choice for SMBs ready to get to the next level.
Should your business upgrade from QuickBooks to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?
The answer will vary depending on lots of variables but, as a former QuickBooks user and consultant and now a Dynamics 365 Solution Architect and Consultant, I do have some insight to share that might help. When we demonstrate Business Central to QuickBooks users, there so many benefits and features that literally cause jaws to drop, but I’ve picked my favorite five to share with you today.
1. GAAP Compliance and Audit Controls
Let’s start with the big one. Don’t get me wrong, everything below is also very important but protecting your business from fraud and loss is typically priority #1. QuickBooks is not GAAP-Compliant. Dynamics 365 Business Central is GAAP compliant.
With QuickBooks, you can change posted transactions easily (even after reconciling) with limited controls. D365 Business Central is fully auditable with record tracking going on at all times in the background. If you want to prevent fraud and know the why, what, where, when, and who of everything that happens with your financials, Business Central is your choice. This is just part of a wide range of advanced security improvements you get with Dynamics 365 Business Central on the Microsoft Cloud.
2. Flexible, Dimensional Accounting vs. Chart of Accounts
If the term “dimensions” is new to you, it’s kind of the same concept as “classes” in QuickBooks but far superior in every way. In QuickBooks, you can only post a transaction to and report on one class at a time. Imagine having the ability to set up unlimited dimensions and post one transaction to multiple dimensions. You can also report on as many dimensions as you’d like on a single report or a Power BI dashboard.
For example, with Dynamics 365 Business Central, you could post a sale tracked to several dimensions—perhaps the salesperson, a department, an area code—anything you want to be able to report on. Then, you can create a report to show sales by salesperson, product line, region, etc. —any number of dimensions—on a single report or Power BI dashboard. Below I have filtered Income, Product Sales by Department = Sales and Area Code = 70. In QuickBooks, you would need to set up separate GL account numbers and classes and, at the end of the day, you still can’t see that data or create the reports you want. A demo is really the best way to see all the things you can do with dimensions, but I’ll tell you it’s game-changing for any business coming from QuickBooks.
3. Reporting, Reporting, Reporting
Business owners and finance professionals live and die by reports and this is really where the advantage of dimensions shines. Dynamics 365 Business Central empowers you to create ad hoc reports based on any dimensions and how you want to see your data—by profit center, department, sales, inventory, purchasing—the possibilities are virtually limitless. You also have the benefit of Business Central’s native integration with Power BI to extend your insight even further and bring in external data to create consolidated, visual, interactive reports. Unlike QuickBooks, no data is hidden in Business Central so the world is your oyster.
Just a side note worth mentioning, Western Computer has a team of Power BI experts to support you. We have done all the heavy lifting for you with our Power BI Content Packs for Business Central that get you started right away with your core financial reporting—without having to know anything at all about Power BI.
4. Consolidate Unlimited Entities and Currencies
It goes without saying that if you have more than one or two entities or currency, you are going to save yourself a lot of time and stress with Business Central vs. QuickBooks. You can set up as many companies or entities in Business Central as you want with easy intercompany transactions. You can also create a single company that consolidates multiple companies into one currency so you can manage all finances in USD and report individually or as a group. It’s quite impressive and it’s standard functionality in Business Central!
5. Fully Integrated ERP vs. Basic Accounting
This is really an apples to oranges comparison, but Dynamics 365 Business Central is a complete ERP system and you get all the functionality with your subscription. Do you track employee expenses? Do you need inventory management and costing? Do you need warehouse management, logistics, CRM? This is all out of the box functionality with Dynamics 365 Business Central.
An additional benefit of Dynamics 365 Business Central vs. QuickBooks is the native integrations. I mentioned Power BI above, but if you use Excel (what accountant doesn’t use Excel?), Outlook and Word you’re really going to love it.
Can you imagine how great it would be if a customer emailed you to order a product, in a couple of clicks you open BC from Outlook, create the sales invoice and a record in BC that saved all your communications together and emailed the customer the invoice? No back and forth between systems, no shuffling through emails, no clunky interfaces—this is out of the box with Business Central.
You may have also heard about Power Platform which includes Power BI and other applications that enable you to create your own business apps without knowing any code, automate processes and workflows, build chatbots and other cool ways to extend Business Central functionality.
Watch our latest webinar on Migrating from QuickBooks to receive answers to your top questions:
Taking the Next Step
This is just the top 5 reasons to consider transitioning from QuickBooks to Dynamics 365 Business Central! If you’d like to explore many more benefits of Business Central with Western Computer as your partner, please reach out to ask questions and talk through your needs.
About the Author
More Content by Telka Clem
