NetSuite vs Quickbooks: A Primer and Comparison Guide for Small Businesses

Quickbooks is a staple in accounting and bookkeeping for small and mid-sized businesses. Quickbooks provides cloud-based solutions for financial management and accounting. The features in Quickbooks help small businesses keep track of daily transactions, sales, and expenses. It also allows small businesses to generate invoices, inventory, and payroll. NetSuite and Quickbooks are frequently compared to each other when businesses look for accounting software or an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System.

Quickbooks is a relatively simple and easy-to-use accounting software with an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate and use. With all the features that Quickbooks provides to small businesses, it is hard to ignore its importance. However, there will come a point where businesses outgrow the functionalities of the software, and scaling up along with adding business process automation is the only solution.

When businesses outgrow their accounting software, the next step is NetSuite Enterprises Resource Planning (ERP).

NetSuite vs Quickbooks

There are many factors to consider when implementing or migrating to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, and one of the factors is determining if NetSuite fits your business. NetSuite is a cloud-based ERP system that is designed for small and medium businesses across several industries and business sectors, like Retail, Manufacturing, Services, Food and Beverage and many more. NetSuite automates several business processes, like financial management, revenue management, order management, supply chain management, and many more.

NetSuite’s Scalability and pay-as-you-go pricing scheme make it an attractive and cost-effective solution for small and medium businesses. For businesses that are scaling up or growing out of their existing systems, NetSuite provides the perfect long-term solution for growth. To properly compare both, we need to examine the features of both NetSuite and Quickbooks.

Quickbooks Overview

Quickbooks is first and foremost an accounting and bookkeeping software with additional features on top like payroll, sales, compute tax, and inventory. It is specifically targeted for small businesses, with limited options for scalability for global businesses.

Quickbooks is for Small Businesses

Quickbooks is suited for small businesses that have outgrown basic spreadsheets and businesses that require basic financial and accounting management automation. Quickbooks allows businesses to manage and create custom-designed invoices

Strengths

• • Quickbooks offers a simple User Interface and provides basic accounting and financial management features for small business out of the box
  • Cost-effective solution for small businesses that only requires accounting and basic financial management.
  • Quickbooks allows small businesses to have up to 25 users.

Key NetSuite Features and Benefits for Your Business

NetSuite provides businesses with a long list of benefits and advantages. NetSuite is more than just an accounting software that does payroll or checks the balance; it is a comprehensive financial management software that provides complete automation of a business’s processes from quote-to-order fulfillment.

Here are just a few key features of NetSuite that provide positive benefits to businesses.

1. Comprehensive Accounting and Finance

• • NetSuite has full functionalities that help improve transparency in procure-to-pay transactions. This includes requisition, purchase order and invoicing.
  • Seamless inventory fulfillment and costing from factory-to-store. NetSuite also has detailed supply chain management capabilities.
  • Complete fixed asset lifecycle tracking, and reporting from acquisition depreciation and asset retirement.
  • Full-service payroll processing, including support for time tracking, incentive compensation, and expense reimbursement.
  • Integrated budgeting and forecasting tools to help manage financial projections for improved decision making.

2. Financial Close Management

• • Period locking to prevent incorrect postings to future periods and a period close checklist of tasks to sequentially completed.
  • Financial adjustments for intercompany transactions, foreign currency revaluation, and inventory.
  • End-to-end visibility in account receivables and payables with integrated order-to-cash management systems.

3. Effective Compliance and Controls

• • NetSuite has effective oversight and compliance protocols in place to ensure that businesses have due diligence in every transaction.
  • NetSuite allows businesses to follow multiple accounting standards like GAAP, and IFRS using multi-book accounting capabilities.
  • Pre-built tax filing and reporting tools that can be configured for local requirements per country.
  • Audit trail visibility into detailed transaction history, reports and saved searches for improving transparency and accountability.

Things to Consider NetSuite over Quickbooks

• • NetSuite is designed to be an all in one cloud-based solution for small, medium and enterprise level businesses.
  • Flexible functionalities and add-on suites that are designed for specific industries and business sectors like manufacturing, retail, and more.
  • NetSuite is built for a global business. It is multi-language and supports multi-currency transactions.
  • NetSuite is highly customizable and is able to integrate with several e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, Salesforce, and more.
  • NetSuite is a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS), meaning users can access NetSuite anytime, and in any part of the globe.
  • It is more than just an accounting software. NetSuite is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software that automates the business process to improve productivity and efficiency.
  • The biggest advantage of NetSuite is its ability to grow with your businesses and its scalability.
  • NetSuite allows businesses to choose between the standard two types of users or user roles. One user role has full access to the entire ERP system This user is designed for business executives, managers and supervisors. The second user role is designed for employees who do data entry roles, accountants, and inventory clerks. NetSuite Solutions Providers like Excelym can also help businesses customize user roles depending on specific business requirements.
  • Real-time reporting and analytics. NetSuite provides businesses with a highly comprehensive and customizable reports dashboard that provides crucial information at a glance or detailed financial reports for accurate and real-time reporting.

NetSuite is a global cloud ERP software that allows businesses to run a multinational and multicurrency enterprise through one platform that integrates Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relation Management (CRM), and Services Resource Planning (SRP). The Omnichannel platform enables retailers, manufacturers, and distributors throughout the supply chain to seamlessly connect and communicate, improving business intelligence and minimizing human error.

NetSuite’s scalability is designed with small and medium businesses in mind. The cloud-based software allows small businesses to easily implement NetSuite at a lower cost compared to on-premise systems and allows businesses to quickly and cost-effectively scale up.

Still not convinced that NetSuite is for your business? 

Contact our dedicated Consultants now so we can help you fully leverage NetSuite’s functionalities for your business.