Limited financial visibility is one of the most significant issues that can hurt your business, and one of the common signs you are outgrowing QuickBooks. The software does provide some reporting functionality, but it lacks the robust features that many growing businesses need in order to gain actionable insight from their accounting.

QuickBooks can only create simple reports that show historical performance based on just a few metrics. In today’s world, however, most businesses need access to multi-dimensional reporting and real-time data in order to make well-informed decisions. The following reporting issues are some of the most frequent headaches we see from clients who’ve outgrown QuickBooks.

Spreadsheet Mishmash

It’s common for growing businesses with QuickBooks to find themselves relying more and more on complicated Excel spreadsheets to track their financials and create reports. Of course, complicated spreadsheets also tend to break pretty easily, which forces you to spend time hunting for minor errors. If you or your colleagues spend many hours manually exporting data into spreadsheets and then crunching numbers to make things work, it’s definitely time to upgrade to a new accounting solution. At this point, QuickBooks may be holding you back in more ways than just wasted time.

Outdated Information

Avoiding frustration is definitely one good reason not to rely on spreadsheets, but too much manual reporting can also hurt your business by offering you access only to old data. If it takes hours or days to generate a report, that information is already outdated. In order to make good business decisions and keep up with your competitors, you need real-time access to accurate data.

Unreliable Data

Another major issue with relying on a combo of QuickBooks and spreadsheets is that you can’t trust your reports to be error-free. Humans make mistakes, especially when manually entering large amounts of information. Even after numbers have been entered as carefully as possible, complicated spreadsheets make it difficult to double-check your work and notice any problems after the fact.

Unfulfilled needs

All of these issues become even worse if your business has accounting needs such as multi-entity management, working in multiple currencies, logging high volumes of transactions, project management, or anything else that demands the tracking of specific data.

As you’re outgrowing QuickBooks, all of these reporting limitations can add up to a big problem for your organization by reducing your financial visibility. This lack of information can result in poor decision-making and wasted time for your business.

Good News!

With a properly implemented, robust accounting solution that works better for your organization, you’ll be able to automate reporting so that relevant data can be accessed immediately. Automating your financial reporting will increase your accuracy by reducing the potential for human error. In addition, with a more robust accounting solution you’ll be able to track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), view dashboards in real-time, create multi-dimensional reports, and use advanced analytics to truly understand the big picture of your business.

Interested in learning more? Download the ebook, Life After QuickBooks to dive deeper into these issues and determine if your business is outgrowing QuickBooks.