Making the Switch from QuickBooks

00:03hello everyone you've just tuned in to the netsuite podcast and i'm your host kendall fisher hoping you are all gearing up for a great holiday season on this episode we're joined by rebecca van housen she's our senior sales consulting manager and our resident quick books expert as we've dubbed her who will be diving into some of the biggest challenges businesses face on quickbooks and how netsuite addresses those challenges she'll discuss everything from the lack of reporting capabilities in quickbooks to obstacles and growing internationally or managing multiple subsidiaries van housen also discusses quickbooks missing crm hr payroll and supply chain management tools and how all of that leads to disparate duct tape systems that result in more manual processes and inefficiencies she even addresses the fears of moving off quickbooks and onto netsuite having done so herself needless to say you won't want to miss this episode coming up next

01:02you're listening to the netsuite podcast where we discuss what's happening within netsuite why we're doing it and where we're heading in the future we'll dive into the details about the software and the people at netsuite who are behind all the moving parts we'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale hi rebecca thanks so much for joining us thank you for having me kendall so today we are diving into a discussion around quickbooks but before we get into all of that can you help our audience understand your background a little bit and why that's sort of set you up to be our quote-unquote in-house expert on this topic i'm sure uh despite the fact that

01:52i'm old i have 22 years of accounting experience i spent the first 10 years in public accounting working with small businesses doing taxes tax planning helping you know clients with their quickbooks instances and last 12 years i spent in the software industry where i was a controller and cfo using quickbooks enterprise for nine and a half years um until we went through an acquisition and we were really tasked to um chas to scale for that second exit strategy so we purchased netsuite to help us do that and that's where my love of netsuite started and i've been here for five years now your love of netsuite even after all that time working with quickbooks huh yes it's true it happened um well i would say that does in fact make you an expert so let's just dive right in for starters what are some of the biggest reasons businesses typically start out running on quickbooks what are the benefits i think we see you know most companies start out with quickbooks because

02:58it's it's quick to get started and it's inexpensive as those businesses continue to grow you know it might be quick and and easy and relatively cheap to get started but as those businesses continue to grow what are the top challenges they then face running on um quickbooks think the number one challenge is reporting companies really need flexible reporting to make proactive business decisions um from a multi-subsidiary or multiple location standpoint and international growth those are that's another reason um a crm tool or customer relationship management that's integrated into their accounting system integrated hr and payroll solutions uh as another reason uh supply chain management you know inventory demand planning order management and finally you know just at the end of the day you get tired of having desperate systems okay that is a lot to unpack there so

04:02i'm gonna go ahead and roll it back to the very first point you made which is that businesses struggle on quickbooks when it comes to reporting what issues does quickbooks present there so quickbooks reporting isn't flexible and not um easy to customize and they really only have one segment for class for specific reporting and how does this impact a business so um we find that a lot of companies spend a lot of time in excel they have to download their reports in order to make changes and do the customization they need and with only one class segment they're not able to analyze their business in multiple ways so i kind of can there's a couple issues in there then first of all a lot of manual processes bandaging systems together to get some of that reporting

04:54and then second the inability to make real-time decisions right if you if you can't analyze your your what's going on with your business in in different ways yeah exactly and you know you need the ability to customize because businesses change so rapidly and when you know in the state of covid they need to make different decisions today than they made yesterday so they need to be able to have a flexible system with multiple segments so they can slice and dice their data and you know you can save them you know you can customize reports and save them so you're not having to reinvent the wheel each month in excel yeah i've heard from multiple customers on this podcast actually who have said if if they were still running on quickbooks during covid they they just don't know how they would have would have done anything how they would have been able to pivot the way that they did or make the decisions that they did so

05:48i've i've heard it if i have if i've heard it once i've heard it several times so then that brings me how does netsuite address these reporting challenges so we do have multiple segments and so you can um as well as custom segments so when you do need to analyze your business in a new way even somebody without um you know like myself somebody like myself who doesn't have an i.t background but an accounting background can create a custom field put that on to report and see you know that business impact in a whole new light um and then save that report so you're not having to do it over and over again and then with some of the other things that you had mentioned you know earlier which is the the flexibility the the not having to do all of those manual tasks and managing with spreadsheets and so on and so forth

06:49and then finally that idea of real-time reporting is that oh everything all of those are addressed with netsuite yeah real-time reporting real-time dashboard visibility yeah the the dashboards themselves with suite success that are already pre-configured with pretty much everything a typical um controller cfo would be interested in seeing is is right there when you open your instance of netsuite you don't have to run reports to get that visibility you've got dashboards as well as the ability to customize the the views on your dashboards as well as reporting it's um it's a really flexible tool i also want to go to another point you made which was multi-subsidiary and international growth and the challenges that come with that when a business is running on quickbooks so if if a business did want to scale internationally or you know acquire additional businesses or what have you what challenges would

07:52they face then on quickbooks so quickbooks isn't designed for multiple entities or multiple locations so you have to have separate instances for everything um which you know leads to manual consolidation and and not a full holistic look at your business when you have multiple subsidiaries or locations um it doesn't have multiple currency and it doesn't have the ability to to report in multiple formats so for that international growth when you need to you know report and gap ifrs or you know do statutory reporting and and i mean co if covet had not happened there was a lot going on this year in changes when it came to kind of reporting and and meeting regulations right yeah there's lots of new regulations from um lease accounting revenue recognition so many different uh reporting standards and just because they were postponed this year doesn't mean that they're not still coming so

08:58this is something that businesses who are running on quickbooks need to start thinking about if they haven't hopefully they have but if they haven't already yes for sure and on netsuite um how do we address some of those challenges especially when it comes to kind of meeting meeting those regulations so um you know netsuite has um the ability to report um multiple entities on one platform you know in uh multiple reporting formats um we have integrated currency uh and translation automatic translation um intercompany transactions really to support you know growing businesses um in one platform that they can see everything all encompassing their business um in one system so that kind of i kind of want to go back then to what you said about quickbooks so if you're if you have multiple entities or multiple subsidiaries and does that mean you have different literally you have to have different quickbooks um systems running and they don't necessarily speak to each other so

10:14you're having to roll that out into an uh you know kind of a dif a separate spreadsheet yes how does that work yeah so it's it's a lot it's a really manual and time consuming process for a lot of businesses because you need to have visibility for each separate entity or separate location um and the only way to do that in quickbooks is to have separate instances you know separate setups in quickbooks but in netsuite you have one instance of netsuite so you can automatically see across all of those um subsidiaries and locations and one place as opposed to um going into one in another instance of quickbooks another instance of quickbooks but then you know the consolidation happens in excel where you see everything together right a lot of manual labor that goes into that um in terms of netsuite and meeting some of those standards like gaap ifrs any of the lease accounting standards that have changed

11:12and so on and so forth how does how does netsuite stay up stay up to date with all of those changes and ensure that that our customers are doing the same so we have dedicated in-house teams that work specifically on accounting standards so that you can be assured that netsuite when when there is a new standard like when um asc606 came out we gave you the ability to transition from asc 605 to asc 606 um because we have those in-house experts to help us and they build that in netsuite so we stay on top of changing regulations um as they're rolling out got it all right switching gears um customer relationship management or crm as you mentioned before does quickbooks have a native crm tool no um they don't so their customer record is just very simple and it doesn't provide a lot of value outside of you know the basics of the customer name the address and billing information okay

12:23that's an issue because i mean as we've said and and as most businesses if not all business businesses would say is your customer is your most valuable asset is it not yes it is so what sort of roadblocks does this present in terms of you know customer relationship management and acquisition retaining um customers as well as you know that sort of visibility across the kind of customer life cycle so you know because it doesn't allow for this customer visibility companies are either having to manage it and in excel which you know is is difficult and again time consuming or they have to buy a separate crm tool and most of those uh don't integrate to quickbooks meaning you know the people who are managing your customers be it support or even marketing some of the sales that they may not be working off of the same information exactly yeah you wanna you wanna all encompassing systems so that you know you keep track of pricing you have you know controls you know in place around what sales people are selling and the pricing around those and you know if

13:41there's customer specific pricing um that you know you you can manage those things well and then even on like the marketing side right like if we're sending emails like those emails should be catered to that specific customers interests needs wants desires shopping you know history whatever it may be right right yeah and um usually that's an add-on to a lot of crm systems but netsuite has the ability to send out email marketing campaigns and and has um robust marketing functionality as well yeah yeah talk to me about some of netsuite's crm capabilities overall sure so so netsuite you know crm is really provides that com complete cradle to grade customer life cycle so you know as you're nurturing those leads as you're marketing to those those leads as they you know as you're getting you need return on your investment for your marketing efforts um all of that rolls seamlessly into customers and and you know opportunities for sales teams to to manage pipeline and growth um and have that visibility

14:54and then all the way through if you have if you need support for your customers um netsuite has a built-in customer support management solution as well so it's really cradle to grave [Music] there's enough uncertainty to go around right now netsuite reduces it by giving you visibility and control with so many critical decisions to make you need the right numbers and you need them right now netsuite by oracle is the world's number one cloud business system with netsuite we give you financials cash flow payroll inventory and more all in one place so you have clear visibility and total control of your business netsuite customers have the flexibility to work from anywhere with immediate clarity on critical information right at their fingertips no more guessing no more waiting make smarter decisions with confidence because

15:44you've got crystal clear visibility into your numbers join over twenty thousand companies who trust netsuite to stay in control receive your free guide managing business uncertainty and schedule your free product tour right now at netsuite.com usa don't wait get your free guide managing business uncertainty and schedule your free product tour at netsuite.com usa netsuite.com usa and again all of this ties back into the overall suite which means everybody is getting the same information um but also that that information then can be used for different areas of the business whether it be marketing accounting customer support what have you right yep once again um switching into kind of this is what we'd get with an overview kind of um episode like this where we just have to get into all of it um but i know we we have a series coming up actually where

16:45we're gonna dive into the nitty gritty um kind of themes and topics of each of these areas but for now let's move into hr and payroll can you dive into that a bit more you mentioned that that was one of the challenges businesses faced when running on quickbooks what it what does that mean so while quickbooks has a native payroll offering um it has multiple and it really lacks i think you know when i used it for all of those years um it really lacks the visibility for identifying errors prior to the payroll run um and they don't have an hr solution so that's a separate solution all together again so again different systems bandaging together don't speak to each other lots of manual processes but for me what stands out is errors prior to payroll run meaning employees could get incorrect checks yes yes and and nobody you know nothing's worse than you know paying your employees incorrectly so you know never a good day when that happens i could imagine i could imagine um

17:58now does netsuite have a native hr hr and payroll solution and how does that create the efficiency that that businesses would lack running on quickbooks and doing this um sure so so netsuite ha does have a full service payroll offering so you don't have to worry about payroll compliance it provides a complete variance analysis from period to period so you can easily identify those errors before they happen so for example if you have an employee that um got paid um you know 50 hours this week versus 40 hours last week it's going to come up with a variance analysis to provide you so you can look at that and determine if that's correct before it happens and there's effective dating so some of the challenges around open enrollment or salary changes is you typically with quickbooks you have sticky notes sitting all over your monitor to remind you to make those salary changes effective dating allows you to set it for that future date when you know

18:57it's occurring and again saves from those errors and with the hr solution also encompassing it it does so many things but a couple of specific things are you know flexible time off management onboarding checklists organization charts um which usually sometimes is as another system and the list is long so i can't do it all today no definitely and again we'll dive into some of the nitty-gritty on this in our in our series that i'll note at the end of our episode here but um one of my favorite netsuite hr solutions is our suite people performance management would i which i just think is so cool that that we're able to tie you know goals and actual performance progress to the overall to to our the overall suite which i think is just so i mean all the times that we i mean think about it rebecca like all the times we've done performance reviews not not here but in in the past and it's like

19:55you're you're retroactively going back and looking like so when did i do this and when did this happen and when did i meet this goal and when did i do you know like it's so cumbersome and time-consuming it is and and now you know with with that in your suite it's visible to everyone across the company as well which you know with role-based permissions um you can see all of that so um instead of somebody having to run down to the hr office and ask questions they can they can see it in the system yeah all on their own yep um moving into the supply chain which whenever i say that it's always like dun dun dun um but how how does how does quickbooks lack visibility into the supply chain i know

20:44that's such a a big topic to kind of unravel here but if you could kind of give the biggest concerns when it comes to supply chain management uh sure so quickbooks doesn't even have um its own native inventory management so it doesn't have demand planning or order management at all and you know you have to again leverage a partner and it it requires you to add um not only additional costs but additional integrations to their what they call a tech stack yeah again as we've been talking about it's just kind of bandaging duct taping together right right exactly that's where we got this phrase um the hairball from i hate to i hate to put that picture in our listeners heads right now but but that's where we get that kind of hairball idea from um so again where where does netsuite kind of come in provide a solution here where does netsuite provide visibility that quickbooks does not when it comes to supply chain inventory demand planning order management

21:49and so on sure so so netsuite has inventory in its core and it provides visibility for safety stock and reorder points so you don't have stock outages or you know upset customers when things run out so full visibility from sales to the inventory management role uh demand planning so helping you figure out historical trends so you can make so it can help make suggestions for ordering um so that you don't have expensive inventory on hand you know you try to manage it as much on time um as possible as well as the ability to drop ship um inventory and the order management system really helps optimize that whole order fulfillment by minimizing shipping costs from the nearest location to the customer that's buying it and it allows for you know cova days you know in-store pickup as well as ship from store so that customers really have um a positive customer experience yeah i mean i

22:59that's the first thing that came into my head right now when you were saying all of you know everything that quickbooks really can't can't manage is i just thought how are you doing this at mid cove at times i mean that with everything changing and with things changing along your supply chain with suppliers not being able to fulfill you know your orders or you not being able to ship or like you said i mean not even just curbside pickup anymore it's like curbside returns so many so many different things happening um during this time so i i just sounds like a lot if you don't have the proper tools and processes in place um now as you've explained and as we've talked about throughout this entire conversation um in kind of all of these challenges what what i what i've been hearing is

23:44it's really just packing kind of you know like you said tech stacking packing different systems upon different systems and and kind of duct tape taping and bandaging them all together but you know jokes aside hairball jokes aside what issues does this cause a business like how does this impact an overall businesses performance success growth scalability um well so when you have all these separate systems like crm and hr and inventory demand planning order management it really leaves data in silos and when you have silo data it's hard to make um you know real-time proactive decisions um as one and you know duplicate entry if you if you're you're managing it in one place

24:32you're entering it into quickbooks as a high-level journal entry so that causes additional reconciliation really the lack of visibility um from front to back office um without real time just just keeps you from making those proactive decisions that that you need in order to be agile especially in times like today so i i bring this back to my my final question like this which is how does netsuite then solve that issue so netsuite has a unified platform and a unified suite of um offerings and so you don't have silos of data and summarized data coming in you have details to look at that could be drilled down from the system linked orders um everything you need from the front to the back office for what your business needs in one place so from employees to your customers to supporting your customers a full picture of your business to make informed decisions now

25:44i'm not too biased not to ask i mean obviously as we talked about at the very beginning of this episode which is quickbooks is it's quick to deploy it's it's you know relatively easy to deploy and it's cheap but what's then what are the fears associated with moving from quickbooks onto netsuite that you know businesses might typically kind of hold back on um even though they feel like they're breaking under under all of the duct tape right i think the most common fear that i've heard over the last five years is losing visibility into historical data and how much time and effort it will take a business to get up and running on netsuite and rebecca how would you address those fears having gone through that transition moving off quickbooks and on to netsuite um i can honestly say that it is easier than i thought it would be our implementation teams they do this every single day and the way that

26:47we make this really easy is that we provide templates so that you can populate and import all all and any information that you need either at a detailed level or a summarized level so you you can get all of your historical perspectives in which again will help you make those better business decisions and any other final thoughts you share in terms of you know quickbooks and and and the the kind of challenges that it brings upon businesses and how netsuite is able to solve those challenges any other things you'd like to tell you know first-time listeners or prospects or anybody running on quickbooks right now and frustrated sure so you know while quickbooks is is easy and cheap to get started with your business um it comes to a point where it inhibits your growth so if you're if you're continuing to grow and you need a system that's going to scale with you

27:52that's netsuite provides the holistic picture of your business um and really can help you take that to the next level whether you're looking for bank funding or vc funding or you know just need to make better decisions netsuite's that solution for you and the suite success approach that we have which i alluded to a little bit earlier where it's out of the box with dashboards and reporting and visibility that that you're going to need and want day one it's really easy to leverage these leading practices in netsuite that we've garnered from you know implementing over 20 000 customers across a variety of industries so you can get that expertise and start having better visibility into your business and it's not as intimidating that way right i mean if we're coming out this was with an approach that allows businesses to get up quick and easy and

28:56that's also catered to their specific needs based upon you know all 20 000 plus customers that we've worked with before in all of these industries that's that should kind of help eliminate some of that fear that you mentioned earlier oh definitely yeah i mean if you think about quickbooks you have to do it all yourself and netsuite at least you have somebody that's guiding you so that you know that what you're putting in and the way you're putting it in is is efficient and you're gonna get the output that you're looking for yeah well rebecca this is great great conversation thank you for giving us this kind of overview thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the netsuite podcast and i am sure without a doubt you will be back on again to dive into more sounds good thank you [Music] thank you so much to rebecca van housen for providing all of that great insight and don't forget to tune into our new video series on facebook as we dive much deeper into all of the ways quickbooks may be slowing you down i also want to shout out to our editing crew over at lampstand and all of you as always for tuning in

30:06there's much more where that came from so make sure to subscribe rate and review talk with you next time you just listened to the netsuite podcast be sure to tune in every week with more netsuite developments stories and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business [Music]