Wondering if there is an ERP in your future? Wondering if you will find yourself supporting some ERP in the future? Wondering if a 'ProAdvisor' can adapt to supporting an ERP over simple accounting software? Wondering how difficult it is to make such a transition? If any of these questions are keeping you up and night, have I got answers for you.
Some of you started your dive into the accounting software world as a result of your accounting, bookkeeping or consulting responsibilities. Perhaps your boss told you that more and more of our customers are buying this 'QuickBooks thing' from the office supply and are trying to set it up so they can stop working in manual ledgers. At the time, your boss was talking about what today is called "QuickBooks Desktop."
Some of you decided to learn as much as you could about QuickBooks and you subscribed to the 'ProAdvisor' program so you could get the free training and the certification that Intuit was offering. As the training expanded, you may have even strived to earn 'Advanced Certification (for QB Desktop)' which some persons taking the first examination exclaimed "that test was more difficult than the CPA exam!"
As your clients grew in both number of clients, and number of personnel, some of them started asking you, "What's this Enterprise version of QuickBooks all about?" You saw the potential in supporting larger clients with a product that was more specialized to their needs, perhaps even specific to their industry or business type (construction, manufacturing, retail, etc.) all of which could be supported by different Enterprise versions.
And then, Intuit announced something special for you and your practice... QuickBooks Accountant or QuickBooks Enterprise Accountant, and they incorporated those products into your ProAdvisor membership. They even gave you a copy of QuickBooks Point-of-sale which many merchants had started using because it integrated perfectly with their QuickBooks (Desktop) or QuickBooks Enterprise. And for some of you, that 'inclusion' expanded your practices into a wide range of other clients from which to choose.
But soon after the internet became more sophisticated, and the days of 'American On Line' had transitioned away from dial-up to direct connections via your telephone or cable provider, "the Cloud" was born. Not long after Intuit released QuickBooks Online which was not only clunky at first, but slow, and with an entirely different look and feel that many who had been using QuickBooks (Desktop) didn't like.
Yet, in late summer of 2013, Intuit began rolling out "the new QuickBooks Online" which came to be known immediately as QBO to differentiate it from the desktop moniker 'QuickBooks'. At the time I described it as 'Slick-n-speedy' and disguised my first headline about QBO with a draped sportscar for the graphic. Yes, it was quite an improvement from a functional standpoint, although the feature set was lacking. Still the same, a group of ProAdvisors immediately saw the advantage of being able to access a clients data file from the cloud in real-time.
Intuit then began offering not only QBO, but QBO-Accountant to any Accountant, Bookkeeper and Consultant who signed up from what they were then calling 'the Cloud ProAdvisor Program.' Best of all, the Cloud version was free, while the Desktop version carried a price tag for annual membership.
It wasn't long before Intuit was announcing that 'the Cloud and QBO' was their future, and at that time they began referring to QBO as 'QuickBooks' and what had always been called 'QuickBooks', the desktop versions, they began calling "QuickBooks Desktop" or "QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise."
Many of you may have built your practices with what is now called 'QuickBooks' and the free ProAdvisor Program for those who only sought to support clients on QBO. Any many of you also 'grew' your practices, or merged with other practices, or merged into other practices, all supporting QBO clients.
While many of our readers are still in firms of 5 or fewer ProAdvisors, over the years, our readership has also mushroomed with larger firms supporting more and more clients. Top 100 Applicants have gone from being in 1 or 2 person firms with fewer than 75 clients, to some being part of firms with more than 75 staff members and support hundreds of clients.
Intuit has also seen this kind of change in the last 13 years since the release of "the new QBO." More and more of the practices and ProAdvisors they work with are larger firms with large numbers of clients. Those firms tend to have two kinds of clients, large clients with complex requirements including multiple subsidiary companies, and small clients who perhaps only show up once a year to get their accounting and taxes done ASAP.
To accommodate. Intuit release QuickBooks Ledger to deal with those simple summation clients needing tax prep, and Intuit Enterprise Suite, their venture into what many consider 'ERP' territory. Intuit Enterprise Suite (IES) was first released to manage the finances for those larger clients who had multiple companies (like LLCs) that were subordinate to a parent entity (like an S corp.). It offered the ability to 'consolidate' data in near-real-time from the parent and subordinates.
Intuit has been actively expanding the functionality of Intuit Enterprise Suite to deal with more complex clients along what are typically called 'vertical' perspectives like construction and professional services, and with the arrival of versions, IES is starting to seem more like other 'cloud' ERP offerings.
So, sooner or later, if you are a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, you are likely to decide that one of your clients needs what IES can offer, and they are willing to pay for it. IES may very well be the first ERP in your 'proadvisor future.'
Let's look at why it is that an ERP, whether it be Intuit's IES, or something else may be your next best offering to keep your practice headed into the future.
The chart above represents my view of where most "Accounting software" is or becomes deficient, the impact those deficiencies have on your clients' businesses (or even your own), and how almost any ERP can resolve those deficiencies, and return a business to an efficient forward momentum. Let's explore why some of these things you may already be hearing from your client(s).
When was the last time you had a client tell you that they couldn't find any 'add on software' for their specific needs that would work with QuickBooks? Well, if you client is still using QuickBooks Desktop, that might be within the last few days. The number of software developers who are designing applications for QB Desktop is dwindling, as they turned their staffs to start developing or expanding their offerings for QuickBooks Online, and other cloud-based applications, like Xero.
But if most, if not all, of your clients are using QuickBooks Online or Xero, you may have heard them say that they are being overwhelmed by the number of Apps they are having to integrate with their accounting solution to accomplish the work they must perform that the 'solution' can't do alone. A few years back, ProAdvisor and Xero Advisors were being told, "standardize and perfect" your Tech Stack, the various Apps you would routinely support. The problem in those few years, the number of Apps for Cloud accounting software has exploded. Where there were 2 or 3 Apps for this or that, just five years ago, today there may be 10 to 20 all doing exactly the same thing. You may encounter a dozen AP solutions, and a dozen AR solutions at your next accounting conference and that doesn't include the Apps that 'offer both AP and AR functionality.' Ten years ago, there were 2 or 3 eCommerce connectors; but with the explosion of eCommerce, the impact of everyone shopping from home during COVID, and the ease of starting a 'cloud based sales' business, there must be two-dozen connectors many of which only connecting this accounting solution to this specific eCommerce platform (sales channel).
On average, small or large, most users of QuickBooks or Xero, have ten or more Apps of one kind or another connected to their accounting. The result is they are paying more for all those apps put together than they are their accounting application. While consulting with your clients on which Apps to acquire, hooking up and supporting those Apps, not to mention the ones your client selects for themselves and then can't get them to work, may be 'your thang.' Wouldn't you rather have one solution that as all the native components your client needs, and which might just cost less than they are paying now? And just because you transition your client to an ERP doesn't mean that you are cutting yourself out of your future.
But there is more to the issues of either insufficient or excessive integration with your clients' "accounting software." In either case, the data they need to run their business gets siloed (segregated from others that need the same information, or at least parts of it.) When a project engineer can't estimate, budget and track the projects they are responsible for within the company's accounting software, they all too often turn to spreadsheets, "good old Excel". Those Excel files are stored either on their own computer's hard-drive, or maybe even on a 'USB drive' they throw into one of their desk drawers at night, or maybe even take home with them so they can tweak some files on their home computer.
Spreadsheet data managed in this fashion is rarely shared with anyone by other than some sort of report the individual possessing it prepares for their immediate supervisor(s). I won't even go into the risk of an employee taking a work USB-drive home, plugging it into the same computer on which their son (or daughter) has download some game that is accompanied by the newest Trojan-virus circulating across the internet. One trip back to the office, and your entire network is compromised when that employee plugs the USB back into their office computer to retrieve their now infected spreadsheet.
But, "Oh Happy Day", your client has migrated from multiple apps and spreadsheets to do the work that their accounting software couldn't to an ERP that offers all of the needed functionality, specialization, and data collaboration tools their team needs, yet all with the ability to manage access, and control the flow of data properly. Each member of the team has what they need, how they need it, and can easily achieve the efficiencies that business requires to move forward rather than muddling through a cumbersome, segregated, existence.
That's the end of Part 1 folks, I will be back with Part 2 in the next few days, and with it, a big surprise, but to read Part 2 you are going to need to register under our new offering. It's still, no cost to you, and will actually be hosting more of my own content. There will continue to be lead-in articles on our free site(s) not requiring registration, but you won't be able to get to the meat of the matter without registering, and "that's no bull."
Disclosures:
Intuit® Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California. Intuit is the global financial technology platform that powers prosperity for the people and communities we serve. With approximately 100 million customers worldwide using products such as TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to prosper. We never stop working to find new, innovative ways to make that possible. Please visit us at Intuit.com and find us on social for the latest information about Intuit and our products and services.
Xero is a global small business platform that helps customers supercharge their business by bringing together the most important small business tools, including accounting, payroll and payments — on one platform. Xero's powerful platform helps customers automate routine tasks, get timely insights, and connect them with their data, their apps, and their accountant or bookkeeper so they can focus on what really matters. Trusted by millions of small businesses and accountants and bookkeepers globally, Xero makes life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. For further information, please visit xero.com.
Other trade names or references, if any, used within this feature refer to registered, trademarked, or copyrighted materials held by their respective owners and are included only for informational and educational purposes.
This is an editorial feature, not sponsored content. No vendor associated with this article has paid Insightful Accountant or the author any remuneration to be included in this feature. The article is provided solely for informational and educational purposes.
Note: Registered Trademark ® and other registration symbols (such as those used for copyrighted materials) have been eliminated from the articles within this publication for brevity due to the frequency or abundance with which they would otherwise appear or be repeated. We attempt to credit such trademarks or copyrights within our respective article footnotes and disclosures.