14 Nov Outgrowing QuickBooks?
QuickBooks Tips and Tricks – Outgrowing QuickBooks
Ever wonder if a business has outgrown QuickBooks? We would like to share some information with you to aid in determining if a client has, or soon will, outgrow QuickBooks.
Here are some of the criteria to help you make the decision:
Number of Transactions – a business that has outgrown QuickBooks may do so based on the number of transactions entered each month. While all transactions are not created equal (for example 10 one line invoices do not take the same amount of space as 10 multi-line invoices) some general rules do apply. First, determine the number of transactions entered in a month. This can be estimated based on pressing Ctrl and 1 together and looking to see the number of transactions in the QuickBooks file and dividing by the number of months that QuickBooks has been used. This calculation can then be performed each subsequent year by taking the new number of transactions, subtracting the number from the previous year and dividing by 12. To calculate the growth, take the number of transactions each month times 2 KB to get the monthly growth rate, take that amount times 12 for the annual KB growth per year then divide that amount by 1024 for the number of MB per year. Typically the file should grow by 15 MB per year or less to maintain reasonable performance. Obviously the age and processing speed of the computer with other factors may also affect the software”s performance
Employee List – Less than 100 employees on the employee list and less than 50 active at any one time is the recommendation from Intuit.
Total Items on Lists – As a general rule, it is recommended that the total number of names on the lists be less than 14,500. To view the number of names, press Ctrl > 1 and look on the right side in the list information box.
If you determine that based on the above calculations, and the performance of the software, QuickBooks is outgrown; a possible solution is the QuickBooks Enterprise Solution. This accounting software package was released by Intuit in 2002 to provide an alternative as small businesses grow. In the past, as a business outgrew QuickBooks either due to size or sophistication, most migrated towards industry specific solutions. But with the Enterprise Solution, the user maintains the same interface as with QuickBooks Premier, but most list limits are significantly increased. In addition to the Enterprise Solution, it is possible to use the condense feature or remove transactions to reduce the size of the file, or to start a new file and transfer the lists and some of the transactional history.