Is There Life After QuickBooks Desktop? It’s Time to Consider Your Alternatives 

Starting in the Summer of 2024, Intuit is discontinuing QuickBooks Desktop 2021, which includes QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus, QuickBooks Desktop Mac Plus, and QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll. 

Intuit is encouraging users affected by this change to move to QuickBooks Online or risk losing access to QuickBooks Desktop Payroll, QuickBooks Desktop Payments, online bank feeds, live technical support, and critical security updates. 

According to Intuit, QuickBooks Enterprise products will not be affected.  

It’s time to consider your alternatives to QuickBooks 

Users of QuickBooks Desktop should know that moving to QuickBooks Online is not your only option. In fact, now is an excellent time to consider whether QuickBooks is a viable long-term solution for your company. 

QuickBooks is a great accounting product for start-ups and small companies. However, as your company grows and develops more complex business processes, you will need the features of a more robust Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) product like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. 

QuickBooks has its limitations 

Now is the time to pause and consider whether QuickBooks will be able to meet your needs in the future:  

• Regulatory compliance issues. QuickBooks Online does provide an audit trail log and allows administrators to define user roles and privileges. However, QuickBooks Online is not fully compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) or SOC1 and SOC2 as defined by the AICPA. This can leave your company at risk of fraud and make it difficult for you to obtain investor funding. 
• Limited multi-entity and inter-company transactions. QuickBooks Online lets you define multiple companies using the same account but is limited when handling multiple currencies, managing multi-entity consolidations, or performing intercompany transactions, such as inventory transfers between legal entities. 
• Limited integrated functionality. QuickBooks is primarily an accounting application. It has strong financial capabilities but was not designed to run a manufacturing or distribution business. Intuit even acknowledges that QuickBooks is NOT an ERP. You may need to purchase separate applications for CRM, inventory management, manufacturing, and more, plus build or buy integrations to those applications. And your accounting will still be disconnected from the rest of the business. 
• Lack of reporting flexibility. QuickBooks Online comes with standard reports, but users have limited access to the data they can export to Excel. You will need to purchase additional software to get more detailed analytics. Lack of visibility across the organization leaves information gaps and data silos. 

These are just a handful of shortcomings with QuickBooks Online. Even if it had these additional features, QuickBooks Online would still fall short of the capabilities of a modern ERP solution. 

Advantages of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central over QuickBooks Online 

If you’re still considering moving to QuickBooks Online, consider the benefits of upgrading to a modern, cloud-based ERP solution like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Business Central delivers the same accounting functions as QuickBooks at an affordable price but includes additional features, such as native CRM, inventory management, and discrete manufacturing capabilities.  

• Advanced reporting and dashboards. Along with standard business reports out-of-the-box, Business Central users can create custom reports and dashboards. Use Power BI and Copilot AI functions to perform advanced analytics on past and forward-looking key performance indicators. 
• Regulatory compliance. Business Central allows administrators to provide granular user permissions based on role and responsibility. Business Central meets most regulatory compliance standards, including SOX. 
• Scalability and enterprise-level security. Business Central, running on Microsoft Azure, allows you to scale your resources (hardware, network capacity, memory, etc.) up or down as your business needs change. Azure also provides enterprise-level security, including intrusion and virus detection, failover capabilities, and backup and restore functions,  
• Easily customizable. Business Central can be optimized to the way you do business. Use Microsoft’s Power Platform to build custom reports, automation, and workflows.  
• Built-in capabilities and powerful integrations. Business Central has comprehensive features, including financials, inventory management, discrete manufacturing, and service management. Business Central also integrates natively with Microsoft Office and Power Platform and many popular third-party business applications, including CRM, inventory management, and payroll. 
• Better Together. Business Central works right alongside your Microsoft 365 (Office 365) applications such as Excel. 
• The power of AI. Use Microsoft’s CoPilot AI capabilities to assist in bank reconciliation, development of workflows and other tedious tasks. 

Get ready to thrive! 

Although change is inevitable, moving from QuickBooks to an ERP like Business Central doesn’t have to be daunting. Western Computer is a partner that wants you to succeed as much as you do. We have helped customers achieve success by providing innovative technology solutions for over 35 years. Our goal is to empower businesses of today to be the giants of tomorrow. We have demonstrated expertise in:  

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)  
• Customer Engagement (CE), including Sales, Customer Service and Field Service  
• Power Platform (including Power BI)  
• Microsoft Azure Cloud solutions  

Read about how Western Computer helped distribution company Streamline Aquatics move from QuickBooks to Business Central in the cloud, positioning the company to expand from a regional to a national presence: 

“Our sales team now has real-time visibility into inventory availability. When visiting customer sites or taking customer calls, they can submit sales orders that we can immediately fulfill because we know with certainty that the products are in stock.” – Chris Peck, President of Streamline Aquatics 

Find out if Business Central is right for you. Download our interactive checklist, Migrating from QuickBooks to Dynamics 365 Business Central, or contact Western Computer.