QuickBooks Enterprise to be discontinued

Due to the recent announcement by Intuit UK who have confirmed that QuickBooks Enterprise is to be discontinued, support for QuickBooksEnterprise will start being phased out within a year as advised below. This is a decision that has taken us by surprise, as it was not something that Intuit effectively communicated to their customers.
 

QuickBooks Enterprise Discontinuation Time Scale 
- UK technical support will only be available until July 2015
- After July 2015 Intuit will provide support via email only
- No new versions will be released
- Payroll will stop after 2014/15 PAYE year end
- Intuit will only provide critical bug fixes until 2017

QBES Discontinuation timescale

While we don't agree with how Intuit have handled the situation, it is imperative that you start thinking of alternative accounting systems to replace QuickBooks Enterprise, we don't want people to feel stranded or rushed into making a decision. 

What does this mean?
Current users of QuickBooks Enterprise will regrettably have to move over to a new system within the next couple of years (sooner if you use UK Payroll).

Furthermore there is no longer any QuickBooks application for businesses with more than 5 users. As such, businesses who have outgrown QuickBooks Enterprise will also need to start making a decision about what alternative will best fit their business needs.

What we recommend.
There are three alternative solutions that best fit the gap left by QuickBooksEnterprise;

1) You can move to the US version of QuickBooks Enterprise, which will have a familiar look and feel but there is no automatic data conversion, it requires a work-around to cope with VAT on purchases and there is no UK payroll system. 

2) You can downgrade to QuickBooks Premier. This will only be viable if you have less than 5 users and comes with no automatic data migration. Although we are currently in discussions with a company who will be able to help provide this service.

3) Alternatively you could consider moving to Acumatica Entrepreneur. This is a full ERP system in the cloud, priced and configured for the smaller business. It does not have a payroll system but does have all the functionality required to cater for the business processing needs of a growing company. 

What is Acumatica Entrepreneur?
Acumatica Entrepreneur is hosted on a UK server and is provided on a monthly rental basis, with a minimum of 10 users and 1 company, it is configured to suit previous QuickBooks users and includes the data migration of all Nominal Ledger transactions and lists.

Benefits and Features
- Ease of use
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Fixed Assets and Intercompany Accounting
- Advanced Stock Management and Sales Order Fulfilment
- Project Accounting with Web Based Time Sheets and Expense Approvals
- Report Writer, Dashboard Designer and Generic Inquiry Creator
- Responsive html screens
- Multi- segmented product codes and account structures

Visit our dedicated Acumatica website for full list of features

Why Acumatica?
Founded in 2007, with headquarters in Kirkland, Washington, Acumatica have offices in Washington DC, Moscow, and Singapore. The company is operated by a team mostly made up of former Microsoft executives and with programmers who were the developers behind the Solomon ERP system (now Microsoft Dynamics SL).

Acumatica have won many awards; twice named in the 'Top 20 Coolest Cloud Companies' by CRN, awarded a 'People’s Choice Stevie' for Favourite Financial Management Solution and more recently won a CODiE Award for 'Best Supply Chain Management Solution' in 2014. They have also made great strides in the Nucleus Research ERP Value Matrix and are swiftly advancing towards 'Leader' status.


If you would like any further information then you can also visit our website www.quickerpsolutions.com or our dedicated Acumatica website www.cloudaccountingUK.com

Featured in the Brochure!

Our Director, James Morgan, has featured in the Intuit ProAdvisor Brochure. James spends regular time with the staff at Intuit advising on QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions and recently was interviewed and photographed.

NEW RELEASE! QuickBooks 2013!!

The latest release of QuickBooks Enterprise sees a very exciting BRAND NEW LOOK! There are also some fantastic changes to the Customer, Supplier and Employees Centres.

• The Centers are now organised by Tabs allowing you to easily access notes, contacts and to-do lists.
• Multiple notes can now be added on each record.
• Multiple contacts can now be created for Suppliers, as well as Customers.
• Choose which fields are displayed in the Edit window.
• A number of new fields have been added to track information.

 

 

 For more information please visit our website www.quickerpsolutions.com 

or call us +44 (0) 844 445 7133

Dashboards , Drivers and mud

dash·board/ˈdaSHˌbôrd/

Noun:

1.      The panel facing the driver of a vehicle or the pilot of an aircraft, containing instruments and controls.       2.      A board of wood or leather in front of a carriage, to keep out mud.

How rally drivers, pilots and carriage drivers would smirk at the colourful charts that now go by the name of “dashboards”!

Well we think that they might just like ours! 

We have just released the second version of our own dashboard with the prototype for the third on its way and we have very much kept the driver and the pilot in mind.

Our dashboards run in a web browser on the client server.  The pages carry your branding and you control who has access to the site and the individual sections. 

 

We are providing a set of standard graphics and will continue to add to these. They will cover the financials, receivables, payables, inventory, sales and ordering, project management and even CRM.

Our aim is to provide the graphics which the accounting system doesn’t.

Not only do you have a graphical view of the information but there is drill down too.  Click on any segment of the graphic and you will see a list of the data that makes up the value.

Of course every business is different so we expect clients to request modifications or request their own specific graphics.

Just like our early adaptor client Learning Resources who needed to manage the performance of their logistics provider.  They needed to see how quickly orders were despatched.

There are many brilliant things about these graphics which should really excite managers and executives.  The graphics are refreshed all the time providing up to date information.

One further thing that will excite the CFO is the low cost.  They make Business Intelligence extremely affordable and very simple.

But the thing that will delight the drivers and the pilots in business is the addition of our collaboration pane.  Typically any measure or graph requires some action, good or bad, something is always communicated. We call it “Group Action”.

 It’s like a social network for business teams.

For example our outstanding order dashboard is showing that there is over £40k tied up in orders that  need to be picked.  Assume that for this business it’s a big problem and something needs to be done about it. 

 

Click on the icons that create a snapshot of the graphic, start a new action, give it a status and invite your team. 

 

They will be notified and before long the necessary actions are taken and they are all noted on your dashboard.

We predict that more communication within a business will take place in these action forums than in your email inbox.

If you want to stay out of the mud then get these dashboards fitted to your business!

QuickBooks on the Cloud

Get QuickBooks Enterprise on the Cloud

We can provide you with QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions on a cloud server. It's the safest way to run QuickBooks Enterprise in the cloud;

• Multi user access at anytime, from anywhere through the internet
• No dangers - you own the software and the data
• Option of local back ups and standby machine disaster recovery
• Quick set up
• Available added security

Our Cloud Server allows you to have access to QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions from anywhere via the internet. Unlike other cloud based accounting systems you own the software and the data. We put your desktop licensed QuickBooks Enterprise on a cloud server, we can add extra secruity and disaster recovery. We can also integrate QuickBooks Enterprise with third party solutions.

Pricing: The hosting of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions with up to 30 users on a cloud server approx £180pm

For further information and to discuss your needs please call us on +44 (0) 844 445 7133 or email us.

What's So Good About QuickBooks Enterprise?

There is an awful lot good about QBE as we like to call it.  But the single best thing about QBE is its price.  It is four times cheaper than the average mid-market accounting system.  Four times, not four per cent, four times !  A 20 user version of a Sage or Iris Exchequer mid-range system will cost about £20,000.  QBE costs £5,000.

Having got your attention I hope to keep it before you start thinking about what to do with the remaining £15k in your budget.

 

For me the remaining top 4 benefits are:

1. Easy to use.  Yes they all say that but some systems really are very difficult to use.  QBE is well designed to make it simple, it has an active technical community forum and it has tips and movies for most of the functions. 
2. Well connected.  Quickbooks has a huge base of users, most in the US but nevertheless this has resulted in a large number of independent business applications that connect to QuickBooks and the Enterprise system, QBE. They all connect through the QBE web connector so it’s a consistent and fairly simple set up.  We use an on line web time sheet system which took about 2 hrs to set up.  It has connections to CRM systems like Salesforce, Sage CRM, Sugar and a few CRM applications designed specifically for QuicBooks.  There are also a number of plug-in ecommerce applications and point of sale systems. 
3. Great filing.  QBE has an integrated document management system.  You can drag an email attachment onto the transaction or account and its available for look up at any time.  Besides this, QBE provides a click through to the original transaction from all of its reports. 
4. Smart financial report writer.  Its called QSW.  It completes the reporting job that many other systems leave undone.  Apart from enabling you to create the report through a designer in Excel it recognises the need to pull a number of reports into a financial pack.  Typically this would be a Balance Sheet, P&L, Cashflow, some divisional reports, a commentary etc,  Each of these are on separate tabs,  Once you are ready you run the report and it combines the lot into a PDF.

There are many other benefits and in the next post I will cover 6 – 10.

It’s important however to point out some negatives.

1.      You won’t look so good at a dinner party with other business leaders when the subject of ERP systems come up.  The others who preside over SAP, Sage, Microsoft and Exchequer may have a guffaw at your expense when you tell them that QBE is running your multi million pound business.  You will have to wait till the end of the evening for your payback as you drive off in your Porsche paid from the saving in switching to QBE. (Calculated saving over 5 years including maintenance and consulting fees).

2.      There is only one field that controls the fiscal period allocated to a transaction.  That is the document date.  For those of us who are used to the older systems this is a big weakness.  Typically, almost half of the supplier invoices are not posted into the period that corresponds to the date of the invoice.  There are two main reasons for this;

·         invoices are received late

·         there is a delay in getting them approved and entering them in the system. 

To a large degree, businesses are sending invoices out promptly, particularly in this economic climate, so it’s not as big a problem.  Nevertheless we would still opt for a separate fiscal period field.

3.      Certain accounts are fixed, their position cannot be changed.  This applies to the Exchange Gain or Loss account.  We would like to split it by currency and between gains and losses. 

Overall QBE is an amazing system because of its price and functionality.  It will make your staff more productive too.  There is very little need for on-going support once you are set up but, we will try our hardest to recommend add ons and reports. We have to do something !

Why Upgrade to QuickBooks Enterprise?

If any of the following statements apply to your business, then QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions can help you be more efficient:

• You need more than 3 simultanious users 
  
• You have specialised roles or departments (e.g. sales, purchasing, payroll)
• You want more control over what your users can see and do in QuickBooks
  
• You need more robus reporting or inventory control
• You operate in two or more locations, have remote workers or want access from home
• You use multiple company files to track your business
• You process a large number of transactions
• You would like more custom fields to track data specific to your business 
• You are running out of space to track customers, suppliers or items
  
  
  www.quickerpsolutions.com 
  
  

South East Business Show 2012

Come and visit us at the South East Business Show 2012 to be held at the Millenium Conference Centre, Effingham Park, Gatwick on the 18th May 2012.  We will be showcasing QuickBooks Enterprise for the UK market, with live demonstrations throughout the day, and members of the team will be on hand to answer your specific questions.

Save up to 30% on QuickBooks Enterprise

Starting today, we're offering a special discount of up to 30% on QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions. You'll also get a Full Service Plan for one year with product upgrades included for free.

This is a limited-time discount, so I invite you to consider some of the benefits that upgrading can provide to you and your business.

If you are switching from a different accounting system you can save 30% on the purchase of 30 users and 10% on the purchase of 5 or 10 users. If you are upgrading from QuickBooks Pro or Premier you can save 30% off no matter how many users you purchase!

We can only extend this offer to you until 31^st MARCH 2012.

Call us today to see how much you can save!!

Tel: 0844 445 7133

Web: www.quickerpsolutions.com

Business System Efficiency Review

As business systems experts we know where efficiencies are likely to be found. By systematically reviewing your current set-up we can identify any aspect of the system that is not working as it should, identify what may be missing to enable your business processes to work most efficiently, and carefully review the benefits you can achieve.

We are able to review the various software components within an organisation, e.g. accounting, reporting, warehousing, manufacturing etc., and can identify improvements that will make a positive difference to your business.

If you would like to arrange a comprehensive review your business system set-up please contact us to arrange an on-line or on-site appointment.

The first meeting and a business efficiency review report is provided free of charge - it's then up to you to decide to take up the efficiency suggestions we provide you with or not.  If you are keen to proceed with any of the suggestions made we can provide you with a specific quotation for the efficiencies recomended.

You have nothing to loose and everything to gain!

QuickBooks Enterprise Shortcuts

When you're working in your accounting system you need to move about quickly and with ease. Here are some of our favourite keyboard shortcuts for getting things done quickly!...

Navigating Dates

• Move dates forward or backwards one day at a time – Use the Plus (+) or Minus (-) keys.
• Go straight to the beginning or end of the week – Use the W key for the first of the Week and the K key for the last day of the weeK.
• Go straight to the beginning or end of the month – Use the M key for the first day of the Month and the H key for the last day of the montH.
• Go straight to the beginning or end of the year – Use the Y key for the first day of the Year and the R key for the last day of the yeaR
• Go straight to Today’s Date – Use the T key.

Performing Calculations in Amount Fields

Any amount field within QuickBooks is armed with a complete calculator. To enable the function, just start typing in the calculation you want to perform within the field. Addition uses the plus key (+), subtraction uses the minus key (-), multiplication uses the star key (*), and division uses the slash key (/).

Working with transactions

• Open the Write Checks Window – Use Ctrl-W.
• Enter a New Transaction – Use Ctrl-N when in the Invoice, Bill, or other transaction forms.
• Delete Line from Transaction – Use Ctrl+Del.
• Insert Line into Transaction – Use Ctrl+Insert.
• Delete Entire Transaction – Use Ctrl-D
• Close active window – Use the Esc key.
• Find a transaction – Use Ctrl-F
• View History or Linked Transactions – Use Ctrl-H

Other Helpful Shortcuts

• Open Chart of Accounts – Use Ctrl-A
• Print – Ctrl-P
• Open Help – Use F1 key.
• Undo Changes made – Ctrl-Z.

Once again QuickBooks Enterprise UK proves how easy it is to use.

To find out more shortcuts search 'keyboard shortcuts' in the help section within QuickBooks Enterprise or visit http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/pages/inproducthelp/core/qb2k12/contentpackage/core/miscellaneous/info_keyboard_shortcuts.html