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QuickBooks Pro Limitations Explained

May 30, 2016 by Wayne Schulz

Are you thinking about purchasing QuickBooks but unsure whether you can fit within the product’s limits? Not sure what those limits are?

Are you a QuickBooks users wondering when your company will hit the limitations build into the Intuit accounting system?

Luckily Intuit publishes the limitations of QuickBooks Pro on their website so that you can review them ahead of time to decide whether your company will fit into the capabilities of QuickBooks Pro.

First, consider that overall QuickBooks is designed for companies with under 20 employees and less than 2 million dollars of annual revenues. That doesn’t mean it won’t work for larger companies. It only means that the typical QuickBooks users are within these parameters. Companies that are expecting to grow beyond these capabilities might consider starting with a more robust accounting system to avoid a migration as the company grows.

Intuit provides some guidance for determining if your company will fit within their product limitations:

QuickBooks is designed for small businesses with 20 or fewer employees and annual revenue of less than two million dollars. The ideal use of QuickBooks is to keep at least two years of detailed transactions in a company data file so that you can run comparative reports and have prior-year project information.

The rate of growth of QuickBooks company data files varies significantly from company to company. There is no “average” or “typical” data file size, since businesses track different information. How quickly a file grows depends on the number of transactions, the amount of information entered per transaction, and the number of “links” per transaction.

For example, someone who enters 500 1-line invoices per month might find that their data file is smaller than another person who enters 100 5-line invoices per month, while someone who usually receives five separate payments per invoice would have a larger file than someone who typically receives only one payment per invoice.

To estimate if QuickBooks is right for your small business, take the average number of monthly transactions (remember, an invoice, payment, and deposit would be three separate transactions, and a bill and bill payment would count as two), and multiply by 2 KB to determine how much the data file will grow each month.

For example, if your company enters an average of 300 transactions per month, your data file could grow 600 KB per month (300 x 2 KB = 600 KB), or 7200 KB per year (600 KB x 12 = 7200 KB). If the annual data file size is less than 15,000 KB, then QuickBooks should be more than sufficient for your company. (Present QuickBooks users can check the size of their QuickBooks file by choosing Help > Product Information.)

One reason that Intuit talks about file size limitations is that many existing QuickBooks users could find reporting and speed of data entry gets much slower as the data files grow.

Here is a list of the limitations of field sizes within QuickBooks. The main issue with these limits could be the account number size which is restricted to only 7 characters.

Character Limitations for QuickBooks Fields

Here is another Intuit QuickBooks chart showing the limits on numbers of records. Note that while you may have up to 10,500 employees, vendors and customers individually, combined they cannot exceed 14,500 or you’ll be forced to migrate. Inventory limits may seem robust however growing companies – especially wholesale distributors – often carry a broad catalog of items from multiple suppliers. These items can easily grow to exceed 14,500.

Inventory limits may seem robust however growing companies – especially wholesale distributors – often carry a broad catalog of items from multiple suppliers. These items can easily grow to exceed 14,500.

Unfortunately, too many companies don’t consider these hard limitations before investing hours of labor into using QuickBooks for their statup.

Our recommendation:

If your company can fit within QuickBooks and you do not expect to grow within the next 5 years then you’re probably on the right path if you are investigating QuickBooks as an option.
If your company expects to grow past $2 million in revenues or will deal with more significant inventory capabilities and pricing then consider skipping the entry-level QuickBooks Pro and looking at alternatives. Your goal should be to avoid a migration in the future just as your company is growing rapidly and can least afford to interrupt their business processes.

To speak with us here at Schulz Consulting and discuss ways in which Sage 100 might be a better fit for your company, please use our contact form. Someone will call or email within 2 hours to discuss any questions.

Sage Payments QuickBooks Integration

November 10, 2012 by Wayne Schulz

I just stumbled across this literature from Sage which indicates their Sage Payments credit and debit card processing integrates to QuickBooks. We don’t have any direct experience with this integration though their literature claims that the integration will “seamlessly flow back into your accounting software”.

QuickBooks Payroll Alive And Well

December 14, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

This morning I received a somewhat confusing email from my local Paychex representative. The subject line of “QuickBooks May Be Discontinued” caught my attention.

There was no message in the body of the email, however, attached was a graphic (see below) that stated QuickPayroll was being discontinued.

Sensing that something wasn’t right and that there’s no way that QuickBooks was going to be discontinued I contacted Intuit for their feedback.

As it turns out the notification, sent by my local Paychex representative, was only partially correct.

QuickBooks Payroll is not being phased out.

An older low-end version product called QuickPayroll is being discontinued in favor of any of Intuit’s other three payroll processing options.

With over 1.2 million payroll customers there’s a slim chance that Intuit’s going to turn their back on the payroll market. In July of 2009 Intuit actually increased their presence in the payroll market with a $170 million acquisition of Paycycle which also brought 85,000 additional small business payrolls under their arm.

Here is Intuit’s response:

Discontinuation of QuickPayroll

As of December 31, 2009, Intuit will discontinue its stand-alone QuickPayroll, a very basic payroll service that did not require the use of QuickBooks. We have notified the QuickPayroll customers (http://payroll.intuit.com/support/kb/kbitem/1012532.html) and have provided them with two offerings so that customers can continue their payroll services with Intuit. With its advertising,

QuickBooks Basic and Enhanced Payroll – payroll services that link to QuickBooks desktop
Intuit QuickBooks Assisted Payroll – payroll service in which Intuit handles the tax forms and payments; payroll integrates with QuickBooks desktop
Intuit Online Payroll – cloud-computing payroll service that runs stand-alone or integrates with QuickBooks desktop and QuickBooks Online.

So rest assured that QuickBooks and QuickBooks Payroll are both alive and well. While we don’t offer services on the Intuit product we wanted to provide this update for any users who might have received the same type of email with mis-information about the status of QuickBooks Payroll.

A full comparison of each option:

http://payroll.intuit.com/compare/compare-quickbooks-payroll.jsp

Sleeter Group QuickBooks Conference November 9-12 Registration Open

May 28, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

If QuickBooks Consulting is your forte – then be sure you register for the Sleeter Group’s annual conference (November 9-12, 2009 in Florida) which has just started early registration.

I attended the conference last year and found it to be extremely helpful in learning more about a product that we compete often against.

You may ask why we would attend a QuickBooks conference for a product that we don’t represent

The answer is simple. No one product can offer a solution that fits every business. Where our solution isn’t the right fit – we often (and regularly) recommend other possible solutions for our prospective clients to investigate. Having a good solid knowledge of the marketplace is what sets Schulz Consulting (in our humble opinion) apart from competitors who might be focussed on only moving boxes of software.

Three Days of Intense QuickBooks Training and Networking

The Sleeter Conference features multiple tracks of QuickBooks learning sessions which are offered on a variety of topics including report writing, add-ons, upgrades, new features, etc.

Each day begins with a keynote address that sets the stage for the day’s events. Intuit addresses the group and can be expected to give a road map and overall discussion about the newer features coming in any expected upgrades.

What I liked the best about the conference was not the Intuit keynotes but rather the impromptu demonstrations given by the technical support managers from Intuit. These informal demos contained loads of information, were totally live, totally interactive and didn’t contain one boring Powerpoint!

Doug Sleeter and his group also offer a great collection of training materials and users guides that any QuickBooks consultant will find helpful.

Highly recommend.

Links:

QuickBooks vs MAS 90 comparison guide now available

October 20, 2008 by Wayne Schulz

Outgrowing QuickBooks?

Thinking about switching to Sage MAS 90 or Sage MAS 200?

Unsure about what the differences between the products are and whether you’ll get enough of a benefit from making the move from Intuit’s Quickbooks software to MAS 90? Then take a look at this new 86 page QuickBooks vs MAS90 document that goes into depth about the differences between these two products.

Here’ a quick breakdown of the included chapters:

Chapter 1 – Introduction

Chapter 2 – Price Value

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
Retail Limitations vs. Value Added Reseller Consulting
Integration
Customization
Enhanced User Interface
Flexibility to Add Modules as You Grow
Core Accounting
Distribution
Manufacturing
Resource and Project Management
Business Intelligence and Customization
Customer Relationship Management
Business Management Applications
Add Users as You Need Them

Chapter 3 — Feature and Workflow Comparison

Feature Comparisons
Available Modules
System Options
Accounts Receivable
Accounts Payable
General Ledger
Inventory
Sales Order
Purchase Order
Payroll
Customizer
Bar Code
Job Cost
Visual Integrator
Workflow Differences
Real-Time and Batch Processing
Cash Basis vs. Accrual Accounting
Audit Trail
Adding Customers and Vendors
Working in More Than One Company
Memorized Transactions vs. “Copy From”
Data Entry
Navigation
Viewing and Editing Open Sales Orders and Quotes
Inventory Costing
Functionality That’s the Right Fit
Alerts vs. Business Alerts
QuickBooks Welcome Window vs. Sage MAS90 Special Edition for QuickBooks Users
Business Insights Dashboard

Chapter 4 — Conversion Expectations

Conversion Specialist Program
Training Requirements
Before You Begin the Conversion Process
What Is Data Migrator?
What Data Can Data Migrator Convert?
Which Versions of QuickBooks Data Will Data Migrator Convert?
What Does the Migration Process Entail?
Printing QuickBooks Reports Before Migration
Data Migrator Checklists
QuickBooks Data Migration Checklist
Sage MAS90 Special Edition for QuickBooks Users Pre-Data Conversion
Checklist
Sage MAS90 Special Edition for QuickBooks Users Post-Data Conversion
Checklist
Data Integrity
Time Expectations
Downtime

Chapter 5 — How to Get the Most Out of Your Software

Implementation
Training
Tutorials
Anytime Learning and Instructor-Led Training
Authorized Training Centers (ATCs)
Certified Trainers (CTs)
Business Partner Training
Support
Certified Support Specialists
Certified Support Centers
Sage Software Support Plans
Conclusion

From the guide:

What are Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)?

GAAP is a widely accepted set of rules, conventions, standards, and
procedures for reporting financial information that are established by
the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Sage MAS90
Special Edition for QuickBooks Users adheres closely to these
important industry guidelines.

For example:

In Sage MAS90 Special Edition for QuickBooks Users, a user
cannot change or delete posted transactions without an audit trail.
With an audit trail of changes to posted transactions, you will
maintain a clean general ledger that will make your accountant
and the IRS much happier!

QuickBooks allows you to use either cash-basis or accrual-basis
accounting methods. Cash-basis accounting does not follow
GAAP. Sage MAS90 Special Edition for QuickBooks Users uses
accrual-basis accounting, which closely follows GAAP.

Although this guide has been designed by Sage Software (developers of Sage MAS 90 and 200) and can understandably be considered a little biased toward their product – it still contains lots of helpful information.

Whenever I review a vendor provided guide such as this I will use it as a starting point. If you can get even one question from it to ask about a prospective new accounting system then it is worth it.

Even though this guide is designed by Sage Software, there is an unusual amount of fact checking that happens before it is published.

For example, there are plenty of charts like this which compare and contrast the available features in QuickBooks and MAS 90.

The guide is available now through your friendly local Sage Business Partner. If you don’t have a friendly (or a local) partner to ask – then hit up the link below for your very own free copy.

Depending upon the version of Sage MAS 90 or 200 that you are considering, you should be asking as well about any promotions that are available for owners of QuickBooks (or other competing products) who are upgrading. Sometimes the promotions are only valid on certain versions of MAS 90 – but you won’t get the discount unless you ask!

Link: QuickBooks Conversion Guide
(PDF)

Character Limitations for QuickBooks Fields

Our recommendation:

Here is Intuit’s response:

You may ask why we would attend a QuickBooks conference for a product that we don’t represent

Three Days of Intense QuickBooks Training and Networking

QuickBooks Consulting Conference

QuickBooks Training Guides and Manuals

Sleeter Group Web Site

Contact Us