QuickBooks vs. Dynamics 365 Business Central: Which One to Pick?

If you’re looking for a solution to manage day-to-day financial transactions and accounting for your organization, you’ve probably come across solutions like QuickBooks and Dynamics 365 Business Central. Both are well-known business management solutions. However, the similarities end there, so let’s take an in-depth look at the strengths and weaknesses of both solutions and how they compare.

Comparing QuickBooks and Dynamics 365 Business Central

What is QuickBooks?

QuickBooks, developed by Intuit, is a well-known accounting solution that helps small businesses and non-profit organizations. It allows companies to handle various financial tasks, including invoicing customers, paying bills, generating reports, and preparing taxes.

QuickBooks Advantages

• Solid accounting solution – If you’re looking for basic accounting and financial capabilities, you can do all of that with QuickBooks and not require separate software to generate invoices, control payroll, or manage job costing.

• Easy to use – QuickBooks is intended to be intuitive and easy to understand, even for those without accounting or financial backgrounds. What’s more, a new user set-up function provides users with the virtual orientation practice, and most of its capabilities can be initialized at a single mouse click.

• Multiple deployment options – QuickBooks comes with various deployment options and a basic deployment process. The solution could be run in a single-tenant configuration, enabling users to shift the application from a private to a public cloud.

• Multiple versions available – This software solution is available in different versions: QuickBooks Online Plus, Enterprise Solutions Platinum, Enterprise Solutions Gold, and Enterprise Solutions Silver. According to the budget and business requirements, companies can opt for any option and get increased functionalities while moving up the chain, such as advanced reporting, payroll, inventory, and pricing.

QuickBooks Disadvantages

• Does not grow with your business – QuickBooks is not scalable and won’t grow with your business. Start-ups with limited data to process can benefit from this solution temporarily. But when the number of monthly allotted business transactions exceeds a dedicated figure or multiple users access the system simultaneously, QuickBooks begins to slow down.

• Limited integration opportunities – QuickBooks may disappoint users who plan to connect it with other tools down the road as their business grows. This software doesn’t easily integrate with many other apps. Users may need to use third-party add-ons to manage and analyze customer interactions and data, thereby increasing the overall cost of the solution and demanding additional training and maintenance.

• Limitations with the number of users and data – This software also has a limit on the number of records that users can store and maintain in the system. QuickBooks can only manage a specific number of business transactions and employees. Users have to remove the already existing data from the record or overwrite the previous data to add more.

What is Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365BC) is Microsoft’s comprehensive cloud-based enterprise resource planning solution for small to midsized businesses to automate and streamline business processes. It is designed to adapt to a growing company and gives organizations the flexibility to customize the application to fit their current business needs.

Going beyond just financial capabilities, Business Central provides companies with comprehensive tools and workflows to connect functions across the enterprise, integrate operations, automate the supply chain, improve customer interactions, and make data-driven decisions that accelerate growth and revenue.

Dynamics 365 Business Central Advantages

Comprehensive business solution – Dynamics 365 Business Central allows you to manage your entire business from one platform. It connects your sales, services, finance, and operations so you can deliver results faster.

• Effective financial management – This solution connects data across inventory, purchasing, sales, and accounting and automates financial processes to generate accurate and faster results. In addition, it keeps track of real-time financial performance using its in-built Power BI dashboards.

• Helps you manage projects – This ERP solution enables companies to create, manage, and track customer projects by monitoring progress. Businesses can monitor resource levels, track invoicing for clients against decided expenses, and make intelligent decisions with a real-time understanding of the complete project statuses.

• Optimizes your supply chain – This solution can maximize supply chain efficiencies with built-in Power BI and intelligence dashboards. Businesses can get a complete inventory assessment to fulfill the order timely and optimize resources and manufacturing capacity to improve production schedules and cater to customer demands.

• Offers advanced integrations – Business Central integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications and other Microsoft products, such as Office 365, Microsoft Flow, etc. Moreover, this platform provides organizations with two-way sync as a bonus.

• Has mobile-enabled functionality – This solution is accessible either on-site or from the cloud, enabling employees to connect or work irrespective of their location or devices; they all get the same user experience and access to the same tools anywhere, anytime.

Dynamics 365 Business Central Disadvantages

• Payroll deployment is pricier – Compared to QuickBooks, Dynamics 365 Business Central has a pricier payroll deployment. However, doing payroll as part of an ERP solution gives you more visibility and lets you break it down by projects, departments, or any other dimension.

• More complex for businesses with less than five employees – As a fully-functional ERP solution, Business Central may be too complex for smaller companies and start-ups with less than five employees, who may not need that much functionality initially.

QuickBooks vs. Dynamics 365 Business Central: At a Glance

Features

 

Dynamics 365 Business Central offers a lot more features and capabilities than QuickBooks. This is because it is an ERP solution. So while it has modules for finance and accounting, it also has everything you’d need to manage a growing business. QuickBooks, on the other hand, is solely for accounting.

Scalability

 

QuickBooks is an excellent fit for smaller businesses. But once the company grows, handling businesses processes become more complex with this software. On the other hand, Business Central is a robust ERP system that expands with the growing business needs.

Ease of Automation

 

Compared to Dynamics 365 Business Central, QuickBooks lacks capabilities and connectivity. Business Central, however, connects workflows across accounting, sales, purchasing, inventory, and distribution. Therefore, users can automate the business operations for a streamlined process within the all-in-one dashboard.

Security Controls

QuickBooks’ security protocol is ideal for small businesses. But for a growing company with more users requiring access to the system, this software’s basic security system fails to keep up. However, with Business Central, organizations get more granular control options and can enable built-in workflows for additional security measures.

Auditing

QuickBooks fails to keep an account of changes to master records or logins/logoffs. On the other hand, Business Central’s audit trail is quite robust, providing more protection to businesses against errors and employee theft.

Reporting

While QuickBooks underperforms when it comes to reporting functions and providing generic and abstract insights, Business Central works smoothly with Microsoft Power BI and Jet Reports to allow for advanced reporting and analytics.

Real-time Data Analysis

QuickBooks only provides a quick snapshot of sales performance over a limited period. However, by leveraging the Azure platform, Business Central offers incredible insights into business activities and trends in real-time, helping users prioritize sales leads based on revenue potential.

QuickBooks vs. Dynamics 365 Business Central: Which One to Choose?

So which solution is better for your organization? The answer depends on your business needs and requirements. QuickBooks could be right for you if your company only requires an entry-level accounting system or has less than five employees.

You should choose Dynamics 365 Business Central if you have business needs that go beyond basic accounting, perform more than a thousand transactions a month, and need to handle deferred revenue. A robust solution like Business Central will help you keep up as your company grows and expands. Plus, your organization will increase its efficiency and productivity by integrating your accounting with Outlook, Microsoft 365, and other business departments.

To learn more about Dynamics 365 Business Central, here are some articles and resources below.