To keep growing, businesses must adapt and transform their systems in a way that embraces change at the right time. When it comes to accounting, it’s crucial that your choice of financial software not only allows for but also promotes business growth–instead of obstructing your business’ journey to greater heights.
Basic accounting software and packages like Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks and Tally can support some financial needs of growing businesses, but only to a point. These accounting software choices typically focus on the fundamentals, like simple inventory, accounts receivables, payroll, tax and reporting. However, most are geared towards the smaller end of the business spectrum.
Xero, despite the elasticity that its cloud-based platform provides, has always focused its functions and services on single-entity businesses, which can create difficulties when trying to integrate reports across a business with more stores.
MYOB, in recent years, has indeed released its own cloud-based offerings to make scaling a little easier, but these basic accounting features are still tailored towards start-ups, freelancers and sole traders. A business can only grow as fast as its software allows.
When a business graduates from basic accounting software to a more comprehensive, end-to-end approach to financial management, it immediately gains real-time visibility into all its financial data, encouraging better decisions at the right time.
The right choice of complete financial management software not only provides better intelligence but also gives businesses the tools to reap greater productivity and profits even as they push into new territory.
Finding the right financial solution
Basic accounting software typically addresses the “businesses of one”: one business owner, one line of business and one operating market. But when a business starts to grow, its systems inevitably become more complex.
Products expand in both range and inventory volume. New business structures like subsidies, branches or retail outlets emerge from the centre of operations. The growing business deals with more customers, employees and transactions, in more channels than ever before.
The business of one becomes a business of so much more– and it needs more support to match. As such, basic accounting software often struggles to deliver the expanded breadth and depth of financial capabilities needed to provide that enhanced level of support.
Instead of being forced to create multiple instances of accounting software and rely on manual and spreadsheet workarounds, growing businesses have an alternative: take advantage of financial management software that caters to the more complex finances of larger businesses, but with a cost structure and flexibility that meet them on their terms.
Financial management platforms combine core finance and accounting functions with strong compliance management that also reduces back-office costs at the same time. With features such as General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Tax Management, Fixed Assets Management and Cash Management to name a few, they help finance leaders design, transform, and streamline their processes and operations with full automation and integration.
NetSuite’s financial management platform, for example, provides end-to-end lifecycle management for plants, property, and equipment by integrating asset management with accounting, thereby eliminating the manual effort and multiple spreadsheets that often plague businesses growing too fast for their basic accounting software.