Basic accounting software packages help small businesses organize their bookkeeping and accounting functions during the early years. But as businesses grow, those small packages will create operational issues that will necessitate the move to a broader, more powerful system.

This blog post discusses five signs you've outgrown your accounting software solution.

Sign #1: You Use Too Many Tools

Basic accounting software wasn’t designed to accommodate a complex or rapidly-expanding business. If your people are using disparate tools – spreadsheets, a CRM tool, an inventory management system, etc. – to handle the workload, you need a more sophisticated solution that offers a centralized, integrated information database.

Sign #2: Too Much Data is Doubling Your Workload

As your customer base grows, the difficulty of tracking the specifics for each customer and their relationship with you will become more difficult. If your salespeople are bogged down by reporting customer data in multiple systems, your accounting software is failing, and they’re inputting the same data two or three times, you're wasting valuable resources – and probably making input errors. You need a single system that offers one-time data entry.

Sign #3: You have Too Many People for the System to Handle Simultaneously

If you've grown to the point where 20 or more people need access to the accounting system, it's probable that you've outgrown basic software. With too many users, basic accounting solutions suffer from poor performance and outages when too many people access the system at once. If your employees are often complaining about the system being down or slow, you need an upgrade.

Sign #4: Your Staff Isn’t Sure the System Can Handle New and Complex Requirements

A growing business puts more demands on its software, and if your employees are questioning whether or not your current system can handle those new demands, you've likely exceeded the system's capabilities. 

Sign #5: You Can’t Do Everything ‘On the Go’

If you have a customer emergency, does someone have to go to the office to handle it? When at the airport, can you log into your system and gather relevant data about the customers and suppliers you're going to meet that day? Can you immediately pull up your company’s cash flow position to decide if you should support a newly suggested sales incentive program? If you don’t have fast access to the right data in all these instances, your current system needs replacing because, very simply, you're missing opportunities to grow.

In the end, basic accounting software is a fine choice while you're gaining a foothold in the market. As competition heats up, however, and stakeholders seek higher performance from your organization, you need to leave the basics behind and move to a complete enterprise system that's integrated, fast, and easy to use.

At Southeast Computer Solutions, we specialize in those systems. Contact us today for more information.