Comparing QuickBooks vs. Dynamics 365 Business Central

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, in this post we’ll examine the strengths and weaknesses of both solutions and how they compare.

QuickBooks at a Glance

The most universal accounting software available in the market, QuickBooks helps small and medium-sized businesses execute basic accounting and financial management tasks like generating invoices, tracking expenses, managing payroll, and receiving payments.

Even without an accounting background, QuickBooks ease of use and different plans to fit different budgets and requirements with increased functionality available while moving up the chain is part of why it is one of the most popular accounting software on the market.

Dynamics 365 Business Central at a Glance

Microsoft’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for small to midsized businesses to automate and streamline business processes, Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC) is designed to adapt to ag rowing company and give organizations the flexibility to customize the application to fit their current business needs.

Much more than just accounting and financial management, Business Central allows organizations to connect sales, services, finance, and operations and manage their entire business from one platform.

Dynamics 365 BC provides companies with comprehensive tools and workflows to:

· Connect functions across the enterprise

· Integrate operations

· Automate supply chains

· Improve customer interactions

· Make data-driven decisions to accelerate growth and revenue

QuickBooks vs. Dynamics 365 Business Central

Features

While QuickBooks is solely for accounting, Dynamics 365 BC offers a lot more features and capabilities as it is a full-scale ERP solution. Beyond finance and accounting, there’s modules for managing inventory, projects, customer relationships, HR, and more.

Scalability

QuickBooks is excellent for smaller businesses but once a company grows – new products/services, more employees, additional companies, etc. – it is unable to handle the complexities of additional business processes.

On the other hand, Dynamics 365 BC can grow with your business to handle business processes such as inventory management, project management, reporting, and forecasting. It’s easily scalable and can be customized to serve any unique business or industry requirements.

Automation & Integration

Compared to Dynamics 365 Business Central, QuickBooks lacks capabilities and connectivity. Being limited to accounting functionality, businesses rely on third-party add-on which increases the cost of the overall solution, requires additional maintenance and training, and further complicates business processes.

With Advanced Integration with other Dynamics 365 or Microsoft/Office 365 solutions, Business Central connects workflows across accounting, sales, purchasing, inventory, and distribution; users can automate the business operations for a streamlined process.

D365 BC also supports third-party integrations through AppSource but those applications – as with all apps in the Microsoft universe – are built on a common data model so businesses are not dealing with compatibility issues, complex configurations, or middleware when non-standard features are needed.

Security & Audit Controls

QuickBooks easy setup also means fewer accounting and audit controls. As more users require access to the system, weak user permissions can limit some users or provide too much access to others. QuickBooks also fails to keep a consistent audit trail of changes to master records or user logins. And with some activities being done outside the system in spreadsheets or other avenues, this can be a huge issue for regulatory compliance.

With Dynamics 365 Business Central, businesses have more granular options to limit functions by permission, groups, dimensions, or accounts. For additional security, organizations can also enable built-in workflows. BC also offers a robust audit trail that tracks changes made to data with a historical log of activities, providing protection against errors and employee mismanagement.

Reporting & Analytics

QuickBooks provides basic reporting and generic insights but requires third-party add-ons to extend its reporting capabilities. With the ability to consolidate date from multiples sources, Dynamics 365 BC with

embedded Power BI has the flexibility and customizability for advanced reporting with dashboards and real-time data visualizations.

Final Thoughts

The main differentiator here is the comprehensive nature of Business Central. QuickBooks is an obvious choice for businesses that are just getting off the ground with only simple accounting requirements, but it may not come as a surprise that many businesses that started with QuickBooks eventually migrate to Dynamics 365 Business Central to scale and manage their business operations within a single platform.

If you’re ready to integrate your financials with the rest of your business and streamlines processes, reach out to our team to learn more about our QuickBooks to Business Central migration process and services.