Halloween Special: 13 Nightmares when Outgrowing an Accounting System

In honor of Halloween this year, Vision33 has decided to put together a list of the most horrifying small business nightmares our clients faced before switching to SAP Business One. Read the list below to see what our clients went through and how your spreadsheets, QuickBooks, Simply Accounting, or other basic accounting systems can be the cause of your very own business horror story:

1. Eerily slow system performance
   Basic accounting software is very limited and isn’t built to scale as your company grows. Financial transactions, inventory management, and a higher number of users can be unavailable or slow your system to a crawl. 
   
   
2. Inventory vanishes into thin air
   With basic accounting software, inventory management is a very manual process. It becomes difficult to get an accurate count of your inventory, and sometimes, items you thought you had just seem to disappear without proper tracking. Spooky! 
   
   
3. The operations straitjacket
   Every day can feel like a nightmare when you’re tied up doing operational tasks and don’t have the right tools in place to get the job done. A limited feature set can stall your company’s progress and prevent you from reaching your company growth goals.
   
   
4. Incomplete Reporting
   Data analysis can be tedious on its own, but it becomes so much more torturous when you are unable to access a specific report. It is also much more prone to human error.
   
   
5. Your money is always tied up
   Basic accounting software doesn’t help you manage your cash flow. Your money is all tied up, leaving you restless and afraid. How do you know who owes you money, who you owe and if you have the cash available to buy more supplies? You struggle to catch up as billing and payments becomes more and more difficult to maintain.
   
   
6. Duplicate data entry
   This might seem more like Groundhog Day versus Halloween but you could probably be utilizing your employees talents for better use. Instead, they are led by your fractured systems and forced to manually re-enter business data in multiple locations. This leaves all your aggressive goals and plans in the corner, collecting dust and cobwebs while you are tied up with data entry.
   
   
7. Manual processes
   Without automated processes in place, your company information is vulnerable to human error and misinformation.
   
   
8. Zombie employees
   Because there are so many manual processes in place, a select few of your dedicated employees are stuck working long hours, doing repetitive tasks entering information into different systems. All those long hours and endless cups of coffee can turn them into zombies, leaving them unsatisfied and less effective! 
   
   
9. Executives are making blind decisions
   With no access to accurate, real-time information, you might as well be running your company with a blindfold on. You are leading your company into the dark when you could be making confident, more informed decisions for your company if you had access to KPIs and custom reports. 
   
   
10. Scaring your customers away
    Customers are not very forgiving when a company makes a mistake to begin with. Without a proper CRM system, you have very little insight into their buying patterns. That, combined with separate systems makes it very easy to make a mistake where your customer is concerned. As your competitors begin to go that extra mile based on their customer data, your customers will slowly start to turn away from you and towards them. 
    
    
11. No application integration
    Basic accounting programs cannot integrate with 3^rdparty applications and industry-specific compliance customizations you may need as your business grows. As your company becomes more successful, your problems just seem to get worse as you continue to stitch your applications together like Frankenstein. 
    
    
12. Sales is running rampant
    Opportunity management is almost nonexistent without a proper CRM system in place to track their progress throughout the sales cycle, leaving them unarmed against your monster competitors.
    
    
13. Nowhere else to go!
    As your company continues to grow, your company doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to grow your company and remain stable. Your company continues to grow in a confined space leaving you two choices: remain small, or break free of your current confines and implement an integrated software solution.

For more information about how SAP Business One, an integrated ERP system designed specifically for growing small to midsized businesses and subsidiaries, can help you overcome these business growth terrors, download our SAP Business One Information Kit.