If you run a business, you’ve likely heard of both NetSuite and QuickBooks for your business accounting and financial needs. But how do you know which is right for your business?
NetSuite is an enterprise-level platform that is best for large businesses focusing on financial management whereas QuickBooks Online is geared more toward the smaller businesses. It’s easy to use and accessible from anywhere, making it easy to run your business from home or the office.
What is NetSuite?
NetSuite offers one platform that you can customize to meet your business needs. It offers features to help with financial planning and management, order and supply chain management, and warehouse and fulfillment planning.
It covers everything from billing, revenue tracking, budgeting, work order management, quality assurance, and work order management. It’s an enterprise-level program that leaves no stone unturned.
Looking at the financial aspects of the program, it includes accounts receivable and accounts payable forms, cash management tools, payment management tools, and fixed asset management. It also includes tools for recurring billing and subscriptions, tools to help you forecast and budget, as well as pricing support and inventory tracking.
What is QuickBooks Online?
Unlike NetSuite, QuickBooks offers four subscription options to help you scale your business. The features aren’t as in-depth as NetSuite, but for some small businesses, it’s just enough.
SimpleStart
If you’re just looking for simple bookkeeping and accounting support, SimpleStart may be all you need. You can track income and expenses, plan for taxes, run estimates, track sales, manage 1099 employees, invoice, and run general reporting.
Essentials
The Essentials plan includes everything from SimpleStart along with options for time tracking, managing bills, and more robust reporting options. You can also add up to three users with this subscription versus just one.
Plus
This plan builds on the two plans below it and also includes up to 5 users, the ability to forecast profitability of a project, inventory tracking, and even more robust reporting options.
Advanced
As you could probably guess, the Advanced Plan is the most robust out of all of the plans available. You can include three accounts for your business accountants, do batch invoicing, get more business insights and analytics, customize your reporting fields, and have a more simplified bill paying system.
NetSuite vs QuickBooks Online Pricing
Pricing is a key factor when choosing the right accounting system for your business and there is a large difference between the two programs.
NetSuite doesn’t show their pricing because it’s based on custom plans created for each customer. On average, businesses pay $1,000 a month at a minimum for the plan though. The pricing is based on your business’s size, the number of users, and the number of features you need included.
QuickBooks is much cheaper starting at just $25 a month for the Simple Start plan and up to $180 for the Advanced plan. But QuickBooks offers many opportunities for add-ons, so the price could quickly increase if you aren’t careful.
It’s important to note that NetSuite has a year long subscription required with automatic annual renewal whereas QuickBooks has a month-to-month contract that you can cancel at any time.
Other important considerations when looking at pricing is the setup costs. NetSuite has setup costs for professional integration, customizations or migrations. QuickBooks, however doesn’t have any setup fees.
NetSuite Benefits
NetSuite is an all-in-one platform. Most businesses don’t need any other platforms when they choose NetSuite and you can even set it up to integrate with your payment processing so you literally only have one platform to manage.
NetSuite, like QuickBooks is entirely web-based too, which means you can access the platform from any internet-enabled device so you can always be up-to-date on your business reports and information.
QuickBooks Online Benefits
QuickBooks Online has many benefits as well, especially for the small business owner. Most small business owners like it because of its simplicity. If you run a small business there’s no need for the enterprise level support offered by NetSuite. If anything, it would get overwhelming and confusing for small business owners.
QuickBooks instead it is user-friendly, easy to understand, and transparent in its features and costs. Small business owners have no problem onboarding right away and being able to manage their business the way they want with the system.
Customer Service
Understanding a company’s customer service is important before you choose a platform, especially if you need help around the clock as not all platforms offer 24/7 support.
As far as tech support, NetSuite offers 24/7 support and QuickBooks offers support 6 AM – 6 PM Monday-Friday, which is important to note if you foresee yourself needing support on the weekends.
Both platforms offer live online training to help you get set up or to work you through any problems that don’t require a technician. They both also have extensive online databases that answers just about any questions you might have about the programs.
Final Thoughts
At first glance, NetSuite is for large businesses and QuickBooks is for smaller businesses, but it gets deeper than that. If you need a holistic view of your business in one place, NetSuite is where it’s at. QuickBooks offers a more disjointed view of your company because it’s not all encompassing like NetSuite.
Both platforms however, are customizable, user-friendly, and offer what business of each size require. NetSuite might be too overwhelming for a new business and QuickBooks might be too simple or disjointed for a large company looking for a holistic view of their company.