QuickBooks and NetSuite are powerful platforms designed to accommodate the financial management and enterprise resource planning (ERP) needs of businesses. However, each has a distinct set of features, and there may come a time when a company decides to switch platforms—which involves a complex migration process.
Below, we look at the:
- Main reasons organizations migrate from QuickBooks to NetSuite and vice versa
- Steps involved
- Roadblocks to watch for
Why Migrate from QuickBooks to NetSuite?
Most businesses start to entertain switching from QuickBooks to NetSuite because they believe their operations have outgrown QuickBooks’ capabilities. Often, that isn’t really the case, and considering add-ons or an upgrade from QuickBooks Online to Enterprise may be a better move.
But sometimes, a move to NetSuite is warranted. There are several factors to consider when assessing whether to migrate from QuickBooks to NetSuite.
Scalability
As businesses grow, their operations may evolve toward those of an enterprise-level organization, with higher volumes of transactions and complex customer relationship management (CRM) needs. NetSuite is designed to handle high-capacity transactions for enterprises.
Scope/Advanced Features
NetSuite is designed to provide large operations with financial management, ecommerce, inventory management, CRM, and ERP, all within the same application.
Customization
NetSuite aims to provide maximum customization without needing to turn to third-party applications and additional integrations. It’s a module-based system that’s highly configurable but can also accommodate add-ons and integrations where needed.
Reporting
NetSuite has more robust reporting options for large-scale companies that can fully utilize that data.
Industry-Specific Configurations
NetSuite provides industry-specific versions. Companies in specific industries may choose to switch to NetSuite to take advantage of the following unique feature sets.
Apparel & Footwear Edition
This edition helps you maintain a centralized view of all your apparel and footwear inventory, customer orders, and unified omnichannel commerce, with CRM to help you maintain a close connection to customers.
Financials First Edition
This edition is ideal for companies scaling quickly and needing their financial management platform to scale seamlessly with their operations.
Food & Beverage Edition
Food and beverage brands can use this edition to connect their ecommerce, financial, supply chain, and order management functions.
Health & Beauty Edition
This configuration will link a health or beauty company’s front-end and back-end systems for maximum efficiency.
Manufacturing Edition
This edition helps manufacturers make the right decisions backed by data. It provides a real-time, centralized view of the company’s procurement, production, and financial data.
Media & Publishing Edition
This edition helps organizations integrate sales with back-office financials, accounting, and management. You can track ad campaigns through fulfillment and verification, invoice, manage subscriptions, and use deep analytics to improve operations.
Nonprofit Edition
Nonprofits can use this edition to maximize efficiency with powerful fiscal management features and settings specific to nonprofit organizations.
Retail Edition
This edition provides real-time access to a retail company’s financial and operational performance.
Software Edition
The software industry edition includes revenue recognition automation and management for financials, projects, subscriptions, and CRM. It also has unique ecommerce features to help you sell your software online.
Starter Products Edition
This configuration is ideal for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies and products-based operations with accounting, inventory, order, sales, and purchase management needs.
Starter Services Edition
NetSuite is known for catering to enterprise-level organizations, but for smaller operations, this edition is ideal. It helps rapidly growing service-based organizations manage their accounting, project management, time and expense entry, billing, and project reporting.
Wholesale Distribution Edition
Wholesale distributors often rely upon numerous disconnected systems. This edition helps bring together all of the financials and operational processes necessary for wholesale distribution.
Why Convert NetSuite to QuickBooks?
What about those who want to make the opposite move? Here are the top reasons companies switch from NetSuite to QuickBooks.
Cost
NetSuite comes with higher licensing and implementation costs. QuickBooks Enterprise may be a better match for large companies that don’t need all of NetSuite’s features and are looking to save on costs.
Users can still add specific features they need, so any extra costs are directly tied to features the organization knows are benefiting it.
Ease of Use
Companies may opt to migrate to QuickBooks Enterprise if they need a more streamlined version of the advanced features found in NetSuite. If QuickBooks Enterprise can fulfill all of a company’s needs, it can also simplify that company’s financial management processes.
Flexible ERP
People don’t usually associate QuickBooks with ERP, but QuickBooks Enterprise does include ERP features. NetSuite’s ERP may be more extensive, but some businesses may prefer the simple, customizable ERP features of QuickBooks Enterprise.
Industry Focus
Like NetSuite, QuickBooks Enterprise is available in industry-specific editions.
Organizations may view specific features as powerful incentives to switch from NetSuite to QuickBooks.
Accountant Edition
This edition gives users key accounting tools for advanced reconciliation, client data review for fixing record errors and updating lists, and a custom file management feature to assist in storing client passwords, organization, and batch file processes, along with advanced accounting reporting and analysis.
Contractor Edition
The contractor edition allows users to track job costs in real time, provides field service management through worker mobile devices that sync with QuickBooks, and offers numerous additional contractor-specific payroll, cash flow, reporting, charts, and analytics features.
Manufacturing & Wholesale Edition
This edition provides customized charts specific to wholesale and manufacturing, bill of materials (BOM) tracking, tailored inventory visualization, vendor shipping features, and unique management of backorders, barcodes, ecommerce, and reporting.
Nonprofit Edition
This edition offers advanced reporting and analytics specific to the needs of nonprofits, along with a unified chart of accounts for fundraising, employee salaries, assets, and more. It provides nonprofits with Microsoft Office integration, unique permissions management, donor tracking, and advanced bill and workflow approvals.
Professional Services Edition
The professional services edition lets users track cost projections compared to results while also tracking the time spent on specific projects. It provides flexible payroll, branded invoicing, tailored receipt management, and robust control over cash flow.
Retail Edition
The retail edition provides uniquely tailored ecommerce management features, including direct integration with top online stores and marketplaces. This edition handles inventory count regardless of how many channels you need to use, advanced payroll, advanced pricing features, contactless payments, enhanced search, and retail-specific tracking of sales, inventory, and customers.
Wholesale & Distribution Edition
With this edition, companies can optimize purchasing and pricing, manage inventory and orders, and benefit from numerous complex features designed for wholesale and distribution. This includes landed cost calculations, centralized vendor data, specific reporting and analytics, and various other customizations and integrations.
Converting QuickBooks to NetSuite and Vice Versa
Whether you’re considering a QuickBooks to NetSuite migration or vice versa, there are several essential steps you’ll need to follow alongside the specific processes for each platform.
7 Key Steps in Platform Migration
The following are the general steps to take when moving from one platform to another.
1. Back up Data
Make a complete backup of all your data before migrating to a new platform. If you run into any issues along the way, this ensures you haven’t lost any critical information.
2. Prioritize Key Data
The smoothest migration process relies on planning out each stage carefully. Determine the order of priority for your data and consider executing the migration in phases based on this order.
3. Map Data Fields
Every type of data belongs to a specific field, so you will need to map all the data fields in your current platform to the corresponding fields in your new platform.
4. Cleanse Data
This critical component of a successful migration involves checking all of your data for errors, missing information, and misalignment with fields as well as standardizing data to fit the right fields in your new layout and removing any excess data that doesn’t belong.
5. Import Data
Once you’ve fully prepared your data for migration, you will import your data into the new system.
6. Validate and Test Data
A thorough review of your migrated data helps eliminate problems down the road. Validate all of your data, looking for incorrect entries and other errors.
7. Train Your Team
Finally, you’ll need to train your team to use the new system.
Converting QuickBooks to NetSuite
Now, let’s look at the specific steps you’ll need to take when migrating data from QuickBooks to NetSuite.
Exporting Data from QuickBooks
Once you’re ready to migrate your data, you can export the data from QuickBooks as follows:
- Go to “Settings.”
- Select “Tools.”
- Click “Export Data.”
You will want to follow this process for both your reports and your lists. The exported files will be in Excel CSV format.
Importing Data into NetSuite
Before you begin importing data into NetSuite, you’ll need to load all of your segment master records, like the general ledger (GL), departments, classes, locations, and items. You will load all of your customer, vendor, and employee records.
To import your CSVs exported from QuickBooks, follow these steps:
- Go to “Setup” in NetSuite.
- Choose “Import/Export.”
- Select “Import CSV Records.”
- Select your CSV file and click “Open.”
You will map your data to each corresponding field.
Converting NetSuite to QuickBooks
Similar to the process of migrating from QuickBooks to NetSuite, you will first be exporting your data from NetSuite and then importing that data into QuickBooks.
Exporting Data from NetSuite
You have a few options for how to export your data from NetSuite.
Option 1
Inside the NetSuite application, you can:
- Go to “Setup.”
- Choose “Import/Export.”
- Select “Export Tasks.”
- Choose “Full CSV Export.”
Option 2
Developers can write a SOAP web services program to access records.
Option 3
You can use SuiteAnalytics Connect to grab the data through an ODBC, JDBC, or ADO.NET driver and load it to Excel.
Importing Data into QuickBooks Enterprise
There are multiple ways to import data into QuickBooks Enterprise.
Option 1
You can import data from Excel using the following steps:
- Go to “File.”
- Select “Utilities.”
- Select “Import.”
- Choose “Excel Files.”
QuickBooks’ Excel import toolkit provides comprehensive guidance with best practices, examples, and a reference guide.
Option 2
You can paste your data from Excel.
Option 3
You can import IIF, or Intuit Interchange Format, files. This is an ASCII text, TSV (Tab-Separated Value) file format, and will require first converting your NetSuite data from its original format. Then you’ll follow the same process as in Option 1, choosing IIF as your file type.
QuickBooks also provides an IFF import kit with detailed guidelines.
Option 4
You can use one of several third-party programs used for NetSuite-to-QuickBooks migration.
Challenges and Common Pitfalls
The most common issues teams run into during migration involve data inconsistency and mapping errors. While these often occur due to a lack of knowledge about correlated fields and a lack of familiarity with the new platform, they can also result from general fatigue over lengthy migrations.
Best Practices for a Smooth Conversion
To ensure a smooth, error-free transition from QuickBooks to NetSuite or vice versa, remember to:
- Back everything up first
- Make a comprehensive plan
- Ensure data accuracy before migration
- Test and validate data after migration
- Continue to monitor your new platform
Use a Professional Migration Service
Migrating from one platform to another is no small task. It’s worth partnering with an expert in both QuickBooks and NetSuite to make sure every step is carefully planned and executed. Even when errors or other obstacles occur, you can rest assured they have the know-how to overcome those issues.
Talk to Fourlane
Our team of experts has helped thousands of businesses with their platforms. We’re there every step of the way, from initial consultation to planning, setup, and implementation, and can even help train your team on your new system.
Don’t leave your migration up to chance. Learn about Fourlane’s migration service and get in touch today!
