I would like to tell you about why people using QuickBooks Pro/Premier should consider moving to QuickBooks Enterprise. But first, I would like to list the traditional features that make the Enterprise platform unique from the QuickBooks Pro or Premier platform:
- QuickBooks Enterprise was built to work within a networked (multi-user system) therefore it works faster and more stable when working with multiple simultaneous users when compared to Pro or Premier. Additionally QuickBooks Enterprise can have 1 to 30 users; which is limited to 5 with Premier.
- QuickBooks Enterprise was built with windows terminal services (remote desktop) in mind, which means it works great with multiple users connected to the same Windows Server either locally or remotely.
- QuickBooks Enterprise has a database designed for larger data files, where you can surpass 250mb of a company file and still work stable. Additionally there is no 14,500 list limit as Pro/Premier have.
- QuickBooks Enterprise can have up to 15 custom item fields an 12 custom name fields, Pro and premier is limited to 5 and 7. Additionally the custom fields can be set with input specifications and even drop down menus in enterprise.
- Search items within transactions such as Purchase Orders and Invoices. Plus automatic price markup and margin setting to adjust item prices upon cost changes.
- Ability to add Advance Inventory and Advanced Pricing Features*
- QuickBooks Enterprise give you the ability to have two companies open at the same time**
- Enterprise gives you the ability to setup roles and specific task-based user security access. Pro/Premier have a very limited user-permission scheme.
- Us-based technical support and automatically upgrade to the latest versions is available with an active Full Service Plan.
- With Enterprise you can Consolidate reports from multiple QuickBooks files
Those were the CORE features that traditionally makes QuickBooks Enterprise a more robust option that QuickBooks Pro or Premier. Now, I would like to walk your through some the exciting new features exclusive to QuickBooks Enterprise over the last 3 years.
QuickBooks Enterprise 13 (2013)
- Automatic PO: ability to create a Purchase Order automatically to stock up to recommended levels
- Default Classes: ability to automatically assign a class in transactions to a Name (Customer/Vendor/Employee), item, or Account
- Batch Enter Transactions: copy/paste from excel checks, deposits, and credit card charges/credits
- Bin Location Tracking*: inventory sub-locations within one location allows you to track inventory by bin number
- Bar Code Scanning*: basic functionality allowing bar code scanning whenever selling or receiving inventory has been added.
*Advanced Inventory Add-on required
QuickBooks Enterprise 14 (2014)
- Sales Rep and Custom Fields in Vendor Transactions: now you can add a sales rep or custom field to checks, bills, purchase orders, and credit card charges
- New Contractor Reports: new true WIP Summary Report with percentage of completion calculation and Committed Costs by Job Report with calculated costs of open purchase orders and timesheets assigned to jobs
- New Assembly Features for Manufacturers: ability to automatically build assemblies with subassemblies, quickly remove or replace discontinued components in an assembly, and option to auto calculate cost of assembly item based on Bill of Materials
- Added Min and Max reorder points: instead of single reorder point. Auto PO feature suggests quantity to order.
- Improved Batch Enter Transactions: added invoices, credit memos, bills, and vendor credits to the copy/paste feature to enter multiple transactions from spreadsheets
- Advanced Pricing*: now adds Price Rules which supersedes Price Levers and adds advanced pricing functionality such as expiring discounts, quantity discounts and package conditional pricing
*Advanced Pricing Add-on required
*NEW* QuickBooks Enterprise 15 (2015)
- Disallow Negative Quantity on Items: this is a HUGE feature, for the first time you can disallow users to sell (invoice or sales receipt) items that have less quantity that amount being sold.
- Accompanying Negative Item Listing Report: with all the items that are currently on negative quantity on hand, great to catch inventory errors
- Shortage Report: list of all items needed in order to build an assembly that falls short and is marked as pending. Also an Inventory Shortage Detail Report with all pending builds and items required to be able to completed the assembly
- Report Filter enhancements: ability to hide zero quantity on hand and only show full assemblies on Inventory reports
- Transaction Improvements: subtotal on item quantities and custom fields, ability to sort by any column, print footer on last page only, alternate gray lines available when printing/PDF transactions.
- Cost available on Sales Forms: such as Sales orders, Invoices, and Sales Receipts, previously only available on Estimates
- Hide opening balances on items and names: option to disallow users from putting this information when creating new item, customers, or vendors.
- Disallow selling to overdue customers: optional feature to prohibit users from creating invoices for customers that have at least one unpaid invoices that is aging beyond due date.
- Advanced Reporting: fully customizable pivot-style advanced reporting within QuickBooks Enterprise
We are Intuit Resellers, call us for a price quote to upgrade to QuickBooks Enterprise 15: 1-800-819-6307
I also want to say that I am a huge fan of the Sleeter blog. Charlie Russel does a great job getting into some of the details of these new features, I recommend these blog articles on QuickBooks 2015 improvements:
- http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2014/09/new-quickbooks-2015-features-versions/
- http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2014/09/quickbooks-2015-enterprise-transaction-enhancements/
- http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2014/09/quickbooks-2015-advanced-reporting/
- http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2014/09/quickbooks-2015-enterprise-inventory-enhancements/
Hector Garcia, CPA
Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor
