Forwardly vs. QuickBooks Online vs. Vena

QBO is a great solution for small and midsize companies. If the goal is to record all transactions and pull reliable financial reports, QBO is a great option. QBO is also a great solution if most operations are run in a system like Ramp. It syncs well with systems like that and turns the data into something management can use to make decisions. QBO is great because so many people use it. It is easy to find training online, and many people have experience with it.

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Using Vena's tools for budgeting, forecasting, and budget variance reports, I have saved hundreds of hours of work, and that increases every year. Vena is perfect when there is a single report template that needs to go to every manager with their own department's data - rather than manually copying and pasting each of them, I create a template in Vena and assign security settings to show each manager only their data. No individual emailing needed either; I just let everyone know their report is in Vena. Days of work are now reduced to hours. When doing forecasting, all the budget and actual data is easily available and can be referenced by other reports. Vena eliminates needing to keep multiple Excel sheets in sync and manually updating each one when a change is made. All I need to do is click Refresh, and it's done.

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• Workflows for accounts payable invoice review are terrific.
• Bill payment allows you to pay vendors online via ACH or check without having to write a physical check, which reduces admin time.
• The cloud based login lends well to a remote or hybrid work environment for staff.
• QuickBooks Online allows you to pre-configure vendors' general ledger expense accounts. This helps with general ledger coding accuracy and consistency.
• QuickBooks Online integrates with Rippling HRIS, Coast, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, etc., which lends well to an efficient month-end closing and reduced administrative time.

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• The Admin function of Vena, being able to set up the users in the user categories and the different groups and assigning the groups and the task bindings, is particularly easy and very helpful because as we have so many different departments and disciplines in our organization, we do need to establish pretty specific user access so this process works really well for us.
• Running reports in Vena is fairly easy, and we do enjoy being able to just push a button and get some budget versus actuals.

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• I dislike that the online bill pay option through QuickBooks is required for their invoicing.
• The auto-fill portion of the customer setup, specifically the company name, is listed, but it also auto-fills in the name portion, which is inconvenient and time-consuming to remove.

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• Create an bottom-line functionality.
• Have another license between power user and contributor that allows building reports that aren't ad hoc, but don't have all the admin rights of a power user.
• Have a session on best in class Workforce Planning prior to implementation.

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It like the product 'right out of the box' and I trust Intuit will continually improve it over the years based on my experience with their desktop products. The large providers of Apps makes customizing the entire package relatively easy and seamless for a wide variety of business types.

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Vena has become an integral part of finance and our daily process. Without it we would take longer to prepare results and decisions will be delayed. Vena has given the whole organization more visibility of results and budgets so that all departments participate more actively in managing their budgets rather than it being the sole responsibility of finance.

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Beyond being overkill for a small org's needs, QBO is constantly stealing screen real estate and attention by hammering users for account upgrades, connecting to one of their approved consultants or buying add-ons. The idea of using a simple configurable bookeeping and light accounting interface is completely missing. At the very least, we should be able to hide functions like inventory that we will never use.

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I love this product. We integrate all of our financial needs between finance and the operations team so that we have real time data being looked at all of the time. Our operations can reach out and be able to discuss possible issues or variances at any time of the month and leads us to be able to have smoother month end closes.

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We have rarely had outages in the last 10 years. I can only recall 2 times in the last 10 years where we were not able to access our client files.

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Vena is seemingly always available. They plan maintenance windows well in advance and always off hours (typically over a weekend) and communicate clearly throughout maintenance about what will be affected. Over 5 years of using the product, I can only remember one time when the platform was unavailable (I believe due to an underlying server hosting issue from their provider), and they resolved the issue and had everything up and running again within 8 hours.

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Everything process has its bugs lately with the new interface. Nothing has worked smoothly since this all began last month.

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The performance is dependent on how much data and calculations are involved and how complex the security settings are. A simple template or report loads in seconds. A complex template or report can take a while. If there are many users with complex security settings, that will be a factor in the load time.

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In my experience, most representatives keep me on the phone for hours, literally, for a single issue and then usually cannot resolve it satisfactorily. I have 10 open cases that need resolution and, in my experience, there has been NO follow-up communication on any of them.

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If I had to rate the overall support for Vena based on my experiences, I would give it a 9 out of 10. The support team is very responsive, providing best assistance during both the implementation phase and ongoing use of the Vena. They have been proactive in offering training resources and addressing me very well, which significantly enhances the user experience and overall satisfaction with the Vena.

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This is the best way to learn and buy-in. The in person effect gives students both a hands on approach but an instruction to be there to customize assistance and understanding. In person also builds greater buy in with your future team on creators. However if your audience is better at on line learning this is another good option.

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The training was structured as a group training to learn the basics of creating a data model and mapping a template. While we had nearly 10 participants, I was the only actual implementer so we probably didn't actually need the training and could have just learned the initial skills from the implementation consultant. Two years later, when we hired a new team member, they completed several modules in Vena Academy (a self paced learning course) which allowed them to get up to speed on the basics with just a bit of supplemental guidance from me as our existing admin.

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The person in charge of QB needs to be very accurate with record keeping and is recommended to stay on top of tasks. The biggest issue we have is reconciliation, and those issues occur only when too much time has occurred between reconciliations

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The Vena consultant had great knowledge of both the Vena solution and Excel and Excel functions. He was able to help suggest ways to build our templates that met our requirements using Excel functions we had not previously considered using. And we have been able to use the Excel information he provided in other ways outside of Vena. He was very patient and flexible as we learned the Vena tool and created templates

As a freelance bookkeeper, the Desktop version of QuickBooks Online doesn't allow for ease of access from any device. Having to be on a computer with the software downloaded creates additional work to gain access to all required filings etc. Also, I personally find the linking functionality on the Online version to be much more streamlined and user friendly.

Prior to using Vena, I have worked with Excel-based budgeting and reporting processes, as well as other property management and financial reporting systems such as Yardi and Entrata. These tools provided access to financial data, but Vena has been more focused on streamlining budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis by centralizing information and improving collaboration.

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As we have grown along our professional path, we have also expanded our use of QB. The scalability is easy and features seem to be waiting for you until you need them. We have increased profits by over 10x from our first year in business to the current and have yet to find a reason to look elsewhere

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Vena solutios is a software that provides robust tools that help different departments in their statistics and we can visualize a lot of promising and visually attractive data. Vena Solutions' level of scalability is high and sustainable over time thanks to the fabulous technical support that is ready to help us at all times

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• QuickBooks has given us a useful portal by which to get an overview of our financials.
• QuickBooks has given us a relatively easy way to send out invoices quickly and efficiently.
• Due to the customization limitations on QuickBooks, we've had to get creative in third-party implementations to better represent our brand and to track financials.

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• Automated monthly financial statements saves us 3 hours a month.
• Moving reporting away from IT has begun to save hours of IT involvement, which will only grow as we shift more reports to Vena. This frees up IT to work on more important IT initiatives.
• Using budget templates saved hours of copy and paste time when gathering inputs from each department.

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info