LessAccounting vs. Microsoft Dynamics AX (discontinued)

If you are an entrepreneur and you want to focus on building your business, start with Less Accounting. It's a full-blown accounting system that has a simple implementation and it can connect to your financial accounts to automate many parts of the business. Our 1st four years of business, we worked without a bookkeeper at all due to the level of automation.

It is not limited in any regard and is not simply for invoicing or tracking hours, it more or less does everything. Perhaps one area that it wouldn't be ideal is for firms that need to have more rigid accounting, with charts of accounts etc for industries that are audited or highly regulated.

Incentivized

It integrates fully with the other Microsoft software we use daily, and this coordination speeds up our work and gives us the agility to run easily. For example, in a purchase inquiry, the customer, after submitting a request, identifies the teams that should work on the project, and if they need further review by other people, they are added to the process, and everything is managed seamlessly rather than the sales process. Get the result as fast as possible.

Incentivized

• Categorize Expenses Automatically
• Profit and loss Statements
• Interfaces with Credit Union

Incentivized

• Microsoft Dynamics AX's scalability to meet our regional office needs provide flexibility to the team's requirements.
• Combined with Citrix Xenapp, the application offers seamless access for users on high latency unreliable network connection to the application.
• Application maintenance and updates are easy which makes it possible for us to manage remotely considering the servers are located in a remote Asia site.

Incentivized

• With the flexibility comes room for folks not adhering to specific accounts. There is no numeric chart of accounts so at times you will see 2 line items for a single item. We tend to overcome this limitation with extensive tagging.
• Invoices and sales orders don't have an obvious way to assign credit to specific salespeople or consultants. We reached out to LA and they have shown us a different way to do this which we'll try soon.
• The visual interface can use some sprucing up. It's easy to navigate but I believe the navigation can be slightly improved. I do find myself hitting the back button to get into other parts of the app.

Incentivized

• MRP can be slow to adapt to changes in actual production or supply chain transactions.
• Setting up number sequences seems a trivial matter, but these numbers ID transactions once they are in the ledger and are key--easy to miss this point in the implementation process.
• Bank rec being easily automated and able to quickly plug into a bank back end to get data is not the best.
• Payment processing can be 'clunky' based on checks, ACH, Wires...as some of these items are not triggered out of the box in AX, bur are easily added --talking ACH and Wires specifically.

Incentivized

It works, it keeps our historical data and is easy to use

Incentivized

Microsoft Dynamics continues to evolve by bringing more functionality to the customer. Also there are several independent software providers that offer a wide range of solutions for vertical markets.

Incentivized

Overall the product does what we need it to do in order for us to function as a company. While there are some concerns over ongoing costs, the belief is, once we have it fully acclimated to our business the cost should settle into alignment with our original expectations. The new features that are consistently being added do add value to the product as they are usually customer request directed.

Incentivized

Some integration and high volume ramping challenges, particularly with BizTalk and SQL Server, but getting sorted out. Outages over time appeared to be more dependent on integration complexity than AX MES.

Some integration and high volume ramping challenges, particularly with BizTalk and SQL Server, but getting sorted out. Outages over time appeared to be more dependent on integration complexity than AX MES.

We use a 3rd-party Microsoft Partner for the system. They are responsive and very knowledgeable. While costs have been mentioned several times in this review they are very aware of costs and have developers who are more economical they use to help offset the level of work required to meet our changes and fix our issues.

Incentivized

It took a lot of work, but Microsoft ultimately did a good job with in-person training, including being onsite in multiple global locations for extended periods.

Our solution deviated from a number of key out-of-the-box standards that were included in Online training. We just used that for introduction to the general functionality.

Some rough spots, but ultimately worked out. The contract didn't appear to be structured to support the level of overlapping facility deployments required to meet timeline commitments. Merging cultures on the program was also challenging. Overall, not an easy implementation by any stretch. Everyone did the best they could.

I had been with QuickBooks for a few years (unwillingly) at the behest of accountants. It took me a while to realize there were other options out there and I needed to begin a hunt to find them. I found LessAccounting. While it's not the most appealing software, it sure helped me see the breakdown of things and allowed me to reconcile my books without feeling like I needed a degree in Accounting.

Incentivized

I was not part of the decision making process to select Microsoft Dynamics AX, however, I do know that an exhaustive search was done and many options were considered alongside Microsoft Dynamics AX and I feel that the right decision was made in choosing this solution.

Incentivized

• + Less time worrying about my accounting
• + actually reconciling my books at the end of each month or quarter
• + being able to access my P+L anytime!

Incentivized

• With the robust built-in reporting we were able to drop an external reporting platform that costed about $40,000.
• API integrations have saved manual entry and reduced having to hire 2-3 people to manage data.
• Several administrators and developers are required for this which costs about 200-300 thousand in employee costs.

Incentivized