QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions review. Good for selling stock items...not so much for customized items.
Updated December 13, 2018

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions review. Good for selling stock items...not so much for customized items.

Joretta Fletcher | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is being used for both accounting functions and material management for our LED lighting manufacturing business. We use it to keep track of open and closed orders, as well as to invoice our customers for products shipped to them. It is also used to keep track of open and closed purchase orders to our suppliers, as well as inventory tracking and management.
  • Reports can be modified and filtered to provide specific information. They can also be exported into Excel for further formatting and filtering.
  • It is fairly user friendly, with a flowchart on the home page to show how estimates turn into orders and then invoices, among other business functions. It is quite forgiving with input errors, allowing one to access already saved data (orders, invoices, etc.) and change it without a lengthy process of backing out previous info and re-entering new info.
  • The toolbar at the top of the screen can be customized to include the functions that one uses most, avoiding the process of selecting a tab and scrolling down to the needed option. One can also personalize how the tab/enter buttons function, as well as date formatting, decimal points, and default scripts for invoices, statements, purchase orders, etc. One can also integrate their established email address to be used through QuickBooks.
  • QuickBooks was built to be an accounting program. It is clumsy with inventory. The reports for inventory management are limited.
  • The inventory management system functions better for a company that just buys items and then resells them. Purchasing multiple materials and then combining them to be a finished good is possible to do, but needs more hands-on involvement than should be necessary.
  • The minimum and maximum reorder points do not function properly. If one has both entered into an item, QuickBooks uses the maximum reorder point only, and ignores the minimum reorder point entirely. I have taken to using only the minimum reorder point and not even entering the maximum into the item.
  • Our manufacturing company mainly provides made-to-order LED lighting. QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions makes the inventory process very cumbersome as every line item has to be "built" manually. This is very time consuming and probably costs our company about $700-$800 in wages per month for this to be completed.
  • There is a "1099 Wizard" that can be used in QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions. This allows our bookkeeper to process the 1099-MISC forms for our subcontractors each year, rather than paying our accountant to do it, which cost us about $250-$300 the last year that he did it.
QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions would be great for a company that is buying products and just reselling them as-is. It is great at keeping track of quantities remaining from previous purchases and time periods, adding new inventory purchased, and subtracting inventory sold. It would also work well for a company that purchased materials to manufacture items for stock, and then sold those stock items.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions does not work very well for manufacturing of one-off or custom products as each item has to be "built", whether it is 1 item or 100 items. It also does not have an easy way to account for scrap or materials damaged in the manufacturing process.

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Feature Ratings

Accounts payable
10
Accounts receivable
10
Cash management
10
Bank reconciliation
10
Expense management
10
Fixed asset management
10
Journals and Reconciliations
9
Standardized Processes
8
Inventory tracking
6
Automatic reordering
3
Location management
5
Manufacturing module
6
Pricing
10
Order entry
10
Cost of goods sold
10
Order Orchestration
10
End-to-end order visibility
10
Order exception Resolution
9
Dashboards
9
Standard reports
9
Custom reports
10
Role-based user permissions
8
Single sign-on capability
9

Using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions

3 - One person in bookkeeping and two in sales.
1 - It helps to have someone who is computer literate enough to be able to know when to reboot the computer, look at the printer control panel, or do other easy troubleshooting functions. But they also need to be able to realize when whatever issue is happening is beyond them and to call customer support.
  • Enter open orders from customers to track their due dates and back orders.
  • Invoice customers for products shipped to them.
  • Prepare Purchase Orders to send to vendors for additional materials. Track due dates, late shipments, and reorder points.
  • Enter receivables and maintain the company checking account(s).
  • Prepare and print yearly 1099-MISC forms.
  • Enter invoices from suppliers and prepare and send accounts payable checks.
  • By formatting reports, I have been able to determine which specific items have been sold most in order to better manage materials for those items.
  • By formatting the templates for Sales Orders, Work Orders, and Packing Slips I have been able to not only add additional fields onto the forms, but also have specified which info prints on which forms, making them more efficient.
  • By using the "Customer Type" field to enter a 2-digit state abbreviation, I can sort my customers by state for reports about sales territories.
  • By modifying what filters are used on reports, I can take a general report about all of our customers or items and dial it in to just one customer or item, making a huge and unwieldy report into a very specific one.
  • Adding more products to the item list.
  • Reviewing and updating our minimum reorder points for better ordering time frames.
  • Revising Bills of Materials as new assembly items are introduced.
We've been using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions from when the business started, 11 years ago. I don't see us changing programs any time soon as it is working pretty well for us now. It would be extremely time consuming to start from scratch with a new accounting or inventory management program.

Evaluating QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Prior Experience with the Product
QuickBooks is user friendly and had a lot of the features our manufacturing company required.
I might have looked at other software programs, but probably would have chosen QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions in the end anyway.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Implementation

If you're loading QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions onto a computer that you're going to directly log into, you should be able to do it yourself. If you are going to connect to a server through a network or remote connection, you should probably have a professional IT person set it up for you.
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation - None. There was no change as we've used QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions from when the business started.
  • Getting the program downloaded onto a remote server.
  • Getting the Remote Desktop connected to the server.
  • Making sure everyone could connect to the remote server, and therefore, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Support

It takes a long time to get through to customer support. And sometimes you have to explain the situation multiple times before the rep actually understands the issue, but that's usually because the issue is complex and out of the ordinary. However, the rep is always patient, and will take as much time and effort as necessary to resolve whatever issue you're having. It's nice that they can "take over" your computer rather than having to talk you through the solution over the phone.
ProsCons
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Support cares about my success
Need to explain problems multiple times
Slow Initial Response
Yes - We do not have an in house IT person, so when QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions seems to be malfunctioning, we need to have someone familiar with the program and its interface to resolve the issues.
Yes - No. It was not resolved, and I brought it up multiple times. I just learned to work around it.
I was having issues with my Intuit Data Protect not running on a daily basis. I was having to do manual backups, which was time consuming and should have been unnecessary. The first time I called about it, the rep said that they had fixed it, but they had not. The second time that I called, that rep not only figured out what the issue was, but fixed it, and then waited on the phone until the backup was completed. While we were waiting for the backup to be completed, I realized that I had another long standing issue that I had just given up on, and mentioned it to the rep. They then proceeded to fix that major issue as well. After everything was fixed, I had been on the phone with the rep for over 4 hours! At no point did they get irritated that it was taking so long, or that the first couple of things they tried didn't resolve the issue. They just persevered and got everything fixed.

Using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions functions well when used in a straightforward manner. However, if you want to get very specific information from the reports, it takes some out of the box thinking. One redeeming factor is that the reports can be exported into Excel and then formatted as needed.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Check writing and reconciliation.
  • Entering and paying invoices from suppliers.
  • Entering payments received and preparing deposits.
  • Building Finished Goods! Each line item on our customer invoices have to be done separately.
  • Entering new items that have a Bill of Materials. It's easier to find an existing item that is close to the new item, duplicate it, and then change the parts that are different from the original. Doing a new item from scratch is very time consuming.
  • Determining what materials have low quantities and need to be reordered. Even though QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions has minimum and maximum reorder points, they don't work correctly.