Background
Dynamics 365 Business Central
In 1984, three young entrepreneurs in Denmark released the precursor application to Navision (which would later become Dynamics NAV) under the name PC&C (Personal Computing and Consulting). In 1987, the developers released Navigator 1.00, which took PC&C’s single-user application and turned it into a client/server-based accounting program which allowed multi-user access. The first version of Navision for Windows was released in 1993.
In 2000, Navision Software merged with Danish firm Damgaard, making it a 1000+ employee company with partners in 25 (primarily European) countries. A mere 2 years later, Microsoft acquired Navision and brought it under the Microsoft Business Solutions umbrella managed by Doug Burgum. Microsoft rebranded Navision (along with Microsoft CRM, Great Plains, Axapta, and Solomon) in 2005 as Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
Dynamics 365 Business Central was released in April 2018 as an “all-in-one business management solution.“ Built on the functionality, code, and development experience of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Business Central is a native-cloud solution that delivers a modern, browser-based ERP experience. Designed to integrate directly with Office 365, Business Central features extensive customizability and extendibility options via PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI. Learn more about integrating Business Central →
QuickBooks Enterprise
The founding company of QuickBooks, Intuit, was founded in California in 1983 by Scott Cook and Tim Proulx. Their first product was Quicken, but QuickBooks was released in 1992 for the IBM PC, Microsoft DOS, and Apple Macintosh. It quickly became the most popular accounting software on the market for small businesses because of its simplicity and ease of use. QuickBooks Enterprise, launched in 2002, increased the capacity 6x, made it more scalable, and allowed for integrations with nearly 200 apps to meet the needs of enterprise organizations. An updated version of QuickBooks Enterprise is released every year, but a 30-user max is still enforced. QuickBooks is still the most widely used accounting system in the world today.
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Licensing: $70/user/month. Additional add-ons available.
Billing Frequency: Monthly
Implementation: Financial Accounting Implementations begin at $19,995 USD. Manufacturing implementations, because they are more complex, begin at $30,995 USD.
Other Considerations:
Dynamics 365 Business Central contracts are managed through Microsoft Partners. Business Central licenses can be added removed on a monthly basis limiting cost of a changing business. All major updates are applied automatically by Microsoft at no additional cost to the end user.
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Common Pros: Advanced financial management functionality, user friendly, integration with Office 365, affordable, cloud-based
Common Cons: Occasional glitches, lacks CRM capabilities on its own.
Dynamics 365 Business Central provides a robust financial management application that is easily scalable. End users will find the cloud-based web application easy to use and enjoy the comprehensive integration with Office 365.
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Dynamics 365 Business Central 30 day free trials are available. A free trial includes access to a Dynamics 365 Business Central trial account loaded sample data (you have the option to import your own). The free trial also allows you to invite other users from your organization to test for the duration of the trial.
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Microsoft releases two major updates to Dynamics 365 Business Central per year – in April and October. These updates will include new capabilities, performance improvements, and better support experiences. All releases are automatically updated however, any major changes to the user experience will be turned off automatically giving administrators time to test and enable these features as they see fit.
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A major strength of Business Central is its flexibility and ability to integrate with Microsoft and other 3rd party applications. This is done by creating custom apps, installing 3rd party apps from Microsoft AppSource, or working with 3rd party services. Business Central is built to maximize customization, so the majority of app development requires little to no coding.
In addition to the wide range of apps that extend the functionality of Business Central, much can be done to personalize and enhance the interface each user will have. Using the Designer, users can easily drag-and-drop fact boxes, data fields, tables and grids, and other data that was previously hidden. Beyond basic changes, complex enhancements can be made to the UI using Visual Studio.
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Licensing: QuickBooks Enterprise Gold with Hosting, their most popular plan, starts at $169/user/month for a single user and decreases in per-month cost with each new user. For example, 3 users cost $353 and 10 users cost $88, instead of the $507 and $1690 they would cost at $169/user/month.
Billing Frequency: Monthly or annual. Annual payments are incentivized with a minor price decrease.
Implementation: Instruction guides for installing and configuring your QuickBooks deployment are provided for free by Intuit.
Other Considerations:
Because an updated version of QuickBooks is released every September, users must purchase and install the new versions to get the added features that come with each release. Older releases are still fully supported but do not get updated.
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Common Pros: Easy to learn and use, consistent, affordable for very small businesses, user friendly
Common Cons: Limited in inventory, payroll, and reporting functionality, few customization options, price increases with updates and advanced features
QuickBooks is a comprehensive ERP solution for small businesses, solo accountants, and entrepreneurs but is not ideal beyond that. It excels at simplicity and ease of use, two important features for very small businesses and lacks in some enterprise-level areas like employee management and payroll.
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Free 30-day trials of QuickBooks Enterprise can be downloaded on the QuickBooks website. Trials are only available for Desktop versions of QuickBooks and not the cloud-hosted application.
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A new QuickBooks version is released every year in mid-September and users must purchase the new version to get the added features and fixes as they are not applied to existing versions. Several updates are made to the latest version throughout the year containing system improvements, bug fixes, and occasional new features.
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QuickBooks Enterprise offers native integrations to over 180 free and paid business apps that can improve and extend a QuickBooks environment. These apps range in category from AR/AP to data sync, point of sale, time tracking, invoicing, and more. It’s clear that the integrations offered for QuickBooks focus on the accounting sector and only enhance what a user already does in the system, rather than add functionality that didn’t exist beforehand.
QuickBooks allows for some, but not as much customization as Business Central does. Entities that are open to modification in QuickBooks include forms, invoices, estimates, and sales receipts. These can be customized with colors, company logos, fonts, headers/footers, and a few more options. Enterprise users can build custom reports but are limited in their ability to customize them. In all, QuickBooks is considerably less flexible than Business Central.