Financial Edge (legacy) vs. QuickBooks Desktop Premier

• Financial Edge is well suited for traditional day to day accounting, accounts payable, and related needs.
• Financial Edge dashboard does not provide a snapshot view of data that I have found are available through other platforms (like QBO).

Incentivized

QuickBooks Desktop is an easy-to-use software with good services. Their invoicing, employment, and vendor sections are all wonderful. These sections allow efficient tracking and instant business summaries and reporting. However, the pricing for additional services and upgrades and lack of good customer service makes it a less attractive software for small businesses.

Incentivized

• Grant Management - nothing is more harrowing than grant reporting, and FE does it best. It allows for layered budgets and limitless division of expenses among grants, overhead, or other projects/programs.
• Reporting - Most financial software tries to adapt for-profit accounting into a non-profit mode without addressing the unique needs of a nonprofit for reporting and auditing.
• Multiple projects and/or cost centers within a budget and system - nothing is more challenging than trying to manage expenses over several cost centers and FE is a champ at allowing that complexity.

Incentivized

• QuickBooks Premier is easy to use, yet flexible and powerful enough to handle some complicated accounting scenarios.
• QuickBooks Premier offers a wide array of canned reports. Custom reports can be easily created.
• QuickBooks Premier with Enhanced Payroll gives us the tools to handle complex payrolls with multiple variables.

Incentivized

• Customer service blames the customer, and never offers solutions other than "wait it out." I've always been told it's my computer, even though everyone else at my work has the same issues.
• Website is constantly "under maintenance" and it somehow never gets better.
• The Database View is outdated and glitchy. Honestly get rid of it.
• The Crystal Report is the only way to handle monthly recurring statements, and Financial Edge does not offer support for it anymore. Good luck figuring that out on your own.

• I would like to be able to choose how i want to view accounts receivable aging. I would like some flexibility to sort and choose how to present the data.
• For a seasoned accountant, I would like to see some of the restrictive controls that are in place for novices to be able to be relaxed so that I can easily make some entries and adjust some balances that ordinarily a regular user would not be able to do.
• I would like to see an easy way to clear old outstanding checks that need to be reversed without affecting prior balances/history.

Incentivized

Because we have been extremely happy with the product and our organization tends to be creatures of habit. We rarely leave a product that works this well for the latest and greatest. Typically we follow the "if it's not broken, don't fix it rule". While QB does make changes we typically just roll with it. If we do find something we don't like we work through it until we fully understand its functionality.

Incentivized

It's user friendly, when it wants to be.

We switched to a more "robust" software program with the hiring of a new CFO. The migration of historical data and ancillary information has been cumbersome and riddle with errors and issues. In hindsight much of what the new software program was touted to accomplish is not come to fruition. QB Desktop Premier was sufficient for the organization needs

Incentivized

This is very reliable software, the desktop version is fast. If there is a problem, it is most likely on your own hardware!

Incentivized

It takes forever to load.

Incentivized

I would give this a zero if I could. Here's the deal. Once you request a chat with a representative, they immediately respond. So responsiveness: 10/10. However, they have a tendency to (always) tell you that whatever problem you're experiencing is your problem, not theirs. They offer no solutions and never take responsibility for their website malfunctioning

This is where QuickBooks falls short. Many times my staff has had questions that have not been able to get resolved easily with a chat or call. I personally have had more general questions that have not been answered easily as well. I think QuickBooks needs to provide the resources of having readily accessible help in order to make it simpler to get solutions.

Incentivized

It is important to do your research. There are tutorial videos online that could help new user of this accounting system. These tutorials are straightforward and easily understandable.

Incentivized

Financial Edge is more economical than GuideStar, and more focused on the financial successes than simply the management of funds and general data.

Incentivized

We've used QuickBooks Desktop Premier for many, many years. We've not reviewed any other accounting products internally - but have a handful of the customers that use Cyma (mentioned above). While I've never had occasion to functionally use Cyma, I have had to install and troubleshoot problems with it. Put simply... not impressed. I found installation a bit confusing, and once started up, I wasn't able to easily find anything I would have wanted to find - where conversely, QuickBooks Desktop Premier excels on both of these fronts.

Incentivized

They're getting better. Still room for improvement.

Incentivized

• We have been able to more effectively track utilization of budgets
• Scholarship management has more than tripled over a five year period

Incentivized

• Most of our business clients use QuickBooks which makes it efficient for us to work on clients that use the program. We can import QuickBooks data into our software which adds efficiencies to our tax practice.
• Having staff that are familiar with the software enables our firm to provide quality service to the clients that use QuickBooks.
• We receive referrals from satisfied QuickBooks clients.

Incentivized