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QuickBooks Desktop End of Support: Your Next Steps Explained

QuickBooks Desktop End of Support: Your Next Steps Explained

What the QuickBooks Desktop sunset means

QuickBooks Desktop is no longer sold as a new product, and support for much of its functionality is ending in the near future. Some of that functionality is core accounting logic, so staying put isn’t a long-term option. That leaves two paths:

  • QuickBooks Online: The right move for many businesses. It won’t change much about how you work, and it can make some things easier.
  • A true ERP like NetSuite: For businesses that already feel they’ve outgrown QuickBooks and want a system that will scale for the next 10 to 20 years.

Red flags you’ve outgrown QuickBooks

Simpler service businesses can usually move to QuickBooks Online and stay there for a long time. Product businesses and complex service businesses tend to hit the wall once they reach a certain size. Watch for:

  • Large-scale inventory management
  • Multi-location or multi-entity operations
  • Complex manufacturing processes
  • Work spread across disconnected systems, with manual journal entries to capture what the software doesn’t

NetSuite handles procurement, fulfillment, manufacturing, and accounting in one system out of the box. As Michael points out, consolidating your software stack can simplify daily work for internal teams and sometimes cut licensing and integration costs.

How much data to migrate

Mitch calls data migration one of the “sneaky costs” of an ERP implementation. Your options fall on a spectrum:

  • Opening balances only: Open AP, open AR, and initial inventory valuations. The most cost-efficient option.
  • Full historical transactions: Everything above plus detailed transaction history. Ideal if you have repeat customers or track serial numbers for repairs, but it adds significant cost.
  • The middle ground: Often the last year of data for demand planning, without bringing over 2018.

Where older data can live

If you need data from 2018 or earlier, you still have options. You can bring all of it into NetSuite as true GL transactions. There’s no limit on how far back you can go, but it adds time and cost. You can also keep it outside the general ledger, either as monthly Excel files stored in a folder or as NetSuite custom records that hold transaction history without GL impact.

The right mix depends on how your team uses that data. Some companies route historical lookups through one point person. Others have five to ten customer service reps who all need access to everything.

Bottom line

The QuickBooks Desktop sunset forces a decision, but it’s also a natural point to reassess your systems. If QuickBooks Online fits, take it. If you’re managing inventory, multiple entities, or manufacturing across disconnected tools, it’s the right time to step up to NetSuite, with a data migration plan built around what your business actually needs.

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Podcast Transcript:

Michael (00:00)
Hey everybody, thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Anchor Group Podcast. We’re going to be talking about QuickBooks Desktop and how that product is being sunset, and many companies are wondering what’s the next step. Today we’re talking with Mitchell, who works here at Anchor Group. We’re both based out of our Minneapolis, Minnesota office location. We’re going to talk through what you should be thinking about when it comes to potentially migrating away from QuickBooks Desktop. Mitchell, before we hop into it, would you mind introducing yourself and sharing what you do here at Anchor Group?

Mitch (01:05)
Absolutely. Great to be here, Michael. As Michael said, my name is Mitch. I’m a solutions consultant here at Anchor Group, but I’m sort of a hybrid solutions consultant. I spend about half of my time working with our current NetSuite clients to help solve their everyday NetSuite challenges, generally in a managed services capacity, but also in implementations and module implementations as well. I spend the rest of my time working with our sales team, Michael here and our other sales members, to help scope projects, identify what folks in the NetSuite space need, and really just try to be as helpful as we can to those folks out there.

Michael (01:40)
Perfect. Thank you for giving that insight, Mitch. What prompted this topic was the fact that Mitch and I have been on many calls with different companies, and people are wondering what’s the next step with QuickBooks Desktop being sunset as a product. Mitch, before we hop into specifically what that might mean, give everybody a general overview. What does it actually mean when we say QuickBooks Desktop is being sunset, and how does that impact the people currently on it?

Mitch (02:14)
Absolutely. With the QuickBooks Desktop sunset, that really means two things. One, they’re already not selling new versions of QuickBooks Desktop. But sometime in the near future, they’re going to end support for a bunch of the functionality within QuickBooks Desktop. This is going to make things pretty untenable, because some of that functionality they’re ending is core business logic that you need to be able to run your accounting off of.

That leaves folks in the space with two options, really. One would be a migration to QuickBooks Online, which is being offered and is something many folks are going to choose when QuickBooks is the right choice for their business. But there are a lot of businesses out there that have felt the pain of outgrowing QuickBooks already, and now we’re reaching a point where they’re going to have no choice but to make some sort of change. So it’s a really opportune time to go up a level, if you will, and find that right next solution that’s going to help your business scale, not just for the next couple of years, but for the next ten, fifteen, twenty, to build a long-term successful business. And of course, NetSuite is a really good option when you’re at that size and looking for the thing that’ll help you scale your business to where you want it to be.

Michael (03:34)
That’s a good explanation. That’s really what we want to speak about today for the next couple of minutes: what does that migration look like? And just to recap, for some people listening, QuickBooks Online is totally the right move. It’s not going to change a lot of your business processes. If anything, it’s going to make some things easier. Awesome move. But if you’re looking to get into the next arena, the next playing field of true ERP systems, NetSuite can honestly be a very good fit.

So, Mitch, tee it up for us. What are some of the types of companies you’re seeing start this conversation? How does somebody know if it’s the right time for them to grow out of QuickBooks and go with something like NetSuite? What are some of the key red flags, we’ll call them, that would tell them, “Hey, we should probably start kicking around some ideas of migrating away from QuickBooks”?

Mitch (04:28)
It’s a great question, Michael. Honestly, it’s primarily going to be either product businesses or more complex service-based businesses that really start to feel that pain, generally once they reach a certain size. Simpler service businesses are oftentimes in the group that could probably transition to QuickBooks Online and use it for a pretty significant period of time. But when you start getting into large-scale inventory management, especially if you’re getting into multi-location or multi-entity situations, that’s where it can start to be a challenge to be on these lower-tier products. And especially manufacturing, too. Manufacturing processes can get really, really complex.

NetSuite is really built to handle all of those things out of the box. So that’s where a business can see some real advantages as soon as they go live: being able to do all of these processes that were bouncing around in disparate systems, with journal entries to try to recognize things that weren’t well captured in software. Those things can just become native functionality: your procurement of inventory and your fulfillment of inventory within the same system that all of your accounting is happening in, and your manufacturing in the same system. These are real advantages that can save a lot of time for your operations team and your accounting team, especially stacked up over the course of years.

Michael (05:57)
Just to echo that, what I’ve seen is that at some point, some companies get tired of managing so many of their business processes in different ecosystems. You can consolidate a lot of those different pieces of your software stack, as Mitch just pointed out, all into NetSuite. That’s the power of it. Some companies realize, “You know what, it’s actually going to be better for our internal team that manages various parts of the business.” Getting everything into one platform is going to simplify the day in the life of their role, and sometimes it can save on licensing, especially when you consider all the integrations you have to have in place between all these different software systems.

Now, Mitchell, one thing that always comes up as a topic of conversation is data. If you’re migrating from QuickBooks Desktop into the world of NetSuite, migrating all your data into the new environment is critically important, as you’d expect. So talk us through that, Mitch. What should people be thinking about? As we talk to people, there are different degrees to which you can move data. Do we want to move a little bit? Do we want to move a lot? Do we need it all? How can we set up a repository for data we don’t move? Give us a rundown of what that part looks like, because that’s probably the most crucial part of a migration.

Mitch (07:24)
It’s a really good question. Data migration can be one of those sneaky costs when you’re implementing an ERP solution, especially when you’re upsizing to an ERP that can handle more data at a more granular level. You have a few options. It’s more of a spectrum than anything else.

Starting on the most cost-efficient end, you can bring over just your opening balances into NetSuite: your open AP, your open AR, your initial inventory valuations, that kind of data, at a relatively inexpensive rate. But some businesses have a lot of repeat customers who really care about rebuying the things they’ve bought in the past, or maybe you do repairs on the products you sell, so you need to be able to track that you sold this serial number to this customer. That data needs to come into your new system so you can continue to provide the customer service your customers deserve and expect.

So then you get into the detailed historical transaction migration. This involves all of those opening balances, open AP and AR, everything from that more cost-effective solution, plus all of your actual transaction detail data. This can be a really great solution. It’s the most ideal scenario for a lot of businesses, but it can add pretty significant cost. So it’s good to consider what would be important to you as you start to go through those initial phases of thinking about implementing a new ERP like NetSuite.

There are good options in the middle, too. We pretty regularly see folks who really want the last year of data, maybe for planning their demand or something along those lines. It’s important to see that last year of data, but they don’t really need to bring 2018’s data into the new system. You can often find a middle ground, based on budget and what your needs are, to bring some of that data without bringing the entire business’s history and adding unnecessary cost.

Michael (09:40)
Great points. Now, I do want to pump the brakes on one thing, because I imagine some people listening to this are saying, “We want data from 2018. We can’t just let that go nowhere. We can’t just lose that when we migrate off of Desktop.” So what would you recommend, Mitch, and what have you seen companies do successfully? What’s the recommended approach for keeping 2018 data, 2015 data, early-2000s data? If you absolutely need to hold on to that, where should it live?

Mitch (10:07)
There are still two options there, actually. If you need to bring all of that data over and you need it to really exist on your GL in the new accounting system, you can do it. It adds time, which adds cost, but there’s no limit to how far back in time you can go with that data. So you can absolutely choose to bring it all over as true transactional data.

Some other things I’ve seen done to bridge that cost but maintain that data: I’ve seen folks use Excel to store historical transactional data, one Excel file per month, all in a folder, to be able to reference that data without needing it stored in the new system. I’ve seen folks leverage what are called custom records in NetSuite to store some general transactional data without the complexity of the general ledger impact of that data. There are a lot of good options out there. Honestly, it’s about finding the right fit for you, which is really about finding a good implementation partner to help you figure out the right mix of your needs and the cost, so you get the implementation you need with the data you need.

Michael (11:14)
Mitch, I like what you said there about how it really comes down to what’s best for your business. People often assume it’s the same for every business, but that’s genuinely not the case. For example, you and I have worked with some companies where having one point person on their customer service team who knows where all that historical data is, is very important. If anybody needs access to it, they go through an intentional bottleneck to find the data. We’ve talked with other companies where they’re like, “No, I’ve got a team of five to ten customer service reps, and they all need access to all of the data we’ve ever had,” just based on the products they’re manufacturing and selling.

So it really does depend, but there is a path out there. As you pointed out, Mitch, we help our clients and prospects understand what the best path forward looks like based on their specific use case.

Mitchell, I want to say thank you for joining this episode of the Anchor Group Podcast. I know there’s a lot to hash out and discuss when it comes to migrating platforms, especially from a platform like QuickBooks Desktop, which is being sunset. Moving to NetSuite ERP genuinely can be a good idea for some companies. If you’re listening or watching this and wondering if that’s the right move for you, feel free to reach out. We’re happy to give some good, honest Midwest feedback about that. So thank you for joining, Mitch. Really appreciate it.

And for all of you, thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Anchor Group Podcast. We look forward to connecting with you next time on future episodes about data migration, migrating to NetSuite, and also how to become a better user of NetSuite. Until next time, keep on chasing greatness. We’ll see you in the next episode.

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