NetSuite vs QuickBooks: Software Comparison

Strong financial management is essential for any business to thrive, but not all accounting software is created equal. While NetSuite and QuickBooks both streamline financial tasks, they’re designed for businesses of different sizes and operational needs. Discover how these platforms differ in features, cost, ease of use, integrations, and customer support, so you can choose the right accounting software for your business goals and scale.

What is NetSuite?

NetSuite is a powerful enterprise resource planning (ERP) system operating as a cloud-based, integrated platform specifically designed for businesses planning to scale. It offers a suite of business management tools for your entire business, including accounting software, customer relationship management (CRM), inventory management, and supply chain management.

NetSuite’s key features include:

• Financial management. NetSuite’s accounting tools encompass general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and fixed asset management, all designed to streamline or automate accounting processes.

• Customer relationship management. You can manage customer relationships from lead to order, automate sales and marketing processes, and leverage customer service tools.

• Inventory management. This feature provides real-time stock levels across multiple locations and offers automated replenishment ordering and lot or serial number tracking.

• Professional services automation. NetSuite assists professional services organizations with project management, time and expense tracking, resource allocation, and contract management.

• Supply chain management. The platform helps manage goods as they flow from suppliers to customers, including procurement, order management, and warehouse management.

• Ecommerce or omnichannel commerce. It offers integrated business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce capabilities to manage online stores, orders, and customer interactions from a single platform.

• Global business management. Through NetSuite OneWorld, the tool supports multisubsidiary management, multiple currencies, and localized tax and reporting requirements for companies with international ecommerce.

• Business intelligence and analytics. You have access to reporting tools, customizable dashboards, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to support data-driven decisions.

• Customization and workflow automation. NetSuite automates workflows and offers customization features, which allow you to tailor your workflows, reports, and user interfaces to match your business processes.

What is QuickBooks?

QuickBooks, from Intuit, is a widely recognized accounting software primarily serving small and medium-sized businesses. It helps users simplify their financial management with core accounting processes and reporting. QuickBooks is available in cloud-based and desktop versions that cater to different preferences and feature needs.

Here are the key features of QuickBooks:

• Invoicing. QuickBooks lets you create, send, and track the status of invoices and accept payment directly from a built-in payment portal your clients access.

• Expense tracking. Connect your bank accounts and credit cards to automatically import and categorize transactions, simplifying expense tracking and allowing for easier expense management. It also lets you attach digital receipts for tax management.

• Financial reporting and statements. QuickBooks generates dozens of financial reports, like profit and loss statements and balance sheets.

• Inventory management. For product-based businesses, QuickBooks provides features for tracking products, managing stock levels, creating purchase orders, and monitoring the cost of goods sold.

• Payroll. Offered as an add-on service, QuickBooks Payroll helps manage employee payroll, calculate payroll taxes, and prepare payroll forms.

• Sales tax tracking. QuickBooks helps businesses calculate, track, and prepare sales tax reports for various jurisdictions.

• Bank reconciliation. This feature allows you to reconcile bank accounts with your QuickBooks records.

• Budgeting and forecasting. Depending on the version, QuickBooks offers budgeting tools and lets you compare forecasting to actual performance.

• Project management. Some versions of QuickBooks, like QuickBooks Online Advanced and QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, include or integrate with project management tools so you can track time worked on projects and manage job costing.

• Integrations: QuickBooks supports more tha 750 third-party applications, from ecommerce platforms like Shopify, to specialized CRM tools.

NetSuite vs. QuickBooks: What’s the difference?

• Features
• Cost
• Ease of use
• Integrations
• Mobile app
• Real-time visibility and reporting
• Customization
• Customer support

The main distinctions between NetSuite and QuickBooks lie in how they were designed and their intended scope. QuickBooks is primarily basic accounting software, while NetSuite is an enterprise resource planning system. Here are some of their differences:

Features

NetSuite offers an extensive number of integrated features, including finance management, encompassing general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and revenue recognition. You also get access to advanced inventory management and multilocation tracking. NetSuite’s integrated CRM module handles sales, marketing, and service. Its supply chain management and project management modules allow it to unify nearly every aspect of business operations on a single platform.

QuickBooks offers essential financial management for small and medium-sized businesses. It excels at tasks such as invoicing, creating financial reports, and tracking expenses. It includes features for managing inventory and optional payroll services. However, it prioritizes making basic accounting processes simple rather than providing the broad operational integration of an ERP.

Cost

NetSuite is widely reported to cost more than QuickBooks, although you must contact the provider for a custom quote. The platform’s pricing reflects its extensive advanced features, as well as its scalability and the all-encompassing nature of an ERP system. Quotes will vary based on the number of users, modules, and how complex the customizations are.

QuickBooks offers four subscription tiers for QuickBooks Online (its cloud-based offering). Plans range in price from $38 per month for one user and basic features to $275 per month for up to 25 users and more advanced features. There’s also a plan for freelancers, QuickBooks Solopreneur, for $20 per month. Plans for QuickBooks Enterprise (its desktop offering) start at $2,210 per year.

Ease of use

As an ERP solution, NetSuite naturally has a steeper learning curve. NetSuite’s extensive functionalities and highly customizable nature mean its initial installation and user training can be more involved than QuickBooks. It is incredibly powerful software, and new users often require some time to become proficient with the system’s depth and breadth. Users on reviews and rating platform Capterra give NetSuite 3.9 out of 5 stars for ease of use, noting that while the tool is easy to navigate, it may require significant training to fully leverage.

QuickBooks is widely recognized for its user-friendly interface and relative ease of setup, particularly QuickBooks Online. It has an intuitive design to help beginners manage basic bookkeeping tasks. Its accessibility makes it a strong choice for small businesses looking for a straightforward tool to manage their business’s finances. QuickBooks’ ease of use rating on Capterra is 4.2 out of 5. Users mention that even accounting novices can easily use the software, although frequent user interface updates create some learning curves.

Integrations

NetSuite offers a truly integrated, end-to-end platform, which removes the need for separate ERP, CRM, and ecommerce applications to “talk” to each other. This approach consolidates business processes and your financial data. NetSuite also offers SuiteCloud Connect, a program partnering with third-party integration providers. This collaboration delivers pre-built solutions for integrating with other major enterprise systems, including Salesforce, SAP, Google Workspace, and Oracle. If you’re looking to integrate with Shopify, the NetSuite ERP Connector or NetSuite Integration apps are good options.

QuickBooks Online has over 750 compatible third-party applications, expanding its accounting software functions. It also offers some built-in integrations accessible directly within the software (such as QuickBooks Time and QuickBooks Payments). Available integrations for QuickBooks Online include Method CRM for customer management, Shopify for managing inventory and sales data, and Fathom for budgeting tools.

Mobile app

While both NetSuite and QuickBooks offer robust mobile apps available for iOS and Android, they are geared toward different customers. NetSuite’s mobile app offers tools like expense reporting, call logging, and time tracking, and supports push notifications for timely actions.

NetSuite offers instant access to saved searches and the ability to customize reports by adding fields, grouping levels, and formulas, all on the mobile app. It intentionally omits some basic bookkeeping features, such as receiving payments and direct customer invoicing. This design choice is a reflection of NetSuite’s target audience of larger businesses, which often have dedicated accounting personnel handling bookkeeping tasks.

QuickBooks’ mobile app allows business owners to tackle core financial tasks, such as invoicing customers, recording payments, entering transactions, and sending reports from their phones. A useful feature is its ability to turn your phone into a receipt scanner, automatically recording expenses and attaching receipts for reimbursement.

Real-time visibility and reporting

NetSuite provides real-time, consolidated financial data and accounting insights across all its integrated modules. This allows for highly customizable financial reporting and analytics, giving you an immediate, holistic view of financial performance and the status of your different business processes.

QuickBooks offers financial reporting for core accounting, generating standard financial reports such as profit and loss and balance sheets in real time. However, to achieve a complete, real-time view of the entire business beyond accounting, you may need to rely on data consolidation or integrate multiple third-party applications.

Customization

NetSuite is highly customizable so that you can tailor workflows, dashboards, forms, and reports to meet your unique business needs and processes. Its underlying platform supports deep workflow automation. It allows for significant modifications to adhere to complex operational requirements in different industries.

QuickBooks offers a good level of customization for basic forms, reports, and the charts of accounts, so you can personalize your accounting environment. But its flexibility for more specialized, industry-specific business processes can be limited compared to the extensive capabilities of an ERP system.

Customer support

Both NetSuite and QuickBooks provide a variety of customer support methods, including knowledge bases, community forums, webinars, and video tutorials. Live assistance is available via phone and chat for both platforms. However, one difference lies in availability. NetSuite offers 24/7 customer support so assistance is always at hand, while QuickBooks’ phone support is limited to regular business hours.

NetSuite subscriptions include basic support, with an option to upgrade to Premium and Advanced Support for additional service levels, such as online case submissions and performance monitoring. For more personalized help, options include finding a certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor or subscribing to QuickBooks Live, which provides online bookkeeping support for an extra fee.