Maybe you are currently running a well-established ever-growing enterprise and planning to expand your business. And you are now concerned about finding an advanced industry-specific solution for all your accounting and financial transaction needs and for managing a large volume of inventory items even in multiple locations.
Or maybe you are an established professional services provider—CPA, accountant, bookkeeper, project manager, or freelance professional having a large client base. And now you feel you are in need of a robust system that can help you efficiently manage time, materials, and expenses on a larger scale and make your business more profitable. And anything like this.
Then, we have a definitive solution for you. Just spare a few minutes and be with us. We strongly hope you will find the right solution for all such needs.
What is QuickBooks Enterprise and What Does It Do?
QuickBooks Enterprise is a comprehensive accounting software solution with a broad range of advanced yet affordable business tools for advanced accounting, customized reporting, robust pricing control, and inventory management to name a few.
The software is designed and developed by Intuit keeping in mind the diverse needs of the changing business environment to help businesses automate and manage their business needs with greater efficiency and ease.
This is the most advanced version of the QuickBooks software. However, it has an all-familiar QuickBooks look and feel, it's loaded with extensive business-oriented features—specialized editions for different businesses, anytime and anywhere access, powerful reporting, customized user permissions, better cash flow management, easier project management, advanced inventory management, payroll management, customized billing, customized reporting, and many more.
According to Investopedia's latest research findings, QuickBooks is the best accounting software of the year 2022 for small businesses, considering its features, cost, integrations, ease of use, and scalability.
What Makes QuickBooks Enterprise Good Accounting Software?
There are endless things to say about QuickBooks Enterprise that make it a good and the most-loved accounting software. It has a massive number of smart and powerful features to grow and achieve any goals in your business. To cut a long story short, no matter what industry you operate in, Enterprise has specific solutions for your business.
You get all key features and advanced business functionalities like advanced inventory management, advanced reporting, advanced payroll management, advanced payment processing, and many more in only one place.
And these are available with the secure remote access that allows you to work from anywhere. In short, it has everything you need for smart integrations, smart decisions, and smart management to earn smart money while running your business.
Who Should Use QuickBooks Enterprise?
QB Desktop Enterprise is designed and developed primarily for product-based business enterprises that deal in manufacturing, wholesale and distribution, and retail and need to handle large volumes of inventory. It is also dedicated to businesses offering professional services that have to manage time, materials, and expenses against every task. That's why QuickBooks Enterprise has been widely accepted as the right fit for a number of industries and businesses—Accountant, Finance professionals, Construction Supervisor, Construction Project Manager, Real Estate Manager, Wholesaler, Manufacturer, General Contractor, Retailer, and Small Business Owner to name a few. It is the very reason for the continuous growth and spread of its industry-based utilization. Maybe you are one of them.
Maybe you are presently using Pro, Premier, or another scaled-down version of the QuickBooks software, but your business operations need more advanced features and flexibility to get things done more quickly and efficiently. Or maybe your business is now scaling up and needs more capacity to accommodate more products, services, customers, or vendors.
If you are looking for a robust feature-packed solution to assign your employees specialized roles, responsibilities, and functions, to manage a large inventory as an integral part of your business, or manage multiple locations that need advanced tracking, QuickBooks Enterprise would be a great option for your business.
If you are currently using an accounting and business management solution that costs you a hefty amount of hard-earned money, QuickBooks Enterprise makes an ideal option for you, too.
Drawbacks of QuickBooks Enterprise
A Bit Expensive Annual Subscription
QB Enterprise demands really significant investment and that's for every year. Even the base plan of the Enterprise version, i.e. QuickBooks Enterprise Silver starts from $1340 per annum. This might cause some inconvenience to the businesses which are still in the budding or developing stages. So, you will need to evaluate accordingly—your business requirements, your budget, and the worth it carries for your business.
Limited to Windows Users
QuickBooks Enterprise can be run only on certain Windows servers 2012 (or R2), 2016, or 2019 and Windows 8.1 or 10. There is QuickBooks Desktop for Mac 2022 but that does not offer the same features and functionalities.
Features, Usability, and Benefits of QuickBooks Enterprise That Make It Most Relevant to Your Business
More Power and Capacity
QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise provides you with rich features and key business functionalities like advanced reporting, inventory, payroll, payments, and more all in one place. It gives you the ability to add many more user accounts, list items, vendors, and integrations than any other versions of QuickBooks accounting software does. It has the highest capacity of handling 1 million inventory items, 100,000 classes, 45 custom fields, 200 app integrations, and up to 40 users with 14 predefined roles for 115 customizable activities to help you run your business even more efficiently and smoothly.
Data level Permissions
With this feature, you can maximize the confidentiality and security of your business data by assigning users permissions or access only to the particular data, reports, and transactions they are intended or responsible for. Only users authorized by you will be able to view, edit, or remove specific vendors, customers, or other data.
Advanced Inventory (included with QB Enterprise Platinum)
There is an advanced inventory management system integrated directly into QB Enterprise. And the best part is it's done without changing the user interface. You don't need any separate tool for this purpose. You just need to scan your inventory or serial numbers and then QuickBook does everything by automatically putting the required data in the respective fields in the correct manner. Even if the inventory items have no barcodes, QuickBooks will create them for you!
Advanced Pricing (included with QB Enterprise Platinum)
Exclusively built for Enterprise, the QB Advanced Pricing feature gives you the ability to customize, automate, and control the pricing of your products or services, right within the software. No more manual updating is required. You can do even more with the advanced pricing features, for example, scheduled promotions, manufacturer markdowns, quantity discounts, price changes by class, etc.
Advanced Reporting (included with all QB Enterprise versions)
With the advanced reporting feature, you can explore untapped insights into how your business is performing. With enhanced filtering, searching, and much more, you are now able to access all your QB data and build any type of reports your business requires. Additionally, it still continues to provide you with the flexibility you aspire for by allowing you to combine numerous company files and create customized reports with the help of DBC-compliant applications. All this has made QB Enterprise the most customizable reporting tool yet.
Budgeting and Forecasting Tools
Enterprise has budgeting and forecasting tools that assist you in planning for the future. They help you create and revise budgeting, planning, and forecasting scenarios numerous times. You can do both—use your last year's Profit and Loss data to start a new one, or create a new budget from scratch for the next year, or. The forecasting tool in Enterprise helps you predict future cash flow and overall revenue.
Free Licenses to Other Applications
The QB Enterprise bundle comes with native integrations with numerous third-party applications that are useful to energize your business. The license for each of the applications offered in the bundle is provided without any additional cost. Second, you don't need to install them separately. TrueCommerce EDI and Intuit Field Service Management are two of them. If you use them in conjunction with your core accounting software, your business gets uniqueness and advantages over your competitors. You will be able to perform supply chain management, inventory tracking, payroll tracking, etc within the software.
QuickBooks Priority Circle
With the QuickBooks Enterprise version, you get all useful training tools free of charge. Pro and Premier users don't receive these useful materials without cost. There are training resources available online but they won't be as useful as the training materials offered by the developer of the software, or the Intuit-hosted knowledge base itself.
Once you subscribe to any of QuickBooks Enterprise editions, you will get a free pass to a dedicated Sagenext technical support team. You can reach them 24*7 through their direct line as well as email whenever you need them and get your concerns addressed. Their customer success team can:
- Connect you to their US-based top-tier customer support representatives and onboarding specialists.
- Allow free access to all QuickBooks training classes.
- Help you ensure you are on the right tools suitable for your business success.
- Works with you for you to understand your business requirements and assist you further in achieving your business goals.
Employee Time Tracking
Enterprise has the best time management tool that helps you minimize errors and increase productivity. QuickBooks Time Elite (earlier known as TSheets Elite) enables mobile time tracking for your workforce, from any mobile device. Just with a click, your employees can clock in and clock out, change job codes, take a break, and add timesheet details immediately. You can effortlessly assign jobs, track progress, and also compare assigned or expected vs actual time spent on a certain task.
Does QuickBooks Enterprise Have Industry-Specific Solutions?
Running a tax and accounting business is in many ways different from running a manufacturing or retail business. And, both can not go hand in hand. Specific businesses need specific solutions. So, keeping this in mind, Intuit, the developer of the software, has specifically developed a range of editions that can fulfill all industry-specific purposes without creating any hassles and complications, and that can keep all extra burdens away from your business processes.
Which Edition is Right for My Business?
QuickBooks Enterprise comes in the following 7 multiple editions for diverse industries, all having their own industry-specific features and reports.
QuickBooks Enterprise Accountant Edition
It is an end-to-end accounting solution that is specially designed to grow alongside accounting firms. It is packed with all the necessary features that make working with your clients easier. It has all the key accounting tools that allow you to review your client data and fix all possible errors from a single window. With this, you can reclassify hundreds and thousands of transactions at once, identify any changes made to the list items, handle client files, fix errors in recorded sales tax payments, and many more, just from one screen.
QuickBooks Enterprise Manufacturing
Includes all the desired tools you need to smoothly run your manufacturing processes as well as keep a track of your manufacturing-specific inventory and sales fulfillment processes throughout multiple locations.
QuickBooks Enterprise for Wholesale & Distribution
To manage your purchasing, inventory, distribution, sales order fulfillment, and accounting from anywhere else with cloud access.
These tools will greatly help you operate your wholesale distribution business processes—all from your warehouse to the customers' doorstep, in the most efficient and accurate way possible.
QuickBooks Enterprise Professional Services
We offer a very simple way to perform multiple tasks like powerful accounting functions, managing project estimates, accurate job costing, monitoring cash flow, billing and payments, and tracking clients.
QuickBooks Enterprise Contractor
An all-in-one solution for all your construction projects with the help of QuickBooks Contractor—from primary estimates to professionally competent quotes, from efficient management of workers to customizable advanced reporting.
Its robust payroll features help you instantly pay your staff and independent workers right from the QuickBooks software by a printed cheque or free direct bank transfer.
Improve profitability with real-time accurate project cost tracking and clear visibility into each project you take on—and do it on a real-time basis from anywhere with cloud access
QuickBooks Enterprise Retail
Offer extended user-friendly features to simplify the pricing process and e-commerce management, enhance inventory and order management, and maximize cash flow. And all that helps you sell online with greater ease and keep you happy throughout.
Most notably, you can manage your retail business from one efficient platform or from anywhere with cloud access. The Retail edition keeps you thriving with a great ecosystem of features, applications, and integrations. Eventually, that helps your business see sustained economic growth forever.
QuickBooks Enterprise Nonprofit
We have really special features for nonprofits, too, that give them the power to run their nonprofit with great confidence and efficiency and help you stay on top of what matters most to your business.
These include industry-specific reporting bundles, Microsoft® integration, customization options, nonprofit chart of accounts, customized payment receipts, tracking and approval of bills and purchase order workflow, and scheduling and paying bills faster in QuickBooks.
It also gives you the increased capacity to add up to 40 users and set user permissions specific to their roles for more than 115 different activities.
Some Special Industry-Specific Scenarios
Item Year Over Year
You will have an interactive dashboard that gives you a great insight into your sales profitability by customer. You can modify your search to check the profitability of even by a sales representative, geography, customer data, and more. Specifically useful for industries like Contractor, Retail, Manufacturing and Wholesale, and Professional Services.
Item forecasting
In the reports list, you can also see an alternative to the template to see what you sold in the last 30, 31, …, and 60 days, the month-over-month growth, the forecasted or expected quantity of products for the next 30 days. Specifically useful for Industries like Manufacturing, Wholesale and Retail.
Job Type, City and Customer Dashboard
QB's interactive dashboard helps you discover how various job types, cities, and customer types are performing, in part or together, which is specifically useful for industries like Contractor and Professional Services.
What's New in QuickBooks Enterprise 22.0?
Now that we have got a good insight into QuickBooks Enterprise software, its salient features, and all industry-specific editions available, there may be a curious question naturally flashing across anybody's mind—is QuickBooks the same as it was in 2021, or are there anything new added to it. The answer simply is of course, yes. So, it's time we gave some thought to what new things Intuit has added or improved to make the software more worthy and useful, especially in the context of the 2022 business environment.
We hope these additions would give you a fresh perspective and offer you more ability to improvise your way through your business. So, let's dive a little deeper into those features.
Enhanced Computing Power
QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise now comes with enhanced utilization of the 64-bit modern processors generally found in most computers. This naturally makes QuickBooks faster by 38%, and ultimately enhances performance, efficiency, and stability. It also gives you more ability to maintain smooth integrations with third-party applications by utilizing the developer-preferred infrastructure and get the peace of mind that every business owner or professional aspires for.
Schedule and Pay Bills Faster
QB Enterprise 22.0 saves your valuable time by helping you schedule and pay bills in QuickBooks itself. You can use any funding source you feel comfortable with and physical or digital form your vendors prefer. QuickBooks will automatically mark the bill paid and will notify you once the money is finally sent to them. It provides you unprecedented financial flexibility as you also have the choice to pay your vendors from a card or bank transfer and get the money sent via physical check or bank transfer.
Bill Workflow Approvals
This feature assists you in managing cash flow and maximizes transparency with purchase order workflow approvals and customizable bills that generate a digital audit trail for each of the transactions occurring. A single dashboard allows you to manage cash flow oversight as well as track bills and POs that require approval. Your employees receive timely reminders not to miss any approval deadline. You can customize your workflow approvals the way you want, or even use pre-defined templates to make it easy for you to set up approval flows based on your business needs.
Sales Order Fulfillment Worksheet
Now you can get paid for your services faster with reduced billing complexities and easier batch invoice creation than you can do in the sales order fulfillment worksheet. Now you receive an instant prompt to generate an invoice every time you mark an item as dispatched.
Customizable Bill Payment Stubs
The QuickBooks 2022 upgrade arms you with the right tools, and relevant facts and figures to stay even more consistent and professional in your communications with your clients. This new feature offers you the ability to directly email the customizable bill payment stubs to your multiple vendors at once.
You can now effortlessly tweak your logos, billing information, payment-made-to-date, and more within QuickBooks itself.
Reduce Errors in Sending Emails to Customers and Vendors
Now, you can avoid errors from manually putting the desired email addresses as you did earlier. This 22.0 update allows you to readily shoot emails to the desired vendors and customers without a hitch by choosing the correct recipients from your list of contacts available on file.
Automated Bill Entries with the Desktop Mobile Application
This newly added feature will allow you to just take photographs of the bills and import them for further review. You can now ask your vendors to email invoices straightaway to QuickBooks. QuickBooks will automatically draft the bill transactions and present them for your review. Additionally, this will enable you to attach files to your bill transactions for simpler audit trials. This will eventually give you the power to stay organized all the time.
Forget Storing Physical Documents
This is one of the most spectacular features of QuickBooks Enterprise 22.0 that helps you make the documentation part of your business activities spectacularly easy and successful. This feature eliminates your need to store any physical documents. You can always remain organized by directly uploading documents via the QuickBooks Desktop mobile app and attaching them to transactions in a matter of seconds.
Automatic Data Entry
You will enjoy the automatic data entry with the help of the mobile Barcode Scanner. Whenever you scan your inventory, QuickBooks will automatically create barcodes for your convenience even if they don't exist.
Enhanced Pick, Pack, and Ship
From a single dashboard, that is easy to use, you can now manage all your wholesale order fulfillment. You can mark your sales orders to pick, pack, or ship, just with a click.
Landed Cost
It makes you able to have wider visibility into your product costs. This is achieved by factoring in freight costs, insurance, duties, and more by volume, value, weight, or quantity. Multiple Preferred Vendors - You can also have greater visibility into vendor contracts, pricing information, and other items.
Combined Invoices
You will keep your customers happier with the simplified customer payment processing as you can now consolidate multiple invoices into a single email sent to them.
Add PO Number in Invoice Emails
As you can now add purchase order (PO) numbers to your email subject lines within QuickBooks, you will be able to save your customer's time by facilitating quicker payments.
Automated Payment Reminders
This feature allows you to set reminders for your customers in an easy way when their invoices are due. This helps you get paid faster.
Different Variants (aka versions) of QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise.
QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise has 4 variants in all. Since Platinum and Diamond offer more advanced features, they are naturally on the more expensive side. Gold falls in the middle range. And the Silver variant, having the most basic features of Enterprise, is the most budget-friendly variant of QuickBooks Enterprise.
We will try to analyze and understand each of the variants in a little more detail.
QuickBooks Enterprise Silver
It is the least expensive of all the variants. However, it does not mean it's not capable of running your business or worth subscribing to. The fact is it supports all the necessary features to efficiently run a business enterprise without a hitch while retaining oversight and financial control.
Its features include 30-user accounts with custom roles and permissions, Invoice tracking, Advanced reporting, Dedicated Customer Support, Online backup data storage, Loyalty program, Automatic QuickBooks product upgrades, QuickBooks Priority Circle service, etc
Pricing: Silver is priced at a subscription fee of $1340 per annum. However, it's currently offered at a discounted rate of $ 1206 per annum for the first year.
QuickBooks Enterprise Gold
It's a mid-range variant of the Enterprise version which strikes a balance between its price and advanced features. Apart from all the features that QB Enterprise Silver offers, it has Enhanced Payroll Processing capabilities for you.
It means it includes fully integrated payroll tools to help you instantly pay your employees with direct deposit, printed checks, or both. You can also comfortably calculate taxes, by abiding by the latest norms and tax laws, address and fulfill tax requirements in a timely manner, prepare files and send W-2s and 1099s.
Pricing: The Gold variant is priced at a subscription fee of $1740 per annum. However, it's currently offered at a discounted rate of $1566 per annum for the first year.
QuickBooks Enterprise Platinum
This variant has a perfect business solution specifically for industries dealing with manufacturing and supply chain management. Other than what the Gold variant offers, it further adds three advanced functionalities, i.e. Advanced Inventory Management, Advanced Pricing Management, and Bill Workflow Approvals.
Advanced Inventory Management automates the inventory and order management from your warehouse to the customers doorstep enabling you to see, at any particular time, what's in your stock, what's on order, and where related items are located. You can update your inventory in real-time by running cycle counts. The most remarkable thing is you can do this without shutting down operations in your warehouse. Additionally, it also offers barcode scanning as well as pick, pack, and ship functionality.
Pricing: QuickBooks Enterprise Platinum, with all the advanced features explained above, is priced at a subscription fee of $2140 per annum. However, it's currently offered at a discounted rate of $1926 per annum for the first year.
QuickBooks Enterprise Diamond
You know QuickBooks Enterprise is the most advanced of all the QuickBooks editions. Furthermore, QuickBooks Enterprise Diamond is the most advanced, flexible, and powerful of all the Enterprise variants. This variant is perfectly suitable for and fully capable of meeting your complex business requirements, creating a custom solution, and maximizing your employee productivity. With all the advanced features that the Silver, Gold, or Platinum versions offer, it adds QB Desktop Assisted Payroll, QB Time Elite, Salesforce CRM connector, VIP customer support, and much more. Plus, this variant allows you to add up to 40 user accounts with predefined roles and permissions which is more than any other variants by 10.
QB Desktop Assisted Payroll helps you manage all Federal and state payroll taxes that are guaranteed for on-time, accurate, and penalty-free payroll processing. Salesforce CRM connector is explained in detail in the add-on section of this post.
Pricing: The Gold variant is priced at a subscription fee of $4200 per annum. However, it's currently offered at a discounted rate of $3780 per annum for the first year (paid $315 per month).
QB Desktop Assisted Payroll is available at an additional but discounted cost of $1 per month per employee (normally at $2 per month per worker).
QB Time Elite is offered at an additional but discounted cost of $5 per month per employee (normally at $10 per month per employee).
Salesforce CRM connector is offered as an add-on at an additional cost of $150/month plus a one-time onboarding fee.
Top Add-Ons for QuickBooks Enterprise
For QuickBooks Enterprise solutions, there are more than 200 add-ons that are used according to the needs of the businesses. We will discuss a couple here that are most common among uses.
SmartVault
Usage: For online document management and sharing.
SmartVault is a well-suited application to store, manage and share your documents pretty well. This is most popular among CPAs, accountants, and bookkeepers as they need to handle a variety of documents, be it invoices, quotations, or any other. The documents you store there can be synced easily with QuickBooks. Accountants require various documents – be it quotations or invoices. Finding them all within QuickBooks becomes easiest for them.
Additionally, SmartVault keeps the documents secure, too. It is highly regarded for the security standards it follows.
Bill.com
Usage: For billing and payments
Bill.com is most loved among businesses because billing is unavoidable for them. It helps you ensure secure billing even over electronic media. It gives you the ability to receive payments through Credit Card, ACH, and PayPal. Once integrated with QuickBooks, billing updates are automated in the data without too much effort.
Salesforce CRM connector
Usage: CRM for QuickBooks
Salesforce CRM connector is the most advanced employee time tracking tool which helps improve your profitability. It helps you minimize duplicate data entry, generate sales orders and invoices as and when sales are made, and gives you more visibility into the entire sales process. Having a single source of sales data between sales and support teams helps you serve your customers efficiently and eventually makes your customers happier.
The Salesforce CRM connector also gives you the ability to track time, and assign jobs, and projects to employees from anywhere. It reduces the need for manual entry as well as errors as it syncs employee time to the cost of the job and payroll. Plus, it helps you track project time spent vs. time planned which leads to improved estimates. Moreover, you can easily track accruals of employee sick leaves and other vacation time with the help of this tool.
ExpenseWatch
Usage: Managing Expenses
Having a proper expense structure in any business is of great importance. ExpenseWatch helps you lay down a simplified yet efficient expense structure. It helps you simplify complex financial transactions, i.e. bills, reimbursements, payments, etc among your organization, employees, ventors, or other third parties. It also helps organizations save a lot of time that they can use elsewhere.
QQUBE
Usage: Data extraction
QQUBE is a data extraction tool that lets you drag information from QuickBooks Data Warehouse directly and drop it into Microsoft Access, Excel, SAP Crystal Reports, or any other reporting tool you use. You don't need to manually analyze to understand table schemes, mapping documents, or relationships.
Transaction Pro Importer
Usage: Importing transactions to QuickBooks
Transaction Pro Importer, the powerful transaction importing tool, helps you easily import transactions or lists from text files or Excel to most of the QuickBooks versions no matter what type of transaction data needs to be imported. Transaction Pro Importer eliminates the need to manually enter transactions into your QuickBooks software.
Fathom
Usage: Cash flow management
Fathom is a necessary QuickBooks add-on for SMBs. It helps you analyze your company's financial health by keeping an eye on your organization's cash flow and other financial performance indicators, and eventually the overall profitability.
With this tool, you will have visuals of both financial and non-financial elements, business data, and trends happening in your company. These visuals will enable you to discuss strategies and devise plans to tackle any problems head-on.
What is the Difference Between QuickBooks and QuickBooks Enterprise?
QuickBooks is simply an accounting software program used by both businesses and individuals to manage their financial activities. While its standard versions can be enough for small businesses or personal finances, larger or expanding businesses may find it confining and insufficient due to its inherent limitations.
Keeping all this in mind, Intuit has designed and developed QuickBooks Enterprise in several industry-specific editions having numerous inherent advanced features to facilitate various large-scale business operations that can not be done by other versions of the software. We will discuss these advanced features in detail in other sections of this post.
Is QuickBooks Enterprise Cloud-Based?
QuickBooks Enterprise is not cloud-based. There is a separate version of cloud-based QuickBooks available with various plans and features. But one thing to consider is that cloud-based QuickBooks plans have very limited features and usability compared to Enterprise versions.
However, there is no need to worry. QuickBooks Enterprise can be hosted on an Intuit-offered or third-party cloud hosting platform, whichever suits best to you, for seamless integrations and collaborations, efficient performance, uninterrupted movement of data, and other such things.
Alternatives of QuickBooks Enterprise
QuickBooks Online
In the event of QuickBooks Enterprise being beyond reach in terms of features or price, there is a scaled-down version available. QuickBooks Online Plus version, in particular, allows you to evaluate job costing, track inventory, create custom reports, etc. You will not need to pay even for remote access (cloud hosting) separately. However, the Plus plan allows you to add only up to 5 user accounts and the Advanced plan allows up to 25 user accounts. The price starts at $80 per month.
Sage 50cloud
At a fraction of the cost, you can get many of the features and usability when you opt-in for Sage 50cloud. It offers you features like inventory management, job costing, and other industry-specific features. Sage 50cloud Pro Accounting, the basic version, comes at $567 per user per annum. The Premium version will cost you $880 per annum and the Quantum one comes at $1460 per annum. They provide you with more advanced features.
How to Download & Install QuickBooks Enterprise on Windows?
QuickBooks Enterprise is really robust software having many variables to be installed. To ensure the software installation goes without difficulty, you'll require proper knowledge of the following: networking, permissions, and file sharing. We will help you with every piece of knowledge. For your clear understanding, we'll break the same into 6 easy-to-follow steps:
Step 1: Prepare and test your network
In the first place you will need to prepare your system and perform some checks with your network. In this phase of preparation, you need to understand what help you'll need before starting, how to back up your previous accounting system, check system requirements, check compatibility requirements, choose an option for setting up your network, test your network bandwidth, and check firewall and AV settings. To keep the information short and simple, we are not adding every detail on how to do these things.
Step 2: Install Enterprise
Before moving on, please ensure you've completed all the items explained in Step 1. And it's also important to keep in mind that you need to install the same version of Enterprise on all your computers.
Once done, click to download the desired version of Enterprise. Then go ahead with the steps given below to open the file. Once you click download, the following screen will appear:
Choose the desired option and click Next. Then select your country, product, version, and click Search to find the software download link. You will have a page like the following where you will download, install and activate links.
Once you download, install QuickBooks Enterprise software on the server, and then please go to step 3.
Step 3: Set up sharing
In this step, you will need to provide access to company files, install Enterprise software on all workstations, set up multi-user hosting by following these detailed instructions.
Step 4: Set up Your Company File & Import Existing Data
On this stage, you will have to register QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, create your company file, and scan company files.
Note:
If you want to move your installation from one computer to another, you'll have to re-register Enterprise on the new computer.
Step 5: Configure Enterprise to Your Business
Here in this step, you need to set up QuickBooks by doing: quick start center, review your Chart of Accounts, enter historical transactions, payroll, enter optional adjustments, backup your company file and then proceed to the next step.
Step 6: Create users and roles
Here you need to set up a role, set up a user, and then you are done!
How to Install Enterprise on a Linux File Server?
Because you are required to set up a network, it would be best to get help from a system admin as they are generally familiar well enough with the Linux operating system. They will require the permissions to install and set up Enterprise on a Linux server. Depending on which version of Enterprise you're going to use, here's what to do.
How to Install Enterprise on a Mac?
There is no Intuit-offered official way to download and install QuickBooks Enterprise on a Mac. However, there are a few workarounds that can follow to get the Enterprise up and running on your Mac. You can try and see which one works for you best.
Using Boot Camp with Enterprise
Boot Camp, which is a utility that comes with your Mac, is already installed on your Mac computer. It allows you to switch between Windows and macOS. It will let you install Windows onto your hard drive. This would probably be the simplest and most cost-effective way to get your Mac working as a “Windows PC”. This way you can install the Enterprise Software successfully on your Mac. The only downside here is that you won't be able to network multiple computers together in case you have multiple users, and you will have to reboot your computer every time you need to switch between your operating systems.
Using Virtual Machines for QuickBooks Enterprise
A Virtual Machine (VM) is a computer program or resource that uses software in place of a physical computer to deploy apps and run other programs. It lets you run a second operating system on a Mac computer. In this scenario, Windows would be the second operating system. The most popular systems for performing this task are VMware, Parallels, and Fusion (there are many other VMs) that will let you finish the same goal.
Using a third-party cloud hosting provider
Cloud hosting is becoming the most popular among Mac users because it's the simplest way to set up a network and run the Enterprise on a Mac computer. The main benefit of hosting your Enterprise software on a cloud platform is that instead of installing and running the software on your local computer, your hosting provider will install the software on their own server and you will be able to remotely access the software online from anywhere and at any time. This is not all, they will also provide you with all the setup, support, and technical maintenance in the future for you.
A professional and qualified hosting provider generally keeps integrated all the needful security features—Network Firewall, End-To-End Encryption, Anti-Malware, Multi-factor Authentication, Intrusion Detection System, Disaster Recovery System, Automated Data Backup, and 24*7 Monitoring to name a few. In short, they would have developed a fully-managed IT infrastructure for you at no extra cost and also offer guaranteed 99.999% server uptime which keeps your business operations running. So, always check these things before you go for any particular hosting provider for ultimate peace of mind.
QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Vs QuickBooks online vs QuickBooks Enterprise Hosting
The differences between QuickBooks Enterprise, QuickBooks Online, and QuickBooks Enterprise lie in their pricing, features, integrations, deployment, and overall capacity.
The primary difference is that QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based solution, while Enterprise is an on-premise application that also offers the option of hosting it on a cloud platform. While QuickBooks Online is the cheapest product having some limited features and usability, and other desktop versions lie in the mid-range having comparatively more features, the Enterprise version offers even more advanced features and usability.
The online version features 65+ reports. The standard desktop version (like Pro) provides 100+ reports. However, Enterprise features 150+ industry-specific reports which is much higher than any other version. And that brings in more relevant data to your organization's financial department. The Pro and Online versions can track limited inventory items whereas Enterprise can handle 1 million inventory items which are best suited for even larger enterprises.
If you talk about its capacity, it offers you 6x the capacity with much more automation than any other version which considerably saves you both time and money.
Conclusion
We have tried our best to make things easily understandable by guiding you through the intricacies of the software—what's QuickBooks Enterprise, what does it do for you, its different versions, features, limitations, available industry-specific editions, benefits, add-ons, alternatives, fundamental differences between different versions, etc. Hope this post helps you take an informed decision whenever you plan to switch to or deploy an accounting software program like QuickBooks Enterprise from scratch in your business
FAQs
How do I migrate my existing data from QuickBooks Pro or Premier to Enterprise?
Don't worry—there is nothing to worry about data migration. It's just as easy and fast as upgrading a software program from a scaled-down version to a scaled-up version. And in case you plan to host your software with an authorized hosting provider, your hosting partner will help you migrate your data.
Does it need any extra practice or training to work on QuickBooks Enterprise?
Not really! The most remarkable thing with QuickBooks Enterprise is that it's much like its other versions—QuickBooks Desktop Pro, Premier, etc. It works much like those variants. In case you are currently using the Pro or Premier version, you along with your staff and clients will find it easy and comfortable to work on the Enterprise version, too.
Even in the event that you are new and totally unfamiliar with the Enterprise version altogether, you need not worry. Intuit also has a fast and efficient tech support team to assist you. In a matter of time, you will be adept at it.
Is QuickBooks Enterprise an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution?
No. QB Enterprise is not a full ERP. It's a kind of advanced accounting software that is designed and developed with some advanced features and functionalities your growing and expanding business can utilize well. This can prove to be the most appropriate next-step solution to your business needs.