Signs You’ve Outgrown Quickbooks (Or Something Like It) As Your Food ERP Software

Have you been using Quickbooks as the ERP software for your food business? Are you wondering if it’s time to upgrade to a food specific ERP system? Are you aware that ERP software for food manufacturers even exists? Here are our top five signs you’ve outgrown Quickbooks and should move on to ERP software for food manufacturers.

1.You want or need to move beyond record keeping to process management.

While being able to record your transactions, customer data, GL information and other standard business items is important, as you grow, it’s important to move beyond simple record keeping to process management. For instance, you should be able to accurately record custom processing instances, assign freight costs to Sales Orders and Transfers, enforce lot holds, configure workflows for your business and more with your ERP software. Your ERP software should help you manage your business not just record it. Your ERP software should help you succeed.

2. You need a system that enables you to acquire new companies and/or grow in an efficient way.

Whether success to you means a continued increase in profits or acquiring new companies or something else entirely, the bottom line is your success and growth requires an ERP system that is scalable. Your food ERP software should give you the ability to manage multiple companies within the same system and avoid multiple installations. It should also offer enterprise level sales order entry, lot tracking, payroll, inventory management, rebates, brokerage and more so that it can serve as an all-in-one solution that grows with you.

3. You’re juggling multiple systems.

Switching between windows on your computer, training employees in multiple systems, remembering which system handles which transaction and stores which data – these are all hassles that come from juggling multiple systems to manage your food manufacturing transactions, inventory, payroll, etc. And what do they all have in common? They’re stressful and a waste of time. You deserve that time back in your day to focus on the things that matter than will help your business succeed. And you can get that time back with an ERP system that’s well-rounded and offers a single solution to all your needs: a system with fully integrated Sales, Inventory, Purchasing, Accounting and Payroll capabilities as well as fully integrated capital improvement project tracking, trace register integration, barcode data collection integration and EDI integration. When all of this exists in a single solution, your day-to-day is more efficient and stress-free.

4. You need industry-specific functionality.

While generic accounting systems may have worked for you when your business was just starting out, they don’t understand your specific needs as a food manufacturer. Without the capabilities to track your products with lot traceability, maintain accurate pricing with price lists, track third party warehouses, record and assign quality test results, auto-assign lot certifications by item and/or site, manage multi-leg freight or track production batches, your generic accounting system is making your life harder than it needs to be. In fact, it’s preventing your company from reaching its full potential. By switching to a food manufacturing software, you can have a single, seamless solution for your food processing needs in addition to your generic accounting needs.

5. You’re tired of manual data entry.

Manually entering data can be annoying. There, we said it. But more than being annoying, manually entering data can create a high potential for error, especially if you’re entering the same data multiple times. We’re humans, we make mistakes. But if you’re tired of duplicate manual data entry, did you know there’s another way? You can have a system that understands your business so well it will auto-calculate your brokerage to avoid overpaying, it will auto-calculate rebates, it will automate freight expenses at the level you need and more!

Regardless of the “sign” that it’s time you move beyond Quickbooks, the underlying push to a food manufacturing specific ERP system is that you want more than data, you want to improve your business and you realize that your software can help.

With proven experience and expertise serving the food industry, we can help you stop wasting time and money on software that doesn’t work for your food business by providing you software that does, allowing you to focus on the things that will help you succeed. With NorthScope, we want you to succeed. We want you to succeed so badly that we’re more interested in a successful software implementation for you than in selling our next deal. And to make sure that happens, we will guide you every step of the way to ensure that NorthScope is the solution to your problems. We want to help make your problems go away.