10+ years in business banking, building a QBO alt.
Been a business banker over 10 years, mostly with small business clients. Looking at whether it makes sense to build a QBO alternative. Nothing to link, no waitlist, not naming anything. Just want to know if what I'm seeing lines up with what you deal with.
The complaints on this sub are pretty consistent and i hear them from my clients. Prices going up, features moving to higher tiers, bank feeds breaking, payroll being a mess, job costing that sort of works but not really. The Intuit login consolidation with Mailchimp and TurboTax hasnt helped either.
Instead of asking what you dont like (you've said it already, a lot), here's what I think the actual problems are. Tell me where I'm wrong.
Job costing is a bigg gap. Projects module in QBO is fine on paper but nobody doing real project work uses it seriously. Cost codes, WIP, committed costs should be first class objects, not tags stuck on an invoice.
Period close doesnt actually close anything below Advanced. You can still post to closed periods with a soft warning. Thats not what closed means anywhere else in accounting.
$99+/month for Plus is a lot for a 3-10 person shop when you look at what you actually get. Paying a full seat for someone who only enters time is dumb.
The accountant is the reason people stay. If the CPA cant work in the tool, none of the rest matters.
Three questions I care most about:
If all of the above worked well, what would still stop you from switching? Data migration, retraining staff, accountant wont touch it, integrations, something else?
What one workflow would need to work on day one for you to actually consider a switch?
For the accountants and bookkeepers specifically, what would a portal need ot do before you stopped pushing clients toward QBO?
Not pitching, not collecting emails. Will read every comment.