BusinessWorks Gold & Quickbooks-50 Key Differences

50 key differences between
Sage BusinessWorks
and QuickBooks Pro

This list of 50 key differences between Sage BusinessWorks and QuickBooks Pro clearly illustrates that these products are vastly different. While this comparison is not intended to be all inclusive, there are hundreds of differences between these two products.

For businesses with annual revenues of $500,000 or more, BusinessWorks provides a more complete and more appropriate solution. QuickBooks is usually adequate for companies with less than five employees, annual revenues under $200,000 and working on a stand-alone system as opposed to multiple users on a network. Larger companies, or even a smaller one that fits this profile and plans for growth in the near future, will quickly outgrow QuickBooks’ capabilities.

Network Performance	QuickBooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Designed for Network Use	No, but can be run in multi-user mode.	Designed with file and record locking and supports up to 48 concurrent users.
Security	QuickBooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Audit Trail	Turned off by default. When turned on, flags a record as changed or deleted; but not by who changed the record.	Provides a complete audit trail of every transaction in the system. Transactions may not be deleted to maintain the integrity of the audit trail.
Passwords	Only four passwords can be defined. “Owner” has unlimited access to everything, “Data Entry” includes everything except payroll and printing reports, “Payroll” can edit and access everything except reports, and the “Transaction” password is used to edit transactions.	Broken down by module and by tasks within modules. You can determine which tasks within a module a user can access.
System Wide	QuickBooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Executive Summary Reports (Flash Reports)	Not Available	Flash reports are available for all modules and provide managers with key executive information in a summarized format.
Import/Export	Comma delimited text only.	In addition to CSV, BusinessWorks supports 30 formats including formats supported by Microsoft®, Excel, Works, Word and Lotus®.
Global Change	Not Available	Available and used to change a wide variety of part, customer, vendor or employee default information for all or a range of IDs simultaneously, thus saving time.
Report Queue	Not Available	Virtually an unlimited number of user defined report groups can be set up which contain reports from all modules. The reports in each group are set up once and then the reports can be printed unattended as frequently as the user chooses.
System Information/Status	Not Available	Provides on-screen status of each module including number of customers, vendors, parts, etc. as well as a System Status Report and Network Status Report.
General Ledger	Quickbooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Departmental Accounting	Includes account classification only. Key missing features include account consolidation by department and departmentalized financial statements.	Full implementation of departmental accounting including departmentalized financial statements as well as consolidated financial statements.
Complete Budgeting	Must manually enter budgets each year for each account. Budgets are limited to one enterprise.	Budgets can be set up by amount or percent of an annual figure. Previous, current or future budgets can be calculated automatically using a wide variety of criteria including actuals or budgets from other periods. You can even increase or decrease the budget for multiple accounts automatically as well as create budgets for individual departments.
Multiple Company Consolidation	Not Available	Can merge data for multiple companies to provide consolidated financial statements.
Accounts Payable	Quickbooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Vendor Information	Limited to contact information and terms.	Additional information includes MTD and YTD purchase information, last payment and monthly purchase history.
Cash Flow Analysis	Based on due date only. Transactions cannot be sorted and totaled for each vendor.	Can be based on a variety of selection criteria including due date, discount date and scheduled days to pay. Additionally, the user can specify the number of days between each period on the report.
Open Invoice Analysis	Not Available	Included as a standard report to show full detail of open invoices on record.
Discount Analysis	Not Available	Included as a standard report analyzing all discounts taken and available.
Accounts Receivable	Quickbooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Ability to Track Open Credits	Not Available	Completely supported including the application of open credits and reporting capability.
Tracking Finance Charges	Only one finance charge for the system.	In addition to the system default, each customer can have an individual finance charge rate.
Payment Analysis Reporting	Not Available	Included as a standard report.
Cash Flow Analysis	Based on due date only. Transactions can not be sorted and totaled for each customer.	Can be based on a variety of selection criteria including due date, discount date and average days to pay. The user can also specify the number of days between each period on the report.
Sales Rep Tracking	Not Available	Can assign sales reps to customers. Sales rep MTD and YTD totals are tracked.
Sales Commissions	Not Tracked	Sales Analysis Report is available. Can even be generated for paid invoices only.
Customer Analysis	Limited information on customer by customer basis.	Customer History report includes but not limited to sales history, payment history, MTD and YTD figures.
Payroll	Quickbooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Deduction Calculation Methods	Limited to 3 calculation methods.	Contains 15 calculation methods including fixed amount per hour and percent of net pay.
Multiple Payroll Expense Accounts	Not Available	An unlimited number of payroll expense and payroll tax expense accounts can be defined to allow for flexibility when posting payroll.
Thorough Reporting	Only three pre-defined payroll reports.	26 pre-defined reports plus worksheets.
Direct Deposit	Not Available	Fully implemented direct deposit system.
Variable Commissions and Piece Rates	Not Available	Can set up commission and piece rate tables with ranges and assigned rates.
Order Entry	Quickbooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Ship to Addresses	One	Up to 500 ship to addresses can be defined for each customer.
Print Packing Lists	Not Available	Packing lists can be printed and sorted by customer or order number.
Complete Order Processing	Not Available	Full sales order functionality including tracking through a wide variety of reports.
On Order, Committed and Back Order Tracking	Not Available	Complete tracking with multiple reports and inquiry screens.
Accurate Sales Order Analysis	Not available. “Pending Sales” listing only.	Complete, in-depth sales analysis reporting.
Thorough Reporting	Seven Sales reports.	Over 25 reports for Order Entry tasks and analysis.
Return Tracking	Limited to writing a credit memo.	Returns are tracked in the Order Entry module by invoice or by part with full reporting capabilities.
Inventory Control	Quickbooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Decimal Places	Limit of two.	Up to four decimal places can be set up for cost and price. BusinessWorks also supports fractional quantities.
Fields for Tracking Committed or Back Ordered Quantities	Not Available	Both are present in BusinessWorks.
Product Line Tracking	Not Available	Product line tracking is supported for more detailed reporting of inventory performance by product line.
Quantity Adjustments and Returns	Not Available	Both are present in BusinessWorks.
Global Price Change and Model Part	Not Available	Both of these time saving features are included in BusinessWorks.
Serial Number Tracking	Not Available	Tracks and provides the serial status (on hand, issued, reserved, missing) for an unlimited number of serial numbers for each part. Serialized On Hand, Receipts, Issues and Returns reports are available.
Multiple Warehouses	Not Available	Tracks quantities and history for up to 99 user-defined warehouses. Parts can be easily transferred between warehouses. Many reports are available that can be sorted by warehouse.
Inventory Performance Report	Not Available	An Inventory Performance report is available to show important information in a summarized format including profit margin, average on hand and stock value.
Build/Unbuild Sub-Assemblies	Not Available	Fully supported.
Complete Pricing	Single price only.	Pricing methods include absolute, margin, markup or product line. Three pricing levels are available (good, better, best) and up to five user- defined quantity breaks are available per part.
Costing Methods	Average costing only.	Supports Standard, LIFO, FIFO and Average costing methods.
Physical Inventory	Worksheet only.	Complete functionality including the ability to lock other users from inventory. Also can update parts by absolute or relative counts.
Job Cost	Quickbooks Pro 5.0	BusinessWorks
Tracking Job Phases	Not Available	Can track up to 999 phases per job.
Tracking Overhead Methods/Amounts	Not Available	Six different overhead methods are available with automatic calculation of amounts.
Analyze Job by Job Code Detail	Not Available	Categorized job codes and automatically calculates changes in prices and costs based on job code detail.
Retainage	Not Available	Retainage is the total price of the job that the customer will withhold until the job is completed. BusinessWorks can withhold, track and release retainage using two different methods.
Used with permission from Sage Software This page was updated on Friday, February 24, 2006