2010 Awesome Add-ons
At The Sleeter Group, we continually study the marketplace of add-ons for QuickBooks and other brands of financial accounting software, as well as services that enhance the software. We're quite impressed with the depth and breadth of solutions in the market, including solutions for everything from automotive dealership management to construction, property management, manufacturing, and wholesale and distribution - and even in horizontal applications such as document management. It's truly amazing to see how the "ecosystem" of solutions has grown and thrived over the years.
For several years now, we've spotlighted several special products that we call "Awesome Add-ons." We survey products in several markets where the financial accounting software may not have all the needed features, or where clients want customized solutions. Most of the winners are software, but several are hardware, software, and/or service combinations.
In order to qualify for our list, the product or service must be developed and sold by a solid company with a reputation for outstanding customer support, and the product must have the following attributes:
- Show superior design, implementation and features.
- Integrate with QuickBooks, Peachtree, or other financial accounting software (FAS) using best practices of the FAS developer's programming guidelines
- Use appropriate transaction types and field population for recording data into the FAS so as to preserve and/or enhance the standard reporting features in the FAS
- Conform to good accounting principles and operating standards.
Here is the list of "Awesome Add-ons" for 2010:
Autofy
Propelware
www.propelware.com
Pricing: $395/yr – includes updates and support
Target Customers: QuickBooks users that process more than 15 transactions per week or require data to automatically be entered without manual data entry.
This utility program helps automate the process of pulling data from and pushing data to, various applications such as QuickBooks. It is particularly useful for QuickBooks consultants who need to help clients automate the process of synchronizing data between different applications on the desktop and on the web.
Autofy automatically synchronizes a variety of business records between desktop and enterprise software, as well as online data sources. Save valuable resources (money, time, and productivity) by eliminating double data entry and data entry mistakes. Accounting invoices, sales transactions, payroll, customer contact information and more can be easily exchanged between software platforms such as QuickBooks®, Peachtree, Salesforce.com® and Microsoft® Office, among others.
The Autofy system is available as a shrink-wrapped application or as a customized solution where data is synchronized exactly to specification. Connections can be built to any data source available including any relational database system, Intuit’s QuickBase, Fox Pro, Excel, and many others.
ExpenseWatch.com
ExpenseWatch, Inc.
www.ExpenseWatch.com
Pricing:
Expense Reports:$16/user/month
Purchasing and Invoice Mgt: $31/user/month.
Target Customers: Small and mid-sized companies in any industry.
This Web-based time and expense reporting tool allows companies to streamline the process of time tracking, expense reporting, as well as purchasing and invoicing.
If you run a business, you have expenses. ExpenseWatch.com includes modules for Expense Reports, Purchasing and AP Invoice Management that can be subscribed to individually to control specific company spending issues, or as a fully integrated expense control suite. Because ExpenseWatch.com is an open expense control platform, companies have the flexibility to integrate spending data with a wide range of business solutions used – travel management tools, accounting/enterprise resource management systems and payroll providers, credit cards, budgeting applications, customer relationship management systems, ecommerce vendors and more. ExpenseWatch.com allows managers to control company spending by viewing purchases, bills and expense reports waiting to be approved or paid, and what has been paid. Annual subscriptions include implementation – which takes about a month – training, support for all users, and usage analysis.
Method Integration
Alocet Incorporated
www.methodintegration.com
Pricing: Click here
Target Customers: Small to Medium sized businesses that use QuickBooks and require industry-specific functions and/or custom features.
MISys SBM Shop Floor Control v4.0
MISys, Inc.
www.misysinc.com
Pricing: $1,500 (as part of the MISys SBM modular system)
Target Customers: All small to medium-sized manufacturer under 100 employees
We first recognized MISys SBM in 2007, but with this major new feature, the product suddenly appeals to a whole new set of customers in the mid-market and beyond.
Manufacturers who need to compute the true cost of their production activities need the Shop Floor Control module of MISys Small Business Manufacturing. This new module, added onto the MISys SBM product allows the manufacturer to completely control and plan the activities, resources, and maintenance of the entire shop floor. It provides for tracking the use and maintenance of production tools, the establishment of work centers for all production activities, the specific rates at which each work center can process its work, the days of the week when each work center is open, the required material, labor, and overhead for each work center, the routing details for bills of material and manufacturing orders, and many other critical activities that must be managed to successfully run a manufacturing operation.
Netfira Connect Commerce
Netfira
www.netfira.com
Pricing: Free, $1 per transaction
Target Customers: Wholesalers, Distributors, Manufacturers, any buyer or seller or finished goods
NETFIRA Connect is the fast, simple, real-time application connecting sellers, buyers and their accounting systems, enabling small and large businesses to securely trade over the Internet.
Netfira Connect Commerce has two integrated modules - Connect Seller and Connect Buyer - which transform the traditional buying and selling process into two way, real-time electronic commerce.
Unlike traditional e-commerce solutions where sellers list their products on an external web store, Netfira Connect allows buyers and sellers to securely link to each other in real-time via a secure peer-to-peer link over the Internet. Key features include online price checking, inventory availability and ordering. Netfira Connect links to most SMB inventory management and accounting systems, including MYOB, QuickBooks, Sage, Attaché and Fishbowl. This enables customers and vendors to electronically trade with each other securely from their desktop, regardless of their size or which backend accounting or inventory system they use.
Qvinci Business Dashboard Solution
Qvinci Software
www.qvinci.com
Pricing: $9.99/ mo - $39.99 / mo
Target Customers: Small business owner and managers as well as Pro Advisors (Gurus). Gurus are able to brand Qvinci and provide the solution to end users while layering additional services on top.
Qvinci is a small business management tool which aggregates data from QuickBooks and Excel and produces a dashboard view of financial information. The solution adds forward-looking tools, drill down, early warning indicators and graphical representations in a user interface that allows the business owner / operator /staff member to instantly spot areas needing attention. Qvinci allows Pro Advisors to brand the solution in minutes and layer additional services on top. The result is increased client "stickiness", recurring revenue and value. Qvinci is sold on a monthly subscription basis and multiple seats can be deployed across the enterprise.
ShareFile
Sharefile
www.sharefile.com
Pricing: $29.95 - $499.95/month, depending on users, storage, and bandwidth requirements
Target Customers: Small and mid-sized companies in any industry.
Virtual Time+Expense
Virtual Software Inc.
www.virtualsoftware.net
Pricing: $5 per user per month per module (Time and Expense modules sold both jointly and separately)
Target Customers: Companies using QuickBooks that have five or more employees that need to track time and/or expenses for billing, payroll or project accounting purposes.
Virtual Software's online platform simplifies the preparation, approval and accounting for timesheets and expense reports. Features include Time tracking, Class tracking, Project tracking, Paperless receipt management (fax and file upload), Credit card transaction downloads, Gross pay calculation and export to any payroll provider.
Using email notifications, Virtual Time+Expense provides multiple levels of approvals and accounting review. After review, Virtual Software's robust suite of back-office tools populates QuickBooks with detailed invoices, timecards, contractor bills and employee reimbursement checks.
XpandedReports for QuickBooks / XpandedReports for Fishbowl
XpandedReports, LLC
www.xpandedreports.com
Pricing:
$19.95 per user per month for XR for QuickBooks
$29.95 per user per month for XR for Fishbowl
Target Customers: QuickBooks Pro‐Advisors and managers at QuickBooks and Fishbowl installations
This is a comprehensive, flexible QuickBooks (or Fishbowl) reporting tool. It helps consultants produce and customized management reports for clients. XpandedReports fills the gaps left between QuickBooks reports and the needed management views of financial data in the enterprise. Instead of static, one‐off, stock reports from QuickBooks or Fishbowl, XpandedReports allows you to create a wide variety reports that can be sliced and diced with almost no limits. XpandedReports offers tools to sort, group, subtotal, create pivot tables and insert formulas directly into the report.
New Products to Watch
In addition to the above winners, there are two new products that we feel are worth mentioning, and we’re keeping an eye on them to see how they mature in the marketplace.
incMagic Search
www.incmagic.com
Pricing: $25/user/year
Target Customers: Any QuickBooks user
incMagic introduces world-class search for QuickBooks. With our simple, small search box right inside QuickBooks, just type a few keys and any matching QuickBooks data comes back instantly. Search for a contact’s name, the first few digits of a customer’s phone number, an invoice number, the price of an item, the amount of a bill — anything. Search results are organized inside QuickBooks, and viewing or editing a match is one click away.
incMagic has developed custom indexing technology specifically for QuickBooks, making search fast and accurate. Search results even update in real time as QuickBooks data changes.
With incMagic Search, it’s easier and faster to find anything in QuickBooks.
Key features:
- Search box and results integrated directly into QuickBooks
- Searches QuickBooks transactions and lists
- Searches keystroke by keystroke — no need to press “enter” to search
- Results update in real-time as QuickBooks data changes
About QuickBooks Add-ons
In 2003, Intuit released its Application Programming Interface (API), which is provided to developers in a Software Developer Kit (SDK). This SDK opens up the 3 million plus small business customer base to software developers who add value to QuickBooks by creating specific add-on products that integrate with the popular financial management system. Even a casual programmer using Microsoft Office and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) can develop an application to read from and write to a QuickBooks data file.
Intuit makes extensive use of the SDK to extend the functionality of QuickBooks. For example, QuickBooks Point of Sale uses the SDK to integrate with QuickBooks.
To search for QuickBooks add-ons, visit the Intuit marketplace site at http://marketplace.intuit.com.
For more information about developing add-ons for QuickBooks visit http://developer.intuit.com.
For previous winners, see links below.
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