What Are the Most Popular General Ledger Software Systems for U.S. Businesses?

Introduction

In the massive landscape of U.S. business, the “GL” is without question the nervous system for finance. The selection of the appropriate GL software is one of the most significant decisions an organization leader makes, effecting all aspects from day to day book keeping and reporting to strategic planning. A few major players fight for dominance in the American market; they all appeal to different businesses on the spectrum.

For solopreneurs through to global businesses, the “most popular” system varies widely depending on company size, complexity and ambition for growth. This article will guide the way through that competitive field, as we look at the front-runners in each category and uncover where a high-end integrative platform like Intersoft ERP offers an appealing option for businesses ready to leap from mere accounting.

The Competetive Landscape: Leaders by Type

The popularity of GL systems tends to vary with the stage of growth of a business. Here’s a look at the main systems in the US market.

Category 1: The Small Business & Startup Favorites 1.

They are well-liked for easy-to-use functionality, budget friendly packages and rapid implementation which is perfect for small business who wants to keep things simple.

QuickBooks Online (Intuit)

The Verdict: QuickBooks is probably the best-known name in small business accounting in the U.S. It’s made its bones by being easy to use, having gazillions of third-party apps that tie into it, and just plain the fact that bookkeepers and accountants tend to recommend what they know.

Best For: Freelancers, solopreneurs and small service-based businesses with basic inventory and payroll needs. It’s the go-to if you want to dive into proper double-entry accounting.

The Limitation: Running a business also means eventually outgrowing QuickBooks. Once a company has more complex inventory, project accounting or multi-entity management to deal with, they are caught using multiple other third-party apps which leaves them with disparate and inefficient system.

Xero

The Reality: Touted as a serious rival to QuickBooks, Xero offers its own attractive design, strong bank reconciliation capabilities (aided and abetted by near feature parity with QBO), and an equally large marketplace of connected apps.

Perfect For: Small business and startups who value modern UX and good collaboration with their accountant.

The Limitation: As with QuickBooks, Xero can be a growth bottleneck for scaling companies. Its base strength is accounting, not sophisticated operations management; as companies grow, then it’s eventually a much easier decision to go with a more all-inclusive software platform.

Category 2: The Mid-Market & Growth Powerhouses

When businesses outgrow entry-level software vendors, they move into the mid-market space and that’s where power and integration are key.

NetSuite (Oracle)

The Reality: NetSuite is the world’s first cloud ERP and it dominates the mid-market and enterprise sectors. It provides complete, fully-integrated software that includes general ledger, CRM, stock management and the e-commerce modules.

Perfect For: High-growth, complex businesses that require one system to manage multiple subsidiaries, complex revenue recognition and advanced supply chains.

The Outlook: The power behind NetSuite’s capabilities doesn’t come cheap, and the implementation is complex enough to make for an overwhelming (and expensive) endeavor with smaller mid-size companies. It is a heavyweight solution for businesses with growing pains who have outgrown.

Sage Intacct

The Reality: Sage Intacct is a cloud-based financial management platform known for its strong accountancy features, ability to manage multiple entities and measurement-related reporting. One of its main selling points with CFOs and accountants is its level of rigour and compliance.

The Perfect User: Organizations in industries such as financial or non-profit or healthcare that require advanced financial reporting and core accounting muscle.

The Takeaway: Its financial core is killer, but businesses that need anything beyond finance – staffing companies, for example, which may also need best-in-breed other applications.)

Category 3: The Enterprise Giants

At the top end, transnational corporations require incredibly sophisticated and strong systems to run an operation spread across the planet.

SAP S/4HANA

The Reality: SAP is a dominant legacy player in the enterprise ERP group. Its successor, S/4HANA, is the in-memory ERP suite for large multinationals.

Perfect For: Big multinationals that has even bigger needs (complex multi-national, multi-currency organisations in multiple territories) with need for high processing power and capability or industry-specific features.

The Consideration: It is simply way too expensive, takes far to long to implement (most times in the years), and resource heavy for any small or medium sized business.

What is the Intersoft ERP Position: The smart choice for ambitious companies

Between the two poles of QuickBooks’ simplicity and NetSuite’s seemingly endless complexity is massive white space. Here is where Intersoft ERP shines.

The vast majority of companies that use QuickBooks or Xero hit a tipping point. They are winning, expanding, and their financial and operating processes are starting to break. They have a tough decision to make – piece together a fragile household of apps around that junior GL, or make one great big disruptive jump up into an enterprise solution.

Enter Intersoft ERP, which offers a third option: A robust integrated platform that scales to handle just this type of transition.

We might not enjoy the broad name recognition of QuickBooks, but we offer what growing businesses actually need:

Not Connected Apps but Native Integration: Instead of add-ons, layers, and syncs that QuickBooks uses to piece together functionality, Intersoft ERP is one system save you time and headache.\” Inventory, project management, procurement and sales are all integrated to your GL as standard. This gets rid of data silos, reconciliation errors and ends up being the single source of truth.

Robust Functionality, Without the Overwhelming Complexity: We deliver multi-dimensional reporting and mid-market class functionality without all of the cost and implementation bloat that comes with a NetSuite-level system. We designed our platform to be powerful, but manageable for scaling teams.

Pro Hirist Accountant Focused: For over 43 years, we’ve built our software for the professional who needs more than basic bookkeeping. We offer powerful attributes for deep job costing, comprehensive inventory management and insightful financial analysis at levels that entry-level systems cannot support.

The Right Decision for Your Business

When you are comparing general ledger software, popularity can be informative but should not necessarily drive your decision. The right answer will hinge on the answers to several key questions:

Where are we today? How many interactions are we handling? What about the complexity of our inventory and reporting?

Where are we going? Are we looking to open new sites, branches or product divisions in the next two-three years?

What is the cost of fragmentation, really? Have we tallied the amount of time wasted and the number of mistakes committed when hopping between disconnected systems?

Conclusion

The most widely used general ledger software in the U.S. plays an indispensable role for businesses of all sizes. Both QuickBooks and Xero are great places to embark on that journey. The world’s biggest corporations are run on NetSuite and SAP.

For the fast growing mid-market business, the business that has graduated from starter systems but is not too big for a monolithic enterprise application, Intersoft ERP is the top choice. It is a system that simplifies your processes, delivers up-to-the-minute financial insights and accommodates the complexities of a growing business, uniting your general ledger with applications to help you transform into an agile organization.