Awesome QuickBooks Add-Ons For 2008

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As the marketplace of QuickBooks add-ons continues to grow, the quantity and quality of independent developers is blossoming. Not only do we see new products coming to market each month, but several products are now in their third, fourth or even fifth version. Many of these products are also hooking to QuickBooks competitors, as well.

The success of the QuickBooks “ecosystem” is benefiting everyone from small business owners, to accountants and consul tants, to software companies, and Intuit. Each of these stakeholders is benefiting by the increased breadth and depth of the solutions, and by the fact that both risks and profits are shared by millions of companies who participate in the ecosystem. The future looks bright for continued growth even as we see huge technology changes on the horizon. With the explosive growth of the online world, and with the Windows Vista conversion, software companies are racing to both “webify” their applications and upgrade them for Vista compatibility.

At The Sleeter Group, we continually study the marketplace of add-on solutions. And for several years now, we’ve spotlighted those best-of-breed products that we refer to as “awesome add-ons.” Before awarding the “awesome” label, we dig deeply into each product to ask all the hard questions we think consultants and business owners will eventually ask.

In order to qualify for our list, the product and/or service must be developed and sold by a 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 using best practices of the QuickBooks SDK programming guidelines;
• Use appropriate transaction types and field population for recording data into QuickBooks so as to preserve and/or enhance the standard reporting features in QuickBooks; and
• Conform to good accounting principles and operating standards.

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Acctivate! – Advanced Inventory & Distribution Management
Alterity, Inc.
www.acctivate.com

Pricing: $2,995 for 3 users for base system. Add-on modules range from $795 to $895 per module.
Target Customers: Acctivate! is targeted to wholesalers, distributors and light-assembly companies with complex inventory management requirements.

Acctivate! provides comprehensive tools for managing inventory-intensive businesses that are happy with QuickBooks, but need better control of purchasing, selling, inventory control, and customer relationship management. This all-in-one system is for wholesalers, distributors and light-assembly companies that handle large data sets with thousands of items in inventory, thousands of customers, and multiple locations. The product is very mature, owing to the company’s 25-year history of working with customers to perfect its system. Based on Microsoft’s SQL server, it is scalable for the growing company. The product integrates well with QuickBooks and completely takes over the inventory management, purchasing, sales, invoicing and vendor bills. It uses QuickBooks for all of the general ledger, payroll, bill paying, and banking functions.