Up until the end of 2015 BrightGauge was primarily focused on operational and sales metrics. But as our customer base grew we saw a demand for more and more financial metrics. Some of them were in our customers’ PSA (Connectwise, Autotask, and TigerPaw) but we realized not all of it was. That’s why we decided to work on an integration with QuickBooks Desktop. With this change we have received a lot of questions and objections from our customers that we wanted to address:
Objection #1 - Security Concerns About Financial Data
Let me start out by saying that I believe operational data (customer name, phone number, location, service history, asset count, etc.) is more sensitive than how your team accounts for the revenue and expenses. That being said, we take security very seriously because it’s in our blood. Our sister company (and our oldest operating company in our family business) is an IT Security Provider, Compuquip Technologies. Both my brother and I came from Compuquip and continue to be involved with the business to this day. So security is always top of mind regardless of what type of data.
You can learn more about our Current State of Security and also check out our Security Policies.
Objection #2 - QuickBooks Reporting is handled by the Finance Team
We can totally appreciate that each team has their areas of responsibility and understand that the finance team may want to keep QuickBooks data out of the hands of their operational team. That’s one of the reasons why we have built in User Permissions into our Advanced Plan allowing the administrators of the account to control who can see what information.
For a complete list of the types of users we offer and the permissions please visit: BrightGauge Users Explained
Objection #3 - What’s the benefit of real time financial reporting in BrightGauge?
Do you have a real time pulse on your company’s financial performance? Or do you wait until several days after the end of the month and get a PDF report emailed to you from your finance team or bookkeeper with your P&L... when it’s too late to make adjustments to performance?
Over 90% of businesses only review financials on a monthly basis with the most popular report being their Profit & Loss statement. The problem with waiting until month end is it might be too late to course correct your business, but by having the information earlier you can make the changes in real time based on the trends you’re seeing.
Objection #4 - I don’t see why I need QuickBooks metrics
We all know cash flow is the oxygen of any business and without it you cannot survive. Knowing it's this important, why wait for someone to run a report for you and send it to you each week or worse yet, each month. Why not have the information in real time being shared with all the key team members that can help collect. These types of metrics will impact your cash flow immediately and easily pay for the investment in the integration.
Objection #5 - We already have a QuickBooks reporting solution and don't want to switch
This one makes the most sense and we know how difficult it is to make a change to a new business intelligence tool or reporting tool. That’s why we pride ourselves in Crushing the Learning Curve but don’t take our word for it, hear it from a new customer that recently went through the experience: Priority One Makes the Change to BrightGauge.
Financial data brings a unique context into your organization so when you combine it with Operational data the result is true, valuable insights into the overall health of your business. See how having the right reports and dashboards at your fingertips can help you achieve your business goals:
