When a company moves to an ERP platform from QuickBooks, one of the first questions its people ask is simple: “Do we still need QuickBooks for a little while?” It’s understandable. QuickBooks is familiar. It’s been the financial home base for many growing businesses, sometimes for years. And letting go of something comfortable can feel risky.
But this question leads to deeper ones. What does it look like to keep QuickBooks running? Does it save time or create more of it? Is there any real benefit to running both QuickBooks and your ERP platform in parallel?
This article answers these questions in clear terms so you can decide what actually makes sense for your transition.
Why Do Some Companies Want to Keep QuickBooks After ERP Go-Live?
Before judging whether it’s good or bad to keep QuickBooks, it helps to understand why people are tempted to do it. There are a few common patterns behind this hesitation.
People feel comfortable in Quickbooks over a new ERP system. They know the screens. They know the buttons. They know how long tasks take. And many have an outside accountant or CPA who also works in the system. Moving away from this setup can feel like losing control.
Some teams also assume moving financials will be the hardest part of the migration. They imagine long hours of rework and worry that switching everything at once will create chaos.
Others get caught in the sunk cost fallacy. QuickBooks is usually billed monthly, but people sometimes feel like, “We already paid for this. Shouldn’t we keep using it for a bit?”
These instincts make sense, but they often lead companies down a harder path.
How Can Running QuickBooks and an ERP Platform in Parallel Create Problems?
To see why running both systems rarely works, it helps to imagine what that setup actually looks like. With an ERP solution like Acumatica, your financials update in real time. A shipment goes out, and your inventory and revenue reflect that immediately. A bill is entered, and your payables shift right away.
If you keep QuickBooks running at the same time, you now have two financial systems. And that means two versions of:
- Bank reconciliations
- Month-end close
- Accounts payable
- Accounts receivable
- Revenue recognition
- Inventory valuation
And these are not small tasks. If you keep both systems active, your accounting team has to perform them twice.
You’ll also take on a new risk: The systems won’t match. Even small differences, like a bank feed processed in one system but not the other, a missed entry, or a deleted invoice, can build up fast. You’ll end up trusting neither system, because you’ll constantly need to check one against the other.
For a team trying to build confidence in a new ERP platform, this parallel operation will create more confusion, not less.
Can You Integrate QuickBooks With Your New ERP Solution?
Some companies ask whether they can integrate QuickBooks with their new ERP platform to keep both running. While integrations might exist, they typically introduce more issues than they solve.
QuickBooks is not the same as a tool like Microsoft Excel, which can be used alongside Acumatica for analysis and data preparation without undermining Acumatica as the source of truth. Keeping QuickBooks active alongside an ERP platform, on the other hand, creates a second financial system.
ERP platforms already manage your financials and accounting by design. Sending that information back into QuickBooks turns QuickBooks into a second ledger, which is something no accountant wants to reconcile.
Even with an integration, you would still need to:
- Maintain duplicate chart of account structures
- Reconcile both systems
- Monitor sync failures
- Validate mismatched transactions
- Manage two sources for audit questions
Rather than simplifying the transition, an integration would double the work and increase your exposure to errors.
QuickBooks Is Easy to Cancel and Easy to Restore
One of the concerns companies have is whether cutting off QuickBooks is final. Fortunately, QuickBooks Online uses monthly subscriptions, not long-term contracts. Most businesses can cancel anytime without penalty.
And because high-quality ERP migration tools transfer all your historical financials, invoices, and charts of accounts into the ERP solution, you won’t be “losing” your information. If you ever choose to move back to QuickBooks (which is rare), you can bring your financial data with you.
This flexibility should remove the fear that you’re trapped.
The Real Factors to Consider Before Keeping QuickBooks
If you’re still unsure whether it makes sense to keep QuickBooks for a bit, here are the factors that matter most and some questions you should ask yourself before deciding:
- How much duplicate work will your team be doing? Running two systems always means more manual entry and more reconciliation.
- How will inconsistencies be handled? If the numbers don’t match, which system is “right”?
- How will users know where to work? If accounts payable, banking, and revenue live in two places, confusion is likely to quickly increase.
- Does your new ERP platform already handle all financial activity? Yes. While some businesses use specialized tools that feed into the ERP platform, the ERP platform remains the system of record. Keeping QuickBooks active alongside it only introduces duplicate work and risk.
- Does keeping QuickBooks delay user adoption? Yes. If the old system is still there, people will default to it.
Once you look at these questions and evaluate the answers, the case for keeping QuickBooks will likely become much weaker.
The Bottom Line: Keeping QuickBooks Feels Safe but Creates More Risk
It’s natural to feel hesitant about leaving QuickBooks behind. It has been the backbone of many companies for years. But once an ERP platform is live, the value comes from running your financials, operations, and reporting in one place. Keeping QuickBooks makes that harder, not easier. It doubles the work. It introduces inconsistencies. And it slows down the adoption curve that makes your ERP solution worth the investment.
If you want a deeper look at how some ERP partners approach this transition, you can explore insights in our companion article (coming soon) about why Stellar One requires QuickBooks retirement at go-live.
Still wondering whether it’s the right time for your business to migrate from QuickBooks to a full ERP platform? Click below to take your ERP Readiness Quiz.
Frequently Asked Questions About Keeping QuickBooks Active