Member Success: SoftLedger Resolves QuickBooks Frustrations for CPA Mary Kitchen

For years, CPA Mary Kitchen was forced to work with her clients using QuickBooks despite the long list of issues she has with the software platform. Frequent interface changes, broken integrations, and unreliable updates made daily accounting work tedious and error-prone. 

“I could take three hours of your time telling you how bad QuickBooks was,” Mary says. “As one example, nothing would update properly. If you pull a financial statement to drill down and change something, the financial statement doesn’t update. You have to redo the whole thing.”

Payroll was an even bigger pain point. “I used to add an additional fee for any client on QB Payroll because I would have to fix so much,” she notes. Integrations that were promised rarely worked, and updates usually made the platform more complicated, rather than more intuitive. 

Put simply, QuickBooks didn’t work for this professional accountant, who ended up spending hours each day manually working around QuickBooks.

“QuickBooks is built for small business owners, not CPAs,” she explains. “It backed into the accounting role, but it’s not real accounting. I have no faith in that software at all.”

Making the Switch

After trying other platforms  including Xero, Wave, and FreshBooks, Mary found they were simply bandaids built for QuickBooks users and too basic for professional work. None of them rethought the process from the perspective of a CPA.

SoftLedger changed the model. Built by accountants for accountants, SoftLedger directly addresses the problems with QuickBooks. 

Mary immediately saw that SoftLedger was different. The company gave Mary:

• Intuitive workflow that makes sense for accountants including journal entries and end-of-month close-outs

• Multi-entity accounts for clients with multiple businesses.

• Accurate updating and easy file pulls

• Open design that makes integration easy

The migration process was simple, and the learning curve surprisingly short. “You always have a learning curve, but with SoftLedger, it was small. You know where to look for things. It’s very intuitive.”

Mary also praised the support and collaboration: “Their help video library is substantial, and the customer service is fantastic. They actually talk with accountants about how to make things better.”

Even her bookkeeper, a QuickBooks veteran, adapted quickly. “You don’t need to be a CPA to use the software, but you can still get all the professional-level features.”

Results

With SoftLedger, Mary has dramatically reduced her frustration and manual work. She deals with fewer issues, fewer errors, and enjoys significant time savings.

“It’s been tremendous,” Mary says. “This is the first time I’ve tried another software and said, ‘This is a better alternative.’”

Tasks that once took hours of repetitive clicking now take a fraction of the time. “If I was doing six hours of bookkeeping, at least two were wasted on workarounds in QuickBooks. With SoftLedger, everything just works. If I click on something, it does what I ask it to do.”

Multi-entity management has been transformative. One client with eight businesses no longer requires Mary to “flip across multiple companies,” saving countless hours during month-end closes.

Perhaps most importantly, Mary can trust her financial statements. “I can move data and know it actually changes. I can trust the numbers. That’s huge during my busy season.”

“SoftLedger didn’t try to be another QuickBooks. They knew what was wrong and started fresh. It’s more robust, faster, and built from an accountant’s perspective. I love it.”