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With Sage 100 Contractor, project commands are close at hand so you can intercept problems before they become issues. This includes:

• Viewing lists of outstanding project tasks
• Keeping in constant communication with team members
• Sending automatic schedule notices at prescribed intervals
• Monitoring the statuses of subcontracts, including changes, invoices, and balances remaining
• Checking material status reports

The details shouldn’t control you, you should control the details – and with Sage 100 Contractor, you will.

Business growth and increased market share are important to strive for, but if your growth isn't organized, you'll end up investing unnecessary time, money, and manpower to go, essentially, nowhere.

You can prevent this, however, by implementing Sage 300 management and business accounting software.

These are the value-added benefits of implementing Sage 300:

As your business grows, it will outgrow its software – your new needs will no longer be met with small business accounting software – and it will be time for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. An ERP system is integrated business management software that manages data across multiple business activities, including accounting, project/service management, inventory control, human resource management, timekeeping, customer relation management, ad-hoc/dashboard reporting and much more.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in September 2014 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

It’s the kind of business story we love: a startup service company with a niche market in the oil and gas industry expands its operations as it gains more experience, employs the right people, builds positive networks, and utilizes today’s technology.

Often, though, as bids are made and new projects started, a certain amount of disparity can occur between the company objective and the mission to keep the current workflow moving smoothly. What’s needed is an intervention of sorts, where a software platform can take on the duties of maintaining transparency, the accurate transfer of documents, and change order management for service business.

An investment in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system may be one of the best investments a small business can make. ERP solutions are no longer just for large companies; as the costs have come down, it’s easier than ever for small and medium-sized businesses to operate similarly to – and compete with – larger enterprises.

Here are ten reasons to move away from your small business accounting software:

If the size and scope of a project are relatively small, project management is often quite straightforward. When it comes to managing multiple projects, however, or a single project with many moving parts, a useful resource planning tool can be a project manager’s best friend.

While QuickBooks software by Intuit is a necessity for many startup companies that can't afford an expensive accountant, there comes a time when something that handles more complex tasks is necessary. A business that outgrows QuickBooks and doesn't update its software will find itself losing ground to the competition until it shifts gears and gets a more robust platform.

Your company may be in danger of slowing itself down by staying with the software, but how do you know you have outgrown QuickBooks?

Individuals and organizations resist change for multiple reasons, including being comfortable with current processes, fear of the unknown, and – unfortunate but true – laziness. If your employees are resistant to change and you let them "win" by avoiding change projects, your business will fall behind its competition and you'll lose great ideas and chances for improvement.

You've grown your business to its current state with basic software, and that's great – but as you continue to grow in both size and complexity, you'll need to find an accounting product that can "stretch" to provide for your new needs. With so many products on the market, it might seem overwhelming, but we have a few recommendations to help you find the best accounting software for you.

It’s not quite the chicken or the egg conundrum, but putting a management accounting system implementation ahead of a business process review doesn’t make sense. It should be the opposite, in fact – you should always get a business process review before implementing a management accounting system.