FinancialForce Alternatives
Want your finances to integrate with Salesforce but don’t want the price or complexity of FinancialForce?
Here are your best FinancialForce Alternatives.
NetSuite
NetSuite is the world’s most deployed cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software that provides a single view of a business across departmental functions such as finance, planning, invoicing, purchasing, sales, marketing, inventory, human resources, and more.
Breadwinner for NetSuite
Breadwinner, a Salesforce-native application that works out-of-the-box and can be up and running in less than a day, rather than requiring weeks or months of scoping and installation.
Breadwinner replicates key NetSuite data within Salesforce in real-time, allowing your staff to see up-to-date invoicing, billing, and payment records against your client and vendors in Salesforce, along with product and pricing info. Breadwinner also allows Invoices, Sales Orders, Bills, etc. to be raised in NetSuite directly from Salesforce.
Boomi, Celigo
You can use a Cloud-based integration service like Boomi or Celigo to integrate NetSuite and Salesforce. These services connect a wide variety of enterprise apps that allow data to be combined or modified as it moves from one application to another and are highly configurable.
This is especially helpful if your sales data needs to be cleaned up before being loaded into NetSuite, or if you need to make use of multiple data sources or endpoints. The downside is that cloud-based connectors of this kind usually take quite a lot of time, effort, and money to get up and running, requiring upfront investment in a complex configuration process alongside ongoing subscription costs and maintenance.
Image – Breadwinner for NetSuite Create Sales Order
“We utilized Breadwinner for NetSuite on one of our recent implementations of Salesforce. The data model in NetSuite is complex and not hugely compatible with Salesforce’s architecture. The Breadwinner app makes the process of integrating with NetSuite simple and pain-free! Seriously impressed with what they have achieved with this app!”
Adam Balme, Founder, Cloudtopia
QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, and QuickBooks Enterprise
QuickBooks is the dominant accounting package for SMBs and SMEs in the US. You may end up using QuickBooks as that’s often what most US accountants use.
Image – Breadwinner for QuickBooks Invoice Creation
Breadwinner for QuickBooks
Breadwinner allows companies to seamlessly connect one or more QuickBooks to Salesforce org. They gain a 360 view of the customer from Salesforce, while securely separating invoice generation for more sensitive financial operations. Breadwinner also works with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, and QuickBooks Enterprise.
DB-Sync, Workato, and Autofy for QuickBooks
Avankia’s DB-Sync is the most common way to connect the Windows version QuickBooks to Salesforce. While I’ve never set it up myself, I know several consultants who have. They generally report that it’s a bit tricky to get working, but that the support is good and that once properly configured, DB-Sync is stable and works well. You can also explore Interweave and Autofy, which also sync QuickBooks to Salesforce.
Breadwinner Customer Success Story
“We keep our accounting data in QuickBooks. We use Salesforce as our CRM—it’s the lifeblood of our organization.
As an organization, we had a need to ensure that accounting/financial data from our accounting system would appear in Salesforce, ensuring that our sales team wouldn’t renew customers with balances over a certain age, and allowing us to leverage automated workflows and processes in salesforce around past due balance reach outs, and reporting on revenue by customer more easily.
Our accountant lives in QuickBooks, while the rest of our organization lives in Salesforce. When we reached out to vendors, FinancialForce and Breadwinner were both at the top of our lists.
While FinancialForce is a full accounting engine, requiring a full transition from our QuickBooks org and process, Breadwinner is simpler and lighter and can pull in all QuickBooks data cleanly for us to read. FinancialForce would have taken months to implement and would have required implementation specialists at additional costs.
We made the decision to continue using QuickBooks as our accounting tool, so FinancialForce would be beyond the scope of what we needed as a solution. Had we decided to totally change our entire accounting software, FinancialForce may have fit, but it was not what we were looking for. Breadwinner has given us what we needed.”
Xero
Xero is the online accounting suite taking over most of the English-speaking world. It is the number one accounting platform in Australia and New Zealand and is making heavy inroads in the UK and Ireland. The US Market has proved tougher for them to enter, but they continue to increase their customer base there. There are no less than 7 ways to integrate Xero with Salesforce, and I’ll touch on them all here.
Breadwinner for Xero
Breadwinner is our app, and obviously we’ll suggest it! It is the only app that performs a two-way sync between Salesforce and Xero. So, if you want an out-of-the-box solution that pushes invoice and address data from Xero to Salesforce and keeps it up-to-date, you’ll want Breadwinner.
Breadwinner for Xero also has the best charts and graphs provided at the Salesforce Account level. It is also the only option if you have multiple Xero orgs that you want to sync with a single Salesforce org.
Zapier, One-SaaS, and Carry the One for Xero
These apps also provide syncing ability (though only one-way for financial data), but often only sync a record upon creation, not upon a record being updated. Some of them offer custom field synchronization, which you may need if you need to connect to your custom objects.
Custom Development and Dime for Developers
Xero provides its own API, so many people opt for custom development. If you go down this route, make sure you explore Dime for Developers, as it provides a framework for Salesforce developers to interact with their app rather than building out a direct connection to Xero. You’ll still need to pay for custom development time, but it might shave off significant time from your development, and provide a structure that benefits your set-up.
Image – Breadwinner for Xero Contact View
“We sought a solution that leverages automation and software to do these mundane tasks so our staff can focus on customer-facing actions that drive the business. With Breadwinner, the result is we’re more efficient and productive with fewer manual processes, and that’s better for everyone.”
Darwin Stephenson, Chief Revenue Officer, Apkudo
Other Accounting Software
Native Salesforce Apps that Handle Invoices
You could also use a non-integrated accounting system and handle your Invoicing separately in Salesforce through a native Invoice app. I personally don’t prefer this option as it creates double data entry and introduces potential errors, but it is an option.
Bill.ON offers subscription billing inside Salesforce, and Invoice IT Billing and Invoices for Salesforce are also options.
Interestingly enough, FinancialForce even makes a competitor to itself that, like the apps in this category, just handles Invoices. It’s called FinancialForce Billing, though as of Oct 2014, it started at $500 a month, so perhaps not the lightweight solution you were looking for!
External Recurring Billing Systems
Zuora, Chargify, and Recurly are standalone recurring billing systems that integrate into Salesforce.