You start with QuickBooks. It’s simple, affordable, perfect for a young business. Your accountant sets it up. You invoice customers. Life is good.

Then you grow. 10 people. 20 people. 30 people.

Suddenly QuickBooks doesn’t cut it anymore. You need job costing. You need real-time visibility into which projects are profitable. You need to track labor differently. QuickBooks can’t do that natively. You’re doing it in spreadsheets now. Spreadsheets you update manually. Spreadsheets that get out of sync. Spreadsheets that lie to you.

So you look at Sage 100.

Sage can do all that. Sage is powerful. But Sage also costs $500+ per month. Sage requires a 6-month implementation. Sage means hiring consultants. Sage means training your team on something completely different. Sage means 3 months of chaos while you’re running two systems in parallel. Sage means data migration nightmares. Sage means months of your CFO’s time dealing with the implementation partner instead of running the business.

You do the migration anyway. Because you have to.

Two years later, you’ve scaled to $15M revenue. Sage still works, but barely. You need more customization. You need to handle multiple business types. You need to integrate with your field team’s mobile app. Sage is bloated. Sage takes months to customize. Sage has become expensive and rigid.

So now you’re looking at enterprise: PeopleSoft. SAP. NetSuite.

Six figures. Another implementation. Another 6-12 months of your life. Another team of consultants who will own your business logic while you pay them $300/hour.

This is the treadmill. And you’re on it whether you like it or not.

QuickBooks → Sage 100 → Enterprise System.

It’s the default path for growing businesses. It’s also expensive, painful, and completely avoidable.

The Real Cost of This Treadmill

Let’s talk numbers.

The QuickBooks to Sage Migration:

• Software: $500-700/month = $6K-8.4K per year
• Implementation: $50K-100K (consultants, data migration, setup)
• Training: $5K-10K
• Downtime/chaos: Unmeasurable, but significant
• Your time: 300+ hours of your leadership team’s attention

Add it up: $75K-$120K in direct costs. And that’s conservative.

But the real cost is hidden. While you’re running two systems in parallel for 3 months, your team is confused. Your data is fragmented. You’re making decisions on incomplete information. Customers notice the chaos. Some leave. Some slow their projects while you get your systems right.

The Enterprise Migration (Sage to PeopleSoft/SAP):

• Software: $2K-5K per month = $24K-60K per year
• Implementation: $200K-500K (larger team, longer timeline)
• Training: $25K-50K
• Consulting ongoing: $100K+ per year (because you can’t figure it out alone)
• Your time: 500+ hours over 12+ months
• Opportunity cost: While your CFO is in implementation meetings, they’re not growing the business

Add it up: $400K-$800K in direct costs, plus the opportunity cost of losing your best people to implementation hell for a year.

And for what? To go from a system that doesn’t fit your business to a system that’s overkill and even more rigid.

Why This Treadmill Exists

The treadmill exists because traditional software is built vertically. QuickBooks is a vertical. Sage is a vertical. Enterprise is a vertical.

Each system is a silo. It does one thing well. When you outgrow it, there’s no upgrade path that doesn’t involve ripping everything out and starting over.

QuickBooks can’t evolve into Sage without you rebuilding. Sage can’t evolve into enterprise without you hiring consultants and spending 6 months in hell.

The software companies built it this way intentionally. Because migrations are profitable. Consulting is profitable. Every time you outgrow a system, they win again.

You lose.

What If You Could Skip the Treadmill?

Imagine a different scenario.

You start with a platform that grows with you. Not a system that forces you to change. A platform that adapts as your business changes.

At $2M revenue, you need job costing. You add a module. Two weeks later, you’re tracking profitability by project.

At $5M revenue, you need workorder management. You add a module. Your field teams are managing jobs differently.

At $10M revenue, you need to manage multiple business lines. You add custom entities. The same platform handles construction and municipal and service work. No rip-and-replace. No migration. No consultants.

At $15M revenue, you have full financial visibility. Real-time P&L. Job profitability. Cash flow forecasting. All integrated. No spreadsheets. No disconnected systems.

You’re scaling. Your software is scaling with you. No treadmill. No chaos. No six-figure migrations every 18 months.

This is what BasicBMS does.

The Entity-Based Architecture Difference

Here’s the technical reason why the treadmill doesn’t apply to BasicBMS.

Traditional software (QuickBooks, Sage, enterprise) is built vertically. It’s organized by function. Accounting. CRM. HR. Each function is a separate application. When you need them to talk to each other, integration is painful.

BasicBMS is built horizontally, around entities. You define what you need to track (customers, projects, jobs, invoices, whatever). The system provides all standard operations for that entity (create, update, delete, search, report). You build the workflows around those entities.

The same foundational architecture handles a construction company, a service business, a water utility, a startup. The foundation doesn’t change. You just define different entities and workflows.

This is why we built an entirely new vertical (municipal water billing) in weeks, not months. The foundation was already there.

It’s also why you don’t outgrow BasicBMS. You grow into it. More modules, more customization, more complexity. Same platform. No rearchitecting.

The Math Works Out

Let’s compare real costs over 5 years.

Scenario 1: The Treadmill (QB → Sage → Enterprise)

• Year 1-2: QuickBooks ($240/year), no migration
• Year 2-3: Migrate to Sage ($100K + $8.4K/year)
• Year 3-5: Run Sage ($8.4K/year)
• Year 5: Start evaluating enterprise ($25K in consulting)
• 5-Year Total: ~$150K+ (plus opportunity cost)

Scenario 2: BasicBMS from Day One

• Year 1: Start with CRM + Quotes ($600/year)
• Year 1-2: Add modules as needed ($600-1800/year)
• Year 2-3: Add job costing, invoicing, payables ($2,400/year)
• Year 3-5: Run full stack ($3,600/year)
• 5-Year Total: ~$15K (plus zero chaos)

The difference: $135K+ in avoided migration costs. Plus the time. Plus the sanity.

This Is Not Hypothetical

We work with construction companies that grew from $5M to $15M on BasicBMS. No Sage. No migration. No consultants.

We work with service companies doing full-stack finance (quotes, invoicing, job costing, payables, GL) on a single integrated platform.

We work with a municipal utility that built an entirely new vertical because the platform was flexible enough to adapt.

None of them migrated. None of them hit the treadmill.

The Real Question

Here’s what you should be asking yourself: Why would you build on QuickBooks if you know you’ll outgrow it?

If you know the default path is QB → Sage → Enterprise, why not start on a platform that actually grows with you?

If you know migration costs six figures, why not choose software that doesn’t require migration?

If you know your business is unique (it is), why choose software that forces you to change how you work instead of adapting to how you actually work?

The answer is simple. Start with BasicBMS. Define your entities. Build your workflows. Scale as you grow. No treadmill. No chaos.

Next Steps

If you’re on the treadmill right now, caught between QuickBooks and Sage, or Sage and enterprise, we can help. The path off is faster and cheaper than the path forward.

If you’re building your foundation and want to avoid the treadmill altogether, we can show you what growing to $15M+ looks like without rip-and-replace migrations.

Download our free System Migration Checklist: This breaks down exactly what you’re going to spend (time, money, sanity) if you go the traditional route. Use it to understand your real costs.

Or schedule a demo and see what a platform actually designed to grow with you looks like.

The treadmill is optional. Let’s get you off it.