What is Quickbase used for?

Discover Quickbase Uses for the Business World

What is Quickbase used for? As a developer who has specialized in creating low-code business applications for many years, this is a question I am asked often. In this installment of my Quickbase series, I’ll examine how Quickbase can revolutionize your business operations. From project management and workflow automation to data integration and reporting, Quickbase offers a versatile platform that can be customized to meet your business needs. 

Whether you’re a small business owner or part of a large enterprise, understanding the uses of Quickbase can help optimize efficiency and drive growth. Stay tuned as a Quickbase consultant explores the multifaceted capabilities of this low-code development platform.

What is Quickbase?

Quickbase is a low-code platform for creating applications that help you organize and analyze the information that makes your business run: customer contacts, billing records, inventories, contracts, the stages of your workflows, or just about anything else. Although formerly one of the Intuit family of software products (with TurboTax and QuickBooks, among others), Quickbase was sold by Intuit in 2016 to a private equity firm and has operated independently ever since.  

Quickbase Use Cases 

The flexibility of Quickbase’s low-code platform makes it helpful in a wide range of industries. Consider a few of the ways that Watkyn clients use Quickbase:

• Client services: To create and process itineraries for group and individual travel or match security personnel with clients and manage their schedules;
• Process management: To manage all the steps in the workflow of a funeral home or take a real estate transaction from new lead to closing;
• Workflow automation: To receive and process university student immunization records or plan and monitor routes for picking up materials to be recycled;
• Supply chain management: To move and track parts inventory for supporting commercial railway traffic;
• Financial management: To receive an award grant money through a local government or non-profit;
• Project management: To manage the financing, construction, and operations of a solar energy-generating firm or manage construction projects from site survey through ribbon cutting.

Quickbase for Financial Management 

Quickbase can help you manage your financial data and produce customized real-time reports that monitor your business’s key performance indicators (KPIs). Do you bill clients for hourly work? Quickbase makes it easy to record time records and create monthly reports for invoicing. Do you sell a line of products? Quickbase enables you to keep track of your sales and manage your inventory. Whether you are a small firm looking to grow or an established corporation reporting to investors or shareholders, Quickbase can use your data to create the necessary records and reports. 

Process Management, Task Management, and Workflow Automation in QuickBase

Over time, many companies develop complex systems to optimize their customer service, efficiency, and profitability. Keeping track of each step in those workflows, ensuring tasks are done in order, recording customer feedback, and making smooth handoffs from one member of a team to another are critical to success. Quickbase makes this easy by allowing teams, large and small, to have real-time access to the same data while allowing businesses to customize permissions at the most granular level to ensure that everyone on the team has full access to the information they need–and only the information they need.   

Quickbase can automate workflows so that when you land a new client, it creates all the records, forms, and tasks you need to take them through your entire sales cycle. When you begin a new project, Quickbase can copy the workflow from a previous project–and allow you to customize it to fit the special requirements of your new customer.  

Advanced-Data Encryption in QuickBase

Quickbase features give you the tools to protect your data and intellectual property (IP). Quickbase customers control access to their data via authentication and authorization at the realm (sub-domain or customer account) and individual application levels. Quickbase also uses advanced data encryption methods, encrypting data in motion and at rest using industry-leading 256-bit encryption.

Quickbase also employs best practices in testing the quality of its security measures, including completing the Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ) for the Cloud Security Alliance’s Security, Trust, and Assurance Registry (STAR) and an annual security penetration test. 

Benefits of QuickBase: A Cloud-Based Platform for Business Applications

Few things hurt your team’s productivity more than siloed data, especially in our hybrid and remote work era. With Quickbase’s cloud-based platform, your data is available to everyone on your team, whether in the office, working remotely, or traveling to visit clients or vendors.  

Low Code Platform: Create Applications Fast

Quickbase makes rapid application development easy with its low-code platform. Creating custom data forms, tables, fields, relations, and reports can be done with just a few clicks, saving hours of development time to get your solution done quickly and inexpensively. 

Developer Resources and IT Department Integration

Quickbase recognizes the investment required for your IT department to learn a new platform. That’s why it makes many developer resources available for free on its website, including many courses in the Quickbase University library, which can take you from the simplest introduction to Quickbase to more advanced development work and even certification. 

Custom Branding and Premium Support in QuickBase

While Quickbase has an attractive user interface, you can easily add custom branding by changing the app icon, header, and footer. Quickbase support comes in a variety of forms. Some explanatory articles and videos cover many technical and non-technical topics that are available for free on the Quickbase website, including Quickbase University. You can also create your posts and review the posts of others in the very active Quickbase community discussion board. Finally, premium support is available through office hours and appointments with Quickbase’s team of developers.

QuickBase for Citizen Developers: Low Code, High Impact

Quickbase is one of the leaders of the low-code revolution, which has democratized the app-building process by allowing citizen developers to create applications without being able to write code. Instead of immersing yourself in a complicated maze of technical jargon, as a citizen developer, you can build your app using the elements Quickbase has pre-created. Want to create a more complex application? Quickbase partners like Watkyn can provide as much or as little help as you need. Quickbase also offers enablement packages allowing you to build alongside an expert developer–or turn the project over to that developer.  

Audit Logs and Business Decisions

Audit logs give you visibility to all the vital activities around your application that influence the success of your business. They are available with every Quickbase package, allowing administrators to track how the application is being used, including all changes to its structure, user engagement, and changes to records and reports. At the “Business” and “Enterprise” levels, Quickbase provides app restore assistance, meaning you can revert to an earlier version of your app or snapshot of your data if you wish to undo a change.

Versatile for Small Businesses and Larger Companies

As the different use cases described at the beginning of this article demonstrate, Quickbase is versatile enough to support both small and large companies. A one-person real estate or travel agency, a small law firm, and a family lawn care business can use Quickbase to manage client contacts, organize billing, and track key financial metrics. A large manufacturer can use Quickbase to process and monitor the movement of every part along a vast supply chain. In contrast, an international hotel chain can track business at each of its properties and give the administrative office the visibility it needs to plan the next wave of new hotels or track the success of a new promotion or pricing system.

Additional Quickbase  Features: Custom Forms, Developer Sandbox, and More

All Quickbase packages include features like custom-built forms, workflow automation, email notifications, and subscriptions, allow you to create personalized dashboards, reports, and charts, and give you access to your data through the Quickbase mobile app. At the “Business” and “Enterprise” levels, you also have access to a developer sandbox and the ability to use Gantt charts to track the progress of your projects.

QuickBase Pricing: How Much Does Quickbase Cost?

Quickbase allows new users to use the platform for free for 30 days. After that, typical pricing is based on the number of users and the features desired.

Billed Annually with Full Access

While all packages give users full access to Quickbase’s essential features, most smaller businesses will find the “Team” package meets their needs. Larger enterprises with more complex needs may want the “Business” or “Enterprise” packages.

The QuickBase User-Friendly Interface is Perfect for Building Business Apps

Quickbase combines simplicity of design with a user-friendly interface to create applications that your team will quickly adopt. Is Quickbase right for your business? The QuickBase consultants at Watkyn will give you a free use case assessment–and if it isn’t, they can help you create the custom application you need.