Rapid Inventory – a tale of what once was, is better than ever!

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Once upon a time, before Intuit decided to offer their current QB-Enterprise Advanced Inventory subscription feature, Intuit had a relationship with a company known as AccuCode.

The result of that relationship was Intuit’s QuickBooks Enterprise Warehouse Management ES. Unlike most 3rd party inventory solutions that work ‘with’ QuickBooks, the AccuCode solution provided full QuickBooks feature integration with a robust inventory engine offering multiple locations, bin/shelf/rack tracking, alternative cost valuation, and serial/lot tracking.  Warehouse Management worked hand-n-hand with QuickBooks providing seamless integration that still allowed transactions like sales orders and purchase orders to be performed in QuickBooks, while receiving and order fulfillment occurred in Warehouse Management.

When Intuit abandoned their relationship with AccuCode to begin work on their own QBES Advanced Inventory functionality, the only people who really knew that the former warehouse management functionality was still available were those Enterprise users who continued subscribing to AccuCode.   About the same time AccuCode changed the name of their former Warehouse Management product to ‘Rapid Inventory’.  But the best news is that Rapid Inventory not only provides the same functionality and complete integration with QuickBooks as when it was Warehouse Management, but Rapid Inventory has expanded and improved their feature set.

Rapid Inventory is completely integrated with QuickBooks to track inventory across multiple warehouses and locations, track lot and serial numbers, expiration dates, and products in transit as well as ‘on hold’. Barcode scanning is integrated, and not just for product identification, but for location, product type, lot or serial number, and many other ‘programmable’ characteristics.  While you can’t print barcodes from QB Enterprise Advanced Inventory, you can not only print barcode labels/tags, etc., but you can print barcodes on documentation including pick-lists.

In every version of QuickBooks, inventory management begins and ends with an Item and a Quantity. If your business is very inventory complex, your company performs every day inventory transactions that can’t be adequately tracked in QuickBooks. Many businesses then turn to spreadsheets, or paper and pencils, to try to track what QuickBooks can’t. If you have multiple warehouses, or inventory with Lot Numbers or Expiration Dates, your inventory controls just get more complicated and difficult to manage, even QuickBooks Enterprise Advanced Inventory can’t handle expiration dates, as well as other complex inventory issues.

Rapid Inventory takes your same QuickBooks item and quantity information and then adds additional attributes such as Warehouse, Location, Serial/Lot Numbers, Expiration Date, and Hold Reasons. This combination of the QB items and the RI attributes creates complex inventory capabilities, and each unique combination of attributes creates a new inventory variant. It would be nearly impossible to manually track your inventory like this, but with Rapid Inventory fully integrated with the QuickBooks you know, even the most complex inventory becomes simple. All this information is collected and sorted automatically, and Rapid Inventory knows where everything is. 

But Rapid Inventory doesn’t stop there, all data tracked in Rapid Inventory is passed back to QuickBooks in a way that QuickBooks can now understand and process the information.  This means that when you view inventory numbers in QuickBooks they are accurate for both ‘counts’ and ‘values’.   When preparing an estimate or sales order in QuickBooks, the quantities on hand will be accurate; when creating a purchase order in QuickBooks, the quantities displayed on outstanding purchase orders will also be accurate…..try doing that with one of those other 3rd party inventory solutions that remove all inventory functionality from QuickBooks!

When you need to access one of those other inventory solutions from a warehouse down the street, or around the world, you have to log-in to your company's server via terminal server to access the 'other' inventory product.  Similarly if your warehouse staff or remote sales staff need access to QuickBooks, they too must use terminal server.  But with Rapid Inventory all remote sites log-in to Rapid Inventory via a browser, or hand-held device, because Rapid Inventory is a ‘cloud based solution’.  All transactions processed in inventory are posted back to QuickBooks using the secure QuickBooks Web Connector.   This reduces the number of QuickBooks licenses necessary since most Rapid Inventory users never require direct access to QuickBooks.

Rapid Inventory users are notified of open sales orders for fulfillment, open purchase orders for receiving, and changes in bills of material, as well as new or changed items.  At any remote location, such as a warehouse around the corner, in another state or around the world, Rapid Inventory users can pick orders for delivery or shipment, process those shipments, and return completed orders to QuickBooks for automatic invoicing.  When products arrive at a warehouse, they are received against open purchase orders and are then ‘inventoried’ into the appropriate location including bin, shelf, and rack or even ‘floating’ locations.  When it comes time to process a physical inventory count, Rapid Inventory leads the way with orderly automated counts and adjustments, all posted to QuickBooks in near-instant updates.  Rapid Inventory locations can even create QuickBooks Sales Receipts if you permit direct ‘from the warehouse’ Counter-sales.

As if that wasn't enough, Rapid Inventory also offers manufacturing functionality; if you need a true multi-level Bill of Materials or a complex manufacturing process Rapid Inventory can either provide or integrate with alternatives that meet your needs.  Rapid Inventory also integrates with EDI solutions, allowing EDI created Sales Orders in QuickBooks to sync with Rapid Inventory for processing; upon order fulfillment the EDI system transmits the invoice to the customer and integrates with the shipper.  At the optimum of this process, the only human hands involved were those of the warehouse employee responsible for ‘picking and packing’ the order.

Because Rapid Inventory is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application, you don’t buy any software or hardware.  You pay a monthly subscription fee for both the Rapid Inventory application and the hardware you need (barcode terminals and readers, connectivity and printer equipment).  Fees are based upon the number of users who need access and the quantity of equipment needed to fit your work locations and productivity requirements.  Rapid Inventory is also a month-to-month subscription; you can cancel anytime if you find a better alternative.

AccuCode recently added Rapid Inventory functionality for Apple iPad/iPhone and Android tablet/phone devices.  These applications allow employees to work remotely to complete transactions anywhere using their phone or tablet devices; they can receive against Purchase Orders, pick Sales Orders, or perform Inventory counts. Even barcode scanning can be performed using the mobile devices' camera, or via an optional Bluetooth scanner.   With an Android tablet shock-mounted on your fork-lift, or an iPad on a goose-neck mounted at a receiving dock, think of the streamlined ease of your most difficult inventory tasks with these enhancements.

Conclusion

I have found Rapid Inventory to be a viable inventory solution for many QuickBooks businesses that otherwise would have purchased add-on software that takes sales, purchasing, inventory and invoicing out of QuickBooks.  Most of their personnel would have been required to learn two different software packages, and the business would have needed to purchase licenses to permit all their users to access both products. They would have been purchasing thousands of dollars of hand-held and specialized printers upfront.  In addition, most of these businesses would have needed to install and use Windows Terminal Server to support their remote locations accessing both QuickBooks and the 3rd party Inventory product. While those solutions may fit some businesses, they are not acceptable to many other businesses.

But with Rapid Inventory, implementing the inventory controls and features they needed, including remote locations was simple and cost-effective. So if you need truly ‘advanced inventory features’ in remote locations, be that across the parking lot, across town, in another state, or on the other side of the globe, Rapid Inventory can meet your needs, and keep your inventory data in sync within the QuickBooks your people know and love. 

There is no reason to think about ‘what once was’, Rapid Inventory is ‘still here, and better than ever.”

You can learn more about Rapid Inventory at: http://www.rapidinventory.com/inventory-software/