November 2021 - Inventory and Manufacturing Overview

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Insightful Accountant will feature an 'editorial emphasis' on Inventory and Manufacturing during the month of November (2021). As a part of that emphasis we will examine several inventory and manufacturing products in-depth over the weeks to come.  This feature provides an overview of some of those products.

All Orders by NumberCruncher is a QuickBooks add-on that delivers robust, feature-rich inventory management, sales cycle workflow, and warehouse management solutions at an affordable price. All Orders is a leading QuickBooks Developer and a provider of inventory and order management software to the QuickBooks community. They were one of the first developers to invest in the QuickBooks SDK (software development kit) from Intuit for the purpose of designing an inventory add-on to QuickBooks Desktop. In addition to their basic product 'All Orders', NumberCruncher also offers a mobile version of that work with All Orders, and an integrated E-commerce website. Both the All Orders Mobile and All Orders Web products are separate products at additional cost to the basic product summarized here.

  • All Orders seamlessly integrates with QuickBooks to provide bi-directional synchronization; updates to entities, such as items and customers, that occur in one system will always roll into the other. Whenever QuickBooks needs to get notified of items going into inventory, such as receiving or out of stock, such as shipping, All Orders will make sure QuickBooks knows about it. Bookkeepers handling AR/AP in QuickBooks cannot even tell the difference between documents generated by actual users or All Orders.
  • The All Orders Home Dashboard is a unique launch screen that serves as a handy one-stop collection of the most often-accessed lists and forms. It provides one-click access to popular sales, purchasing, production, and warehouse functions, plus quick reports, making this the starting point for many users.
  • The All Orders Customer Information Screen is really a CRM that provides a complete history of every transaction for each customer. Combined with searching and filtering, staff can easily find quotes, orders, shipments and return and open them for viewing or editing with a single click. This screen includes the customer contact details, internal notes on the customer, and an A/R Aging summary for their account.
  • All Orders covers the entire Sales Cycle. Quotes can be issued to customers and then easily converted into Sales Orders. Orders can then be filled with shipping documents (or electronically or via their 'mobile' App) which prompt the pick, pack, and ship/delivery process, culminating in an invoice being generated in QuickBooks.
  • All Order has your Point-of-sale needs covered by allowing you to take orders and accept payments for those orders at a parts or service counter, not many inventory systems have that functionality included.
  • Advanced price level capabilities include company-wide discounts, customer-specific discounts, customer-specific price catalogs, and customer-specific discount by item category, markups, item-specific volume discounts, and more.
  • All Orders offers you a 'parallel cost ledger,' whereby FIFO or specific identification can be used for costing, while QuickBooks will continue to use weighted average cost, this lets you trace a certain purchase to a specific invoice where weighted average cost may not may not be appropriate.
  • All Orders incorporates a 'reorder analysis' feature that will create Purchase Orders in batch on items falling below reorder points or needing inventory over a period being tracked. Multiple vendor comparison is available.
  • Receiving and Return Order Management including RMA issuance, receiving via bar code from order or product (serial/lot#).
  • Multiple warehouses and multiple locations/bins, supports locations within locations so items can occupy multiple bins.
  • Repair Orders link service activity transactions with sales activity transactions even if they occur at different dates/times/places, etc.
  • Supports Lot and Serial Number Tracking, Barcode Printing & Scanning and Mobile Warehouse Management (Mobile Warehouse is an Optional feature).
  • Forecasting and Reporting Features

Fishbowl is also an add-on inventory management software for QuickBooks that maximizes manufacturing and warehousing processes. Fishbowl offers a wide variety of advanced inventory features you won't find in QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online.

  • Fishbowl integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks so that when you order a new product or fill a customer’s order, your accounting and inventory management software get updated with the same information. When integrating Fishbowl with QuickBooks, it is necessary to know what accounts are being affected in QuickBooks each time you export from Fishbowl. Invoices, Bills, Credit Memos, and Inventory Adjustments will be created in QuickBooks depending on the function completed in Fishbowl.
  • Fishbowl can save a customized dashboard for each user account on the computer so that every user sees the information that is most relevant to them.
  • With Fishbowl, you can manage everything from proposals and quotations to order fulfillment and shipping/delivery, all in one powerful, user-friendly system.
  • All of the inventory features of Fishbowl Desktop can be found in their Manufacturing or their Warehouse versions. Each of those two versions has been fine-tuned to the specific needs of those business types and affords extra features within each package.
  • Fishbowl Manufacturing provides complete manufacturing Inventory, advanced work orders, bills of materials, barcode scanning, production stages, multi-location, labor & job tracking, MRP, eCommerce integration, shipping, EDI integration, landed costs, CRM integrations, business intelligence, and seamless integration with QuickBooks.
  • Fishbowl Warehouse offers complete warehouse inventory management, including stock alerts, reordering, shipping, receiving, barcode support, multi-location support, serial/lot-tracking, eCommerce, CRM, and EDI integrations, true-cost calculations, employee time tracking, business intelligence, and seamless QuickBooks integration.
  • Fishbowl Online offers robust, scalable cloud-based Inventory Management for QuickBooks with complete inventory management, seamless QuickBooks integration, and no special hardware requirements since you can access the software from any device using the Internet and you can scan barcodes using your smartphone.

Numerous other features are available as plug-ins for any of the Fishbowl versions. Some plug-ins are standard, some are optional. These features include, but are not limited to:

  • Repair Order Management,
  • Returns (RMA) Management,
  • Asset Management,
  • Traceability,
  • Multi-channel Sales E-commerce Integration,
  • Product Configuration,
  • SalesPoint (POS),
  • Multi-currency support,
  • Time/Labor module, and
  • Reporting.

No matter what your need, Fishbowl likely has a solution for you. That's why they have supported thousands of QuickBooks customers for more than 20 years.

Acctivate is Inventory Management Software they profess operates like an operational hub for growing businesses. They offer a combination of inventory, order, and business management features focused on growth, insight, and scalability centered around QuickBooks integration.

Acctivate gives small to medium-sized businesses complete control over operations at a company-wide, real-time visibility level with business data centralized in a single system. 

While Acctivate has a core of features focused on meeting the needs of businesses that have outgrown QuickBooks inventory and order capabilities, they offer a modular design to allow their customers the opportunity to pick and choose the feature set that will work best for themselves. In simple, why pay for features in a pre-configured bundled product that you don't need when you can select only those you need.

  • Acctivate Inventory does not routinely sync with the Items in QuickBooks. When transactions are posted from Acctivate to QuickBooks you do not see the part numbers if you want to print the invoice or run any item specific reports you MUST do so from Acctivate.
  • Whether you need to look at summaries, details, or both, Acctivate dashboards are a dynamic, interactive solution that enable you to gain insight and make better business decisions.
  • Acctivate prides itself on providing business insight tools that bring on-demand visibility of each business to the forefront enabling informed decisions to be made. One such tool is event timelines that deliver a simplified view of historical and active data and critical insights.
  • Acctivate decision support tools simplify the decision-making process by providing easy access to real-time business intelligence across all areas of your company.
  • Sales management and order fulfillment tools integrated with inventory control software can be the sales team’s secret weapon in an ever-increasingly competitive environment.
  • Counter sales, returns and exchanges can be handled quickly with multiple payment options, barcode scanning, special handling or shipping instructions and sales tax management.
  • Acctivate’s purchasing management software is a repository of purchasing history information that can be accessed by all authorized company personnel. It streamlines the complexities of purchasing with dynamic purchasing management for requisitions, quotations, purchase orders, receiving and alerts.
  • Inventory control affects the entire business and your customers, not just your warehouse. Acctivate offers a variety of inventory features ranging from 'catch weights' to 'kitting & assemblies', 'landed cost' to 'matrix inventory' and serial, lot and expiration date tracking.
  • Manufacturing capabilities include custom fabrication and process manufacturing.
  • Acctivate’s order fulfillment tools are designed to reduce errors, eliminate bottlenecks, optimize worker productivity and assist in the process of satisfying customers.
  • Acctivate supports leading barcoding hardware devices, scanners and printers. Their Mobile warehouse feature is an optional module.
  • Acctivate is 'international ready' supporting Landed Cost, Multi-currency, and EDI compatibility.
  • Acctivate also offers E-commerce integration with multiple web stores and marketplaces.
  • Reporting and Analytics
  • On-premise Platform or Cloud Options

As you can see from the list of features above, Acctivate adapts to increased demands and growth with a flexible and scalable design, not only supporting a virtually unlimited number of users, locally and globally, but enabling addition of new features without significant changes, to handle substantial growth or change in your business volume or structure.

MISys Manufacturing is frequently the 'go-to software' recommended by QuickBooks ProAdvisors for manufacturing requirements QuickBooks can't handle. The fully modular design. Simple installation, quick implementation, and ease of use make MISys a perfect choice when you have complex manufacturing and production environments.

MISys features include, but are not limited to:

  • Extensive tracking of manufacturing inventory and work in process (WIP). 
  • Other systems help you maintain an inventory. MISys is designed to help you maintain NO inventory.
  • For MISys Manufacturing customers, that's simply not enough. MISys customers enjoy a typical savings of 25-50% in inventory and associated carrying costs (like insurance, floor space, physical management, etc.) because MISys has the ability to order only what you need, when you need it.
  • Work orders to document and track production activity.
  • Advanced production via manufacturing orders
  • Shop Floor Control, Labor Tracking and Material Requirements Planning
  • Multi-level bills of material with full explosion down to 16 levels deep.
  • Instantly display transaction history, where-used (BOM implosion), and outstanding order status.
  • Like other inventory systems, MISys can tell you what you have in stock and where its located.
  • Track inventory in multiple locations.
  • Bar coding, Serial/lot tracking
  • Record detailed stock status for all inventoried items.
  • Can optionally allow or prevent negative inventory levels
  • Maintain inventory levels with minimum, maximum, and reorder points.
  • Net-change physical inventory with cycle counting.
  • Batch-oriented or direct entry of all stock transfer transactions.
  • Advanced purchasing with automated inventory replenishment.
  • Full back-flushing of all assembly transactions.
  • Choice of standard, average, LIFO, or FIFO costing methods.
  • Cost adjustment with roll-up through all BOM levels.
  • Extensive reporting using industry-standard report generator (Crystal Reports).
  • Uses a unique set of general ledger accounts with a specific item, job, or location
  • Mobile Alerts
  • Sophisticated integration with QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online
  • MISys also offers mobile functionality they call 'EXT', which provides almost all the same functionality as their desktop interface. This includes Manufacturing Orders, Work Orders, Sales Transfers, Purchase Orders, Serial & Lot tracking, and Shop Operations. In addition, you also receive the same Alerts on your EXT mobile that you get on your desktop login.

MISys can be installed on-premise for network operations, or deployed in the cloud on your hosted server, or a MISys approved hosting provider.

SOS Inventory by Saddle Oak Software is a complete inventory, order management, and manufacturing solution featuring tight integration with QuickBooks Online. From the ground up, SOS was built for QuickBooks Online and was the first inventory software to connect to QBO.

Since QBO doesn't include Sales Orders, you use SOS for all your orders and fulfill those orders and invoice from SOS. The SOS invoices fully sync with QBO.

But SOS covers the entire lifecycle of your inventory-based or light-manufacturing business. Rather than me list them out, they are conveniently illustrated in both the graphic above and the box below.

SOS gives QuickBooks Online inventory and manufacturing capabilities it doesn't have otherwise. If you need to expand QuickBooks Online to provide inventory and manufacturing functionality you don't need to look any further than SOS Inventory, the first APP built to provide QBO with Inventory functionality.

Disclosure:

All information and graphics were taken from the various sponsors' websites and the Intuit QuickBooks App Store(s). Information published here was current when Insightful Accountant researched it from those websites and not necessarily at the time of publication. Insightful Accountant does not accept responsibility for variations or changes in information that may have occurred since we researched each sponsors' website or the Intuit QB App Store(s) and we published our content.