Editor's Note: November is "Inventory and Manufacturing Month" at Insightful Accountant, where we shine the light on a few lesser-known apps. This feature takes a lighter look at OrderTime.
In a previous article this month, we told you about All Orders from NumberCruncher, the third-party add-on for QuickBooks Desktop. But did you know that NumberCruncher also has a cloud-based inventory and manufacturing solution that works with QuickBooks Online?
OrderTime Inventory provides operational control for light manufacturing, wholesale, eCommerce and web retailer businesses by managing orders, customers and inventory in a cloud environment. It then synchronizes data with QBO, including purchase orders and sales orders along with customers and vendors.
Customer Management — The cloud-based customer relations management database within OrderTime covers the entire sales cycle from lead to payment.
- Manage all your customers from anywhere and via any device.
- Manage leads, customers, contacts and addresses.
- Generate quotes and sales orders, and track their statuses while controlling approvals.
Order Management System — Order Time automates and streamlines order processing for your business.
- Import orders manually, or via accounting and eCommerce integrations.
- One hub to run it all: Control Sales Orders, Work Orders, Purchase Orders and more via OrderTime inventory.
- OrderTime also can manage your own directly connected customizable B2B selling channel.
- You can invite your customers to the portal, where they can place and view their orders, see their specialized prices and pay their open invoices.
- OrderTime enables you to integrate various ecommerce sales channels, including your business website and various shopping carts or marketplaces.
Purchasing — Purchasing is an essential part of inventory management, so we have segregated it for discussion. The reality is that too many inventory-centric businesses purchase too much inventory to avoid situations of not having enough. Buying too much comes with a loss of liquid capital that might be needed for other operations, but not having enough can lead to lost sales. Therefore, it is essential to have the right purchasing tools to know when and how much to buy.
- Reorder Analysis — OrderTime supports multiple purchasing models, including just-in-time and reorder point. Create Purchase Orders based upon your requirements using the Reorder Analysis planning tool.
- Purchase Orders & Vendors – OrderTime supports multiple vendors per item, including vendor part numbers, costs, and lead times. In addition, it identifies low inventory situations and will automate the creation of Purchase Orders based upon purchasing models set by the user.
- Integrated Receiving to carefully monitor what’s received against what was ordered, and track Vendor performance based on quoted cost to billed cost and quoted delivery to actual delivery. You also can track Drop Ship Purchase Orders to ensure delivery compliance.
Inventory Management — If you are involved in manufacturing, wholesales, ecommerce or web retail, you cannot afford to lose sales or disappoint customers due to stock-outs. That’s why it is essential to manage your inventory and make sure reorders occur on time.
- OrderTime is designed to manage your inventory across multiple locations and warehouses, and optimize your inventory to keep your stock levels accurate in real-time with each transaction.
- Barcode Inventory System optimizes your inventory, tracks barcodes, manages labels and prints barcode formats using special integration.
- Locations & Bins – Create custom locations and bins so that you can efficiently find anything.
- Lots and Serial Numbers — Traceability for every item using details like lot or serial numbers and expiration dates.
- Kitting and Assemblies – Bundle groups of items to sell as kitted products. Configure assemblies for manufacturing work orders.
- Style Variation — Create variants based on item attributes like color, size, etc., using OrderTime’s style editor.
Production & Manufacturing — You may be in the business of delivering a product or manufacturing it. OrderTime will meet most requirements for light manufacturing, wholesale, eCommerce and web retailer businesses.
- Create Bills of Materials with routing steps to build complex assemblies, including modifying components on the fly for each finished good.
- Track sales and production orders, raw materials and components, along with costs and scheduling using OrderTime’s Calendar feature for order fulfillment.
- Finalize orders and get them on their way with ShipStation integration that syncs with sales and production documents. Complete shipment information, including the most cost-effective shipper and print shipping labels, to get your product out the door.
Reporting – For an app of this type, OrderTime has excellent reporting. You access reports from the main landing page using the Reports tab, which displays a Frequently Run, a My Reports and an All Reports tab. Essentially, every feature and function of the app has a corresponding report, which you will find on the All Reports tab.
- Reports have multiple options to customize report content using filters and settings. For example, you can add new columns and make them part of a report or a report section.
- Reports also can be sorted into a variety of display orders depending on the report type. In many cases, you can simply "click and drag" the fields you would like onto the Sort by list to rearrange the report.
Overall Impression of the App
An "app aware" article is designed to make our readers aware of an app they might not otherwise have heard of. In this case, far more ProAdvisors likely are to have a knowledge of All Orders than OrderTime. But, like its older, long-established brother, OrderTime is an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use application.
For a cloud-based app, it is sophisticated in both design and capabilities. You might expect that from NumberCruncher, which has been providing inventory software to QuickBooks users since the early days of Desktop.
As far as OrderTime is concerned, there are 32 Five-Star ratings appearing on the Intuit QuickBooks App Center Order Time webpage. All those users not only "recommend" the app, but they have numerous complimentary things to say, ranging from their satisfaction with set-up assistance, to how well the app works, and how easy it was to get it going. Not every app usually appeals to all users, so when you find an app that has only Five-star ratings, you know it is something special in one way or another.
If you are looking for a relatively economical cloud-based app to provide inventory and manufacturing capabilities to QuickBooks Online, check out OrderTime by booking a Demo. But, be aware that some of the features discussed in this article are optional add-ons not included in the standard-based price.
Make sure to review all pricing factors when you consider your system requirements. You also may want to consider the option of a trial run before making any final decision.
Acknowledgments and Disclosures:
Graphics and content used within this feature were derived or adapted by the author in part from OrderTime source materials, including NumberCruncher Website Resources, OrderTime Popular Articles, OrderTime Recently Update Articles, OrderTime Updated Articles, OrderTime Knowledge Base, and OrderTime ‘Free Trial’ related content. Adapted source materials published within this feature by Insightful Accountant are for educational and product promotional purposes only.
OrderTime, as used herein, refers to one or more registered trademarks of NumberCruncher.com, Inc. with a Registered in Hollywood, Florida.
QuickBooks, as used herein, refers to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit, Inc., a publicly-traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California.
Various other trade names used (or displayed) herein refer specifically to registered trademark products held by their respective owners. And are used for informational and educational purposes only.