QuickBooks Online is the top choice accounting software for millions of small business owners these days. Over the years, Intuit has extended its area expertise to inventory management, making its products much more appealing to inventory-centered companies. However, the extended inventory control capabilities are not available across all of the QuickBooks plans/versions. Neither is this feature set comprehensive enough to cover more advanced inventory management needs. HandiFox Online, a QuickBooks-integrated app, can help you maximize the use of your QuickBooks Online from an inventory tracking standpoint. Here’s how.
What is QuickBooks Online good for?
QuickBooks Online (Plus) inventory feature list is quite compelling and includes:
- Real-time updates to inventory item quantities
- Inventory, non-inventory, service items, and bundles
- Product images and categories
- Reorder points and low-stock alerts
- Vendor Management
- Purchase order generation
- Invoices
- Price rules
- Customizable reports (Sales by Product/Service, Inventory Valuation, Physical Inventory Worksheet, Open Purchase Order)
- Import from Excel
For small to medium-sized businesses that need a straightforward, integrated solution for accounting and basic inventory management, QuickBooks Online is a suitable option. If your inventory processes involve thousands of SKUs and span multiple storage locations you have to look for an add-on that would provide more substantial inventory functionality.
What gaps do QuickBooks Online third-party apps have to fill?
QuickBooks Online third-party apps sync with QuickBooks bidirectionally, i.e. they can pull and push all inventory- and sales-related transactions both ways in real-time to keep accounting and inventory aligned. Meanwhile, these systems bring a lot of automation and time-saving features of their own. There are at least 7 areas where HandiFox Online as an example of such software expands the horizons for QuickBooks Online users.
1. Barcoding
One of the major productivity drivers QuickBooks Online is short of is the ability to scan items in and out via a barcode scanner app. The speed and accuracy of barcode-enabled data entry, stock intake, cycle counting, and shipment verification put the long unproductive hours of manual work behind you. HandiFox Online reads and records barcodes with a Bluetooth scanner or via a mobile phone’s camera. The app can generate new 1D/2D barcodes and print barcode labels. Barcoding capabilities are something that, above any other functionality, guarantees getting clean data into your QuickBooks Online.
2. Multi-warehouse inventory management
The larger your business gets, the more challenging it becomes to centralize all the tracking and data. Using QuickBooks Online, you would have to purchase a separate subscription for every new location. Even then, you wouldn’t be able to move stock between locations, which complicates inventory oversight.
HandiFox Online lets you create inventory sites that represent your physical warehouses and can be associated with locations in QuickBooks Online. Each site gets its own assortment of inventory and, if needed, can ship or receive stock transferred from another warehouse using inventory transfer transactions. The bin location feature streamlines the search and will save your stockers tons of time. As your business grows, HandiFox and QuickBooks will scale with it.
3. Inventory receipt
QuickBooks Online offers vendor management and the ability to record the receipt of inventory shipped by a supplier by way of turning a purchase order into a Bill. The downside here is that inventory items are checked against purchase orders manually. HandiFox automates inventory intake through barcode scanning and eliminates human error. It also allows batch receiving - auditing multiple shipments from a vendor in one go. Another advantage is that whenever an inventory receipt transaction is edited in HandiFox, the associated Bill in QuickBooks Online is changed in lockstep, ensuring both systems are in line with one another.
4. Pick and pack order fulfillment
QuickBooks Online doesn’t have or track sales orders. HandiFox Online offers complete customer order management from the moment an order is placed until it’s delivered and paid for. Thanks to the picking and packing with a barcode scanner, order fulfillment is quality-controlled and orders are shipped faster. Serial or lot-numbered items can be picked based on FIFO (First In-First Out) or FEFO (First Expired-First Out) methods. The app automatically generates an invoice and allows creating a sales receipt, once this invoice is paid. Credit memos help you manage returns and keep tabs on customers’ open balances.
5. Units of Measure
Units of measure are non-existent in QuickBooks Online, which is critical to some small businesses buying or selling in multiple measurement units. HandiFox Online overcomes this limitation by offering multiple units of measure (up to 10 per item). The inventory software lets you set up conversion rates (eg. how many bottles are there in one palette?) and change UoM right while filling out a transaction both from the web and mobile apps.
6. Lots, serials, and expiration dates
Designed primarily for accounting, it’s only fitting that QuickBooks Online doesn’t focus on things like lot number/serial number tracking. HandiFox Online offers multiple methods of inventory tracking: by lots, serials, expiration dates, and their combinations. The app makes sure the right lots/serials are entered into the transaction and their order matches the pre-set fulfillment methods (FIFO or FEFO). It allows printing barcode labels with serial/lot number information and logs the entire product journey based on its serial or lot for a comprehensive report.
7. Mobile app
One of the strong suits of QuickBooks Online is the 24/7 availability of its data. On the flip side, taking a laptop or tablet wherever it is you are going, to be able to check inventory levels any minute or receive incoming stock is unnecessary heavy-lifting. HandiFox Online has a mobile counterpart that takes all your operations beyond the office. Inventory counting, receiving, pick/pack, customer management, sales order tracking, invoicing, barcode scanning, and mobile printing are doable and, to be honest, much more enjoyable on a smartphone. Last but not least, the offline mode protects your business from data loss in case of spotty Internet connection. The app is iOS and Android compatible.
To wrap it up, you don’t need to ditch QuickBooks Online just because it lacks inventory functionality that, frankly, it's not supposed to be offering at this scale. Take a free 14-day trial of HandiFox Online to see how the two systems complement and enhance each other.
