QuickBooks Online is the top choice accounting software of millions of small business owners these days. Over the years, Intuit has extended its area expertise to inventory management, making their products much more attractive to inventory-centered companies. However, the extended inventory control capabilities are not available in all of the QuickBooks plans/versions. Neither is this feature set comprehensive enough to cover more advanced inventory tracking and sales management needs. HandiFox Online can help you maximize the use of your QuickBooks Online from an inventory management standpoint. Here’s how.
QuickBooks Online Plus has a very convincing feature list of inventory features which include real-time updates to inventory item quantities, low stock alerts, PO generation, taxes, invoices,and reporting. HandiFox syncs with QuickBooks bidirectionally, i.e. it can pull and push all inventory- and sales-related transactions both ways in real time. Other than helping keep accounting and inventory aligned, the system brings to the party a lot of automation and time-saving features of its own.
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. The speed and accuracy of barcode-enabled data entry, stock intake, cycle counting and shipment verification (through pick/pack) put the long unproductive hours of manual work behind you. HandiFox reads and records barcodes with a bluetooth scanner or via a mobile phone’s camera. The app can generate new barcodes and print barcode labels. Barcoding capabilities are something that, above any other functionality, guarantees getting clean data into your QuickBooks.
2. Multi-warehouse tracking
The larger your business gets, the more centralized it should be. HandiFox Online lets you create inventory sites which 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 by means of 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 the 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 Pack order fulfillment
QuickBooks Online doesn’t have or track sales orders, leaving you with 3rd party software options to deal with order processes. HandiFox Online offers complete customer order management from the moment an order is placed until it’s delivered and paid for. Thanks to picking and packing with a barcode scanner, order fulfilment 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. Mobile app
One of the strong suits of QuickBooks Online is, by all means, 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 does seem like unnecessary heavy-lifting. HandiFox Online has a mobile counterpart which takes all your operations beyond the office. Inventory counting, receiving, pick/pack, customer management, sales order tracking, invoicing, barcode scanning, and mobile printing are absolutely 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 available on Android devices.
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 in the first place. Take a free 30-day trial of HandiFox Online to see how the two systems complement and enhance each other.