The Ultimate Guide to QuickBooks Inventory Management: QuickBooks Enterprise
Inventory management is crucial for many retail businesses, where both too-high and too-low stock can be detrimental to the business. Without an accurate and efficient inventory system, your business could lose money and run into issues with stock counts, delivery times, warehousing storage, and more.
Learn how Enterprise can be your go-to for all QuickBooks inventory management needs.
How QuickBooks Enterprise Is a Cost-Effective Inventory Management Solution
QuickBooks Enterprise is a powerful financial management and accounting software that also provides inventory management capabilities. It keeps track of your stock, and with its many features, you won’t have to worry about accuracy, tracking, or manual data entry.
If you are using other accounting software, you may want to consider switching to QuickBooks Enterprise for inventory management.
Making QuickBooks Enterprise your one-stop accounting and inventory management software is a cost-effective solution. Since it is designed to be used by anyone, it is easy to get the hang of using QuickBooks and harness its potential. With other inventory management tools, you will have to put more effort into using the software, and they tend to have high maintenance and training costs.
Use Webgility for E-Commerce Inventory Management
If you have an e-commerce business, you might be concerned that QuickBooks Enterprise won’t connect to the e-commerce platform of your choice. You don’t have to worry thanks to Webgility!
A partner of QuickBooks, Webgility is a top accounting automation software for the e-commerce industry. Webgility can be used with QuickBooks Enterprise as an inventory control solution for your e-commerce business.
Webgility is an additional feature for QuickBooks that makes it easier for businesses to manage their accounting systems, as there is no need to reconcile data with separate software. Any updates to the inventory in your store will be automatically synced to QuickBooks, thus saving time. Being able to do everything in QuickBooks will ultimately improve the efficiency and accuracy of data within the accounting system.
Convenient Features of QuickBooks Inventory Management
QuickBooks Enterprise has many advanced inventory management features. Inventory management with QuickBooks centralizes control and automation, so you won’t have to worry about manually counting or entering data, which often leads to costly errors.
Some advanced inventory features of QuickBooks inventory management software allow you to keep an eye on everything from the convenience of your phone or computer.
- Mobile Barcode Scanning: Use your phone or other mobile device to scan stock items and get information about them or track inventory.
- Serial and Lot Number Tracking: Ensure quality control and monitor certain batches through the inventory system. This also makes it far easier to recall products should an issue arise.
- Expiration Date Visibility: This feature, available in Enterprise Platinum and Diamond, allows you to control the quality of the products being sold and know when products need to be discounted.
- View of Vendor Information: You can keep track of vendors and their information to ensure they meet the needs of your business.
- Tailored Editions for Specific Industries: Whether your business is in beauty, tech, or virtually any industry, you can use a tailored system to ensure the software best serves your needs.
- Multi-Location Visibility: Even if you have warehouses or stores in multiple locations, you can see collective reports to understand how your business fares on an individual or holistic level.
- Real-Time Tracking Information: QuickBooks delivers real-time reports, letting you know exactly what is happening while it happens.
- Automated Inventory Forecasting: Avoid running out of stock with automated inventory forecasting and reordering.
All these features give you more control and help you make better decisions so your business can thrive.
3 Helpful Strategies for QuickBooks Inventory Tracking
Here are three QuickBooks Enterprise strategies that will benefit your company.
1. Align QuickBooks with Your Business Needs
Your QuickBooks account is made to align with your specific business needs. The multiple plan options and customizable settings allow you to focus on what is most important to you.
Not only is the program customizable, but it also understands each business is different and has unique software requirements. QuickBooks Enterprise has integration capabilities so you can seamlessly work on multiple platforms while maintaining overall control from your QuickBooks command center.
With so many options, it helps to have a QuickBooks expert at your side to show you how to best utilize QuickBooks inventory management tools.
2. Implement and Integrate
If you are unfamiliar with QuickBooks inventory management capabilities, it’s time to talk to one of the experts at Fourlane or watch one of our training videos.
You can easily set up inventory management with QuickBooks Enterprise in a few simple steps:
- Collect all existing inventory data.
- Check for accuracy.
- Input this data into QuickBooks automatically (not manually).
Once this data has been uploaded, you can integrate other point of sale (POS) and e-commerce platforms with QuickBooks. Doing this gives you a complete view of transactions in your workspace.
Implementing QuickBooks into your business model may take some time, but you’ll benefit from complete control over your selling platforms.
3. Utilize QuickBooks Reporting and Analytics
Once you have inventory uploaded and begin tracking it with your QuickBooks software, it’s important to take advantage of the system and make sure you are using all of the features QuickBooks offers. Tracking inventory is one thing, but there are valuable insights to be gained from analyzing and understanding what those numbers mean.
QuickBooks inventory management software can analyze your data and give you comprehensive inventory reports, and multi-location visibility allows you to see all of the totals on one screen.
The program can analyze sales trends to see which products are in demand and which are falling out of favor. You’ll be able to see seasonal trends and demand patterns and make educated predictions so you are never sold out or overstocked.
This view of the whole inventory system, coupled with smart predictions, allows you to make strategic decisions. For example, if you see one product is increasingly popular, you could release a similar version to satisfy customers’ demands and keep their interest.
7 Reasons QuickBooks Enterprise Inventory Management Is the Best
QuickBooks Enterprise is quickly gaining ground and is designed to be the best inventory management software in the industry. Here are seven reasons why.
1. Increased Customization
Compared to QuickBooks Pro or Premier, Enterprise offers users access to:
- 15 custom fields for items (instead of five)
- 30 custom fields for customers, vendors, and employees (instead of 15)
- 12 individual name fields (instead of seven)
You can also program input specifications and drop-down menus into each field.
This improved customization allows users to capture and manage more data. The result? Access to more advanced search functions and improved custom reporting efforts.
2. Advanced Pricing Module
Trying to force your pricing models to fit the narrow confines of standard accounting software can be a nightmare. Many businesses require a level of individualization that these solutions can’t provide.
Thankfully, QuickBooks Enterprise Diamond and Platinum allow users to customize their pricing structure. Now, you can differentiate your prices by product and customer. You’ll do so by applying different rules to each unit.
This allows you to provide personalized discounts and promotions at a more granular level than before. Leveraging the software’s Advanced Pricing feature, you can even establish special pricing rules for certain customer types.
3. Modernized Barcode Scanning
Does your business sell physical products of any kind? Inventory tracking can be one of the most laborious and time-consuming parts of warehouse management.
This is where QuickBooks Enterprise’s new mobile barcode scanning feature comes into play. As soon as your warehouse receives sales orders, employees can use a mobile device as a scanner to pick products quicker and more easily.
This eliminates the need for them to manually enter the information into a database. In addition to saving time, it also lowers the risk of user error. In an instant, your inventory numbers will update to reflect the most recent numbers.
4. Greater User Capacity
There are myriad employees across various departments who can benefit from QuickBooks Enterprise. This means you might need a larger user capacity.
With this version of QuickBooks, you can have up to 40 individual users logged into the platform at the same time.
The best part? They can tap into the system from anywhere with the capacity for both local and remote access.
Of course, with extended accessibility comes the need to set user restrictions and data privacy safeguards. To this end, QuickBooks Enterprise allows managers to set more permissions to restrict sensitive data and bank account access to only those users who require it.
5. Expanded Inventory Lines
It isn’t uncommon for large enterprises to have an enormous inventory list that far exceeds the 14,500 lines allowed by QuickBooks Pro and Premier.
Using QuickBooks Enterprise inventory management, users who have lamented such limitations in the past will rejoice that this version allows you to list up to 1 million items. Combined with the software’s other advanced inventory tools, this makes the platform a go-to solution, especially for companies with vast and varied product lines.
6. Improved Inventory Tracking for Multiple Locations
Does your organization operate multiple warehouses, spread across various locations? If so, it can be difficult to keep track of stock levels at each one.
To meet customer demand and avoid expensive delays, you need immediate insight into where your stock is located and the exact quantities that remain. QuickBooks inventory management software includes an Advanced Inventory feature that makes this real-time visibility possible.
Want to take it a step further? By clicking the software’s “Bin” feature, you can instantly see exactly where in each warehouse each item resides. The numbers on your screen will always reflect up-to-the-minute data and current sales history.
Whether you’re tracking serial numbers, lot numbers, or both, you can use this tool to see in one click how many items you’ve sold. This means you never run the risk of understocking.
7. Refined Control Over Inventory Stock
Whether your business is big or small, keeping track of stock is a time-consuming but essential task. Running out of stock or having too much eats away at profits and affects your relationships with customers.
Thanks to its powerful features, inventory management with QuickBooks can help prevent stock errors. QuickBooks Enterprise lets you organize your inventory stock to suit your business best. It also provides a forecast calculator that can estimate when you will run out of stock and alert you to order more before this occurs.
If you’re curious about current inventory stock numbers, you can always pull those up because QuickBooks tracks numbers in real time.
Start Using QuickBooks Inventory Management Software Today
Are you tired of dealing with inefficient inventory tracking and reporting tools? It’s time to leverage the best inventory management software for your needs, and QuickBooks Enterprise is the answer.
Fourlane’s QuickBooks expertise is second to none. Our consulting services will help you find the version that suits your business best. Reach out to Fourlane today, and we’ll walk you through the steps to improve and perfect your inventory system.
