For many years, clients in the manufacturing industry were directed by their accountants and bookkeepers to QuickBooks Enterprise to handle the nuances and complexities of their workflows. With assemblies, units of measure, and the additional enhancements brought in by advanced inventory, including inventory sites and serial/lot number tracking, QuickBooks Enterprise was an easy choice to make.

However, as technology has evolved, many businesses want the flexibility and ease of access that comes with being in a fully cloud-based environment. As a result, Fourlane is now migrating many of our clients to QuickBooks Online Advanced. By pairing QuickBooks Online Advanced with the right inventory management apps in the QuickBooks ecosystem, your clients can reap the benefits of two powerful systems for a fully integrated manufacturing software package.

The advantage of manufacturing apps

One of the main benefits of QuickBooks Online Advanced is the number of options available with QuickBooks app integrations. It’s important to fully vet these options to ensure that QuickBooks will fulfill the needs of the business for reporting requirements, order fulfillment, and inventory management.

In fact, you might be surprised to know that some of these apps have expanded capabilities in their features that can help bring manufacturing clients even better workflows and insights into their business.

You’ll want to begin the process of researching the right software for your client by requesting a demo to get a high-level overview of the features available. Remember that almost all aspects of managing stock quantities, bills of materials, build scheduling, reporting, and order fulfillment will be done in this app, so finding the combination of features that will work for the business is crucial.

There are many strong apps on the market to review when considering an integration with QuickBooks Online Advanced that can enhance inventory management and order fulfillment. Some apps I’ve found to be successful for my clients include: Katana, SOS Inventory, Cin 7, Unleashed, and MiSys, not on the app store, but a good app to review. Some of these can also connect to integrate e-commerce platforms, shipping and fulfillment software, and CRMs with QuickBooks Online Advanced.

Ask questions about how the onboarding process works for a new implementation. It’s important to know how the data will be built into the software and what kind of training accompanies the transition into the software. Guiding your client through the selection process, and partnering with them during implementation, is vital to ensure that the financial statements and reporting back into QuickBooks Online Advanced are accurate.

Inventory control and managing costs

A client with a small liquor brand came to me for assistance with his financials in QuickBooks Online Advanced. He was in the process of expanding his markets into more states and taking on investors, and knew his financials were in rough shape. But he also needed help understanding inventory control and managing costs for his growing product line.

After a review of his workflows and a cleanup of the financials, it became clear that we also needed a way to help him better understand inventory cost and stock levels. We found a third-party app that was budget-friendly and had the capabilities we needed to be able to manufacture the spirits, flavors, bottles, and labels into finished bottles that could be tracked by quantity and be better in line with revenue recognition.

While this client initially came to us just for help getting their books up to date and reconciled, through our partnership, we were able to work together to create a system suitable for their growing needs.

Relying on QuickBooks connected tools

Here’s another example, this time using the full benefit of QuickBooks connected tools. This client manufactures and distributes garden products, but was unhappy with their current ERP—and wanted to move back to QuickBooks. They had previously been on QuickBooks Desktop, but really wanted the cloud-based access and flexibility of QuickBooks Online Advanced. Having previously cobbled together many different outside systems with their former ERP, connecting QuickBooks Online Advanced with QuickBooks Time, QuickBooks Online Payroll, and QuickBooks Payments was very attractive to them. After we conducted a thorough review of their current situation, including bills of materials and manufacturing process, several software options were reviewed, and now a successful implementation is underway.

Since so much of the heavy lifting of the manufacturing processes will be handled with the integration of apps, you might find your client’s accounting processes within QuickBooks Online Advanced are more streamlined. As a result of this, you and the client can really focus on refining the processes for reporting and use some of the advanced reporting features in QuickBooks Online Advanced to drill down into the data, including classes, locations, and tags.

In addition, so many of my clients love the ease of using QuickBooks Online Advanced bank feeds to cut back on manual data entry and the time spent on bank reconciliations each month. Another huge benefit of QuickBooks Online is the mobile app, which I love for mileage tracking, receipt capture, and access to files on the go. You never have to feel disconnected when using QuickBooks Online.

Benefits to you and your clients

By enhancing your QuickBooks Online Advanced solution with the successful integration of a manufacturing app—and integrating other QuickBooks connected tools into your tech stack, you and your clients can have all the insight, reporting, and internal control you need to work together to create the best environment possible for their growing manufacturing business.