The QuickBooks Enterprise guide to inventory management

Managing inventory can be a major challenge for many businesses, from manufacturers that maintain warehouses of raw materials to retailers that stock products ready for shipment. If managed effectively, inventory should be ready in optimal quantities right when your business needs it.

But, inventory management is no easy task – it requires keeping tabs on the status of, and demand for, thousands of items. Some of this stock will generate more profits than others, requiring prioritization and proactive management. It’s essential that you can maintain a comprehensive, minute-to-minute view of your inventory to guide your business decisions in real time.

QuickBooks® Enterprise includes a number of features that support this kind of robust inventory management. Amongst those features, the software’s tools enable you to easily:

• Track products by bin location, serial numbers, or lot numbers.
• Manage your end-to-end workflow from a single dashboard.
• Do inventory counts without shutting down your warehouse.

Let’s dive into how QuickBooks Enterprise can support your company’s inventory management needs.

Top-to-tail order fulfillment with QuickBooks Enterprise

Advanced Inventory provides a range of benefits to help you make better decisions and stay on top of operations. This starts with top-to-tail management of the order fulfillment process, which can all be controlled from a central dashboard.

You’ll be able to track products by location, find things easily, and send orders to a picker or packer with one click. All your vendor information, including contacts and pricing data, is also accessible from the dashboard. It’s hard to overstate the convenience and ease-of-use that this centralized system provides to users.

Advanced Inventory also takes advantage of the latest mobile technology. Mobile barcode scanning options speed things up, streamline your picking process, and reduce data entry mistakes. And, uploading inventory counts to your dashboard from different areas or warehouses allows you to take inventory without stopping operations.

You’ll also be able to get a true understanding of product costs by looking at expenses with freight, duties, insurance, and other miscellaneous expenses factored in. For example, through QuickBooks Enterprise, hair product manufacturer Mixed Chicks discovered they were paying suppliers for costs that the suppliers had not mentioned. Once you learn the exact cost of each stage and element of a product’s assembly, you can more accurately calculate profit margins and figure out which products to prioritize.

All of this inventory management capability is tied into your accounting on QuickBooks Enterprise, making assessing, overseeing, and reporting on your business operations easier than ever.

Advanced Inventory features in QuickBooks Enterprise

There are a number of features that make inventory management in QuickBooks Enterprise more streamlined and robust than other solutions. Advanced Inventory software comes equipped with best-in-class capabilities designed to make management headache-free.

• Enhanced pick, pack, and ship: A single central dashboard gives you a 360-degree view of your entire sales order fulfillment process. You can send workers instructions and reclassify items with a single click. Express pick-pack allows you to orchestrate picking and packing at once in a streamlined workflow. You don’t even have to leave QuickBooks to print labels from UPS, FedEx, and USPS.
• Cycle count: Cycle count is a real-time inventory tracking system that allows you to keep tabs on what you have in stock and where each item is, without having to close down operations to count. With this function, you can coordinate inventory management across several warehouses, and identify and repair mismatches between expected and actual inventory.
• Mobile barcode scanning: This feature allows your team to scan and send the data to your system with an internet connection, or by using a Bluetooth scanner and the QuickBooks Android app. With this tool, you can speed up processes, reduce errors, and focus staff time where it’s needed most.
• Order management and inventory picking: You can fulfill orders faster and prioritize important orders via a packing process, using information such as ship date, inventory availability, and value of order. You can create customized pick-lists on which warehouse workers across multiple locations can collaborate. The system allows managers to check the status of orders in real time so you’re never in the dark.
• Customizable inventory reports: You can get useful insights from the system’s customizable inventory reports: Inventory valuation summary, inventory stock by item, and assembly shortage by item. You can add fields to the reports to make sure it contains everything applicable and is appropriate for your business needs.
• Manage inventory across locations: Advanced Inventory tools allow you to maintain inventory in more than one location. You can keep tabs on stocks and orders in each warehouse and move inventory among them, as needed.

Advanced Inventory gives you a complete picture

Analyzing your inventory processes is a key aspect of effective management. Advanced Inventory software makes these potentially complex tasks much easier, allowing you to get a complete picture of how your inventory system is functioning.

Advanced Inventory software also makes classifying your product or materials easy. A well-thought-out and executed classification will allow you to maximize sales volume, reduce stockouts, free up staff time, and avoid the waste of holding too much inventory at any time.

Classification also enables prioritization: You can make sure you’re always well-stocked with the 20% of your inventory that brings in 80% of your revenue, while keeping the rest of your inventory lean. Classifying inventory can also help you smoothly handle tax time by easily accounting for Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

It’s a great idea to conduct regular inventory analysis to identify what’s working well and where there is room to improve operations. Advanced Inventory software helps you run inventory analyses to make sure you’re not overstocking unneeded items or losing sales due to stockouts.

The analysis can tell you if you have the materials on hand to take on a given project, and identify trends so you can shift your product mix to take advantage. One of the best things about having all your inventory data and management tools in one place is that you can easily get the big picture view of your business processes.

Complete inventory management

QuickBooks Enterprise is a complete solution for inventory management, offering everything from one-click processing and mobile scanning to inventory analysis and reporting.

You’ll be able to see and control all aspects of inventory maintenance and processing on a single dashboard, enjoying streamlined operations and enviable ease-of-use. This comprehensive system will put an end to fears that you’re missing something, and ensure that processes take place as planned. Advanced Inventory gives you an end-to-end view of the entire inventory management workflow and full control over its functions so you can see what’s happening, troubleshoot easily, and remain worry-free.