For many small business owners, automating your inventory management becomes necessary as your business grows and your accounting becomes more complex.
Think of your business’s inventory as the beating heart of your operation. Just as a heart must be monitored and cared for to keep the body healthy, your inventory must be tracked and managed to keep your business running smoothly. With manual inventory management, it’s easy to make mistakes and miss important details, leading to inefficiencies and potential health problems for your business.
Automated inventory management, on the other hand, is like having a team of experts constantly monitoring and caring for your business’s heart. With advanced tracking and reporting tools, automated inventory management can help you identify trends, avoid stockouts, and reduce waste, all while providing you with real-time data that you can use to make informed decisions.
Utilizing QuickBooks Inventory Management
Proper inventory management is vital for a business’s success, but many struggle to keep up. In fact, 34 percent of businesses have shipped an order late because they inadvertently sold a product that was not in stock.
Believe it or not, 43 percent of small businesses in the United States don’t track inventory or do so using a manual system. This is a dangerous practice and one that can be easily solved by using inventory management tools.
QuickBooks is one of the most popular accounting software solutions for small businesses, and for good reason. It is known for its versatility and user-friendly interface, making it ideal for managing inventory. Some of the key benefits of using QuickBooks for inventory management include:
- Accurate inventory tracking: QuickBooks allows you to keep track of your inventory levels in real-time, ensuring that you always have accurate information on hand.
- Streamlined ordering process: QuickBooks makes it easy to reorder inventory when you’re running low, allowing you to keep your shelves stocked and your business running smoothly.
- Detailed reporting: QuickBooks provides detailed reports on your inventory, giving you the information you need to make informed decisions about your business finances.
- Easy integration with other business software: QuickBooks integrates with a variety of other business software, allowing you to streamline your accounting and inventory management processes.
While QuickBooks offers the tools you need to keep your business’s heart beating, you may be left on your own accord to customize your inventory process to fit your business needs.
Managing Inventory For Multiple Venues
If your business is making sales on multiple platforms, whether it’s Amazon, Shopify, or a retail shop, then your inventory management becomes, well, harder to manage. Unfortunately, the more complex this process gets, the more important it is to maintain!
Just as a neglectful approach to heart health can lead to serious consequences, neglecting proper inventory management can result in devastating risks for your business. Running out of stock at the wrong time, carrying too much dead inventory, or losing track of your product costs can all lead to significant financial losses and potentially even the failure of your business.
Managing inventory for multiple venues can be an unnerving task because it involves coordinating and consolidating inventory data from different locations. This often requires a sophisticated system that can accurately track and synchronize inventory levels in real-time, taking into account factors such as demand, stock replenishment, and inter-location transfers. Additionally, each venue may have its own unique set of operational requirements and inventory needs, which can make it challenging to develop a single inventory management system that works effectively across all locations.
As you accumulate sales from your online shops, special events, and physical stores, tracking the products coming in and out of each location becomes complicated. Your business is now in need of a system designed specifically for your business with workflow automations that cater to each facet.
Inventory Management Automation Software
Inventory automation software can save your business time, money, and the risk of mistakes, by providing a central database for easy inventory management.
Perhaps most importantly, automation software allows you to integrate and manage all of your selling venues into a single platform, making your QuickBooks inventory management a smooth and easy process!
For example, we often help clients integrate with SOS Inventory, an automation system that delivers a broad range of features and acts as an enterprise-level software solution. When it comes to tracking inventory, we believe you get what you pay for, and SOS Inventory is well worth the price when used correctly!
SOS Inventory, among other automation solutions, offers a number of features that can save the time and stress that comes with manual inventory management, such as:
- Synchronize data to and from your QuickBooks Online account
- Set reorder points per minimum order quantities
- Created unlimited, customizable product templates
- Seamless integration with popular e-commerce platforms such as BigCommerce, Shopify, and Amazon
- Generate Product Performance reports across all platforms
Expert Assistance For Your Inventory Automations
Setting up an automated inventory management system can be a game-changer for your business and help it grow to the next level. However, we understand that it can also be a headache to get all of your ducks in a row to get things just right. After all, if you are going to trust an automated system to track any aspect of your business, you need to make sure it’s set up correctly!
We talk a lot about the importance of accurate QuickBooks reporting, but utilizing third-party software is an entirely new challenge. Luckily, we specialize in inventory management and know how to formulate comprehensive solutions for problems that are tough to address.
Setting up QuickBooks for inventory management AND adding automation can be a daunting task, but you don’t have to do it alone. At MISSION Accounting, our team of experts can help you get QuickBooks set up properly so that you can focus on running your business. Bernard Roesch, MISSION Accounting’s founder, is a Harvard-educated accountant with years of experience helping small businesses like yours.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you simplify your inventory process with expert-developed accounting tools.
