QuickBooks and Supply Chain Management

 

QuickBooks had always been considered as the best accounting software for small companies. It  was considered  as Expense and Income tracker and nothing more than that. Companies were looking elsewhere for more advanced  ERP and Supply chain operations. 

QuickBooks has started breaking that image few years back and started offering a complete ERP Solution including supply chain management to its customers. Customers with QuickBooks are thinking beyond the boundaries of Bills and Receipts when they think about QuickBooks now.

Refer this article on ERP Systems and Supply Chain Systems.

Let us see how QuickBooks is offering end to end  solution for Supply Chain Management for Small and Medium Businesses.

Buy Side of the Supply Chain:

Purchase Orders

Buy side of the supply chain starts with Purchase Orders in QuickBooks. A purchase order is created and sent to the vendor. Purchase order in QuickBooks consists of Header and Line items. The header has information like Vendor name, Vendor address, Payment terms etc. The purchase order lines will have details like products ordered, quantity,requested date, price etc. 

Purchase Order Receipts

When the material is delivered by the supplier, purchase order receipts are created in QuickBooks. If inventory is used, stock quantity is increased by the receipt quantity. Subsequently when supplier sends the invoice (called Bills in QuickBooks), QuickBooks will match the invoiced quantity to the received quantity to ensure payment is made only for the quantity received.

Sell  Side of the Supply Chain:

Sales Orders:

Sales orders are the customer's purchase orders entered into QuickBooks as Sales orders. Normally  in QuickBooks,  income is posted as Invoices or Sales Receipts depending upon if the payment is received fully or at a later date. 

Sales orders are entered into the system before the material or service is delivered to the customer and invoices are created. Sales orders are the best way to capture customer commitments into the system so the deliveries can be planned.

Sales Order Shipments:

When it is time to deliver the material and fulfill the sales order, it is executed in three steps in QuickBooks

1. PickSlip printing
2. PackSlip printing
3. Invoice Generation

Pick Slip:

Pick Slip are the documents used for preparing the material for shipments. It is also the document that tells the warehouse what to pack and keep ready for shipment. If inventory is used, the pick slip will give details like what is the quantity needed and where the material is currently located in the warehouse.

PackSlip:

 

Pack Slip and shipping label are used for the actual shipment. The pack slip gives details like what is packed inside the container.

Invoicing:

Invoicing is  the last step in fulfillment process. When invoices are created, QuickBooks deducts the inventory from the current stock.

Back Ordering:

 If the ordered quantity is not available at the time of shipping, warehouse may back order the quantity that is short. This is done by entering the actual quantity that was shipped while creating invoice.

It is possible to print the pick slip again at a future date when quantity becomes available. Customer is invoiced only for the quantity that is shipped

Conclusion

QuickBooks is providing  a very affordable and easy to use supply chain system for small and medium businesses. Most of the so called Tier 1 ERP system needs a huge budget to implement and support. Efforts of QuickBooks to simplify the systems and make it affordable for small business is a huge welcome in the market. Also by using applications from Intuit partners like TPSynergy Supply Chain solutions  it is possible to provide a full fledged Integrated supply chain system with QuickBooks as the back end financial system.