Inventory, warehouse and manufacturing management are rarely named as top features of Intuit QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online products.  Many clients find these advanced features as difficult to learn and almost impossible in keeping up to date.  Management must often deal with nonsensical numbers such as a balance sheet showing negative inventory or colossal amounts of components ordered that could overflow all warehouses if really delivered.  But reach a little further out of the QuickBooks products and many capable vendors stand ready in offering add-ons to make these daunting tasks faster, easier and more accurate. In this article we review just a few QB vendors offering inventory and manufacturing products to make life easier for those in purchasing, inventory, warehousing, sales administration and management.  Future blogs will summarize other inventory/manufacturing options.

So today we review Fishbox, Boxstorm, Locate and MISys.

Fishbowl (focus on Inventory, Manufacturing and Warehousing)

Fishbowl is a software add-on for QuickBooks Desktop that maximizes inventory, manufacturing and warehousing processes. And according to its publisher Fishbowl works with QB Online just as well as with the QuickBooks Desktop line (QB Desktop is QB Pro, Premier or Enterprise running locally or on a remote host/server.

Fishbowl is offered in three versions, all built around the same code base but focused on different areas, such as Fishbowl Inventory, Fishbowl Warehouse and Fishbowl Manufacturing; each offers different feature sets.

All three versions offer “Parts” (also known as “Items” in  QuickBooks) and “BOMs” (“Bills of Materials also known as QB “Assemblies”). Other well-known features include:

  • Barcoding
  • Batch processing
  • Inventory cost valuation methods (average, LIFO, FIFO, actual).
  • Landed costs.
  • Lot numbering
  • Matrix inventory
  • Modifications/Substitutions
  • Multi units of measure
  • Multi vendors for each product/component
  • Outsourced tracking
  • Parts scheduling
  • Pricing rules
  • Production orders
  • Purchase orders
  • Sales orders
  • Serial numbers
  • Stock categorization
  • Work orders

There is also an integrated CRM feature supporting data exchange with QuickBooks.

Boxstorm (SAAS Inventory for QBO)

Fishbowl has long been considered a strong contender in the QuickBooks Desktop market, but what about cloud-based QuickBooks Online which seems to be taking over the world among smaller and mediums sized businesses?  For QBO, Fishbowl now offers Boxstorm, a cloud-based / software-as-a-service (SAAS) application providing inventory features specifically for cloud accounting software.

It’s tempting to think “well they just tweaked the Fishbowl code to run on a server in the cloud” but not so!  Boxstorm was re-written from the ground up as an entirely new cloud-based app. Boxstorm can be dialed-up on traditional PC browsers, along with tablets and smartphones.  This means that warehouse personnel can move around making entries on the fly, rather than being tied to their desktop PC’s.

Boxstorm even offers a “free forever” version with slimmed-down features including cycle-count, move, save and scan, however many firms will quickly out-grow these limited capabilities

When this is not enough, Boxstorm comes in three more advanced versions which include selling points such as:

  • Add, Move and Remove Inventory
  • Bar Code Scanning
  • Customer Management
  • Default Vendors
  • Developers API Access.
  • Import/Export Data (direct and with .csv.
  • Inventory Expiration Dates by Lot
  • Item Categorizations
  • Locations: set Default and Nested
  • Purchase Orders
  • Purchasing Reports
  • Receive Payments for Sales
  • Reorder Point Stock Alerts
  • Sales Orders
  • Sales Reports
  • Sales Reps production reports
  • Set Auto Ordering
  • Stripe Payment Processing
  • System User Access Rights
  • Track Lot/Batch Numbers as well as Expiration Dates
  • Transaction Taxes
  • Unit of Measure – multiple with conversion
  • Vendor Management

Of course all integrate with QuickBooks Online.

Locate Inventory

Locate Inventory is a newer cloud-based inventory package by FBP, and recently gained the distinction of being listed in the Intuit App Center. This product integrates with all QB Desktop offerings as a Web Service as well as QuickBooks Online.

FBP Locate also talks to at least 15 other players in this ecosystem including big e-commerce names such as Shopify, Magento, 3DCart and BigCommerce; logistics partners including FedEx, UPS, ShipStation and Endicia; and merchant-services providers (credit card processors) such as Authorize.net.

Some features seem more from the realm of top-end ERP’s such as options to fulfill orders from internal inventory or that of a supplier.

Inventory data may also be used in prioritizing sales orders and related warehouse work assignments using customized workflow rules.  The overall objective is maximizing the efficiency of inventory by quickly prioritizing which orders get processed first – and last.

Although Locate integrates with both QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online it still keeps its own ledgers and journals.  These can save huge amounts of time when discrepancies are seen and reconciliations are needed between the two products.  And rather than dump tons of unnecessary sales, purchasing and inventory data into your QuickBooks system every night, FBP Locate generates a txt-like “IIF” (Intuit Interface file) which then posts just a single, summary daily journal entry into your QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop system.  This helps greatly in keeping QB data file sizes within normal limits.  After all, detailed information on small orders can always be looked-up in the system taking the initial order rather than bloating-up QB; even QB has its limits.

Seems that FBP Locate must be good at locating inventory too.

MISys (Manufacturing focused)

Since the mid-1990’s, MISys Manufacturing has offered client-server-based software in situations where extra features are needed beyond QuickBooks Desktop products.  The modular MISys structure is said to be easy to implement and use, and installation is straightforward.

With its manufacturing focus, MISys aims to minimize inventory expenses, identify and eliminate purchasing errors, improve efficiencies in the warehouse and in production, and supply needed information to QuickBooks where reports can be produced to better understand and deal with production costs.  MISys provides functions which include:

  • Job Tracking
  • Mobile device utilization for inventory or shop-floor tracking)
  • Monitor Specific Production Activities
  • MRP (Material Requirements Planning)
  • Multi Units of Measurement
  • Multi-Level BOM’s (Bills Of Materials, aka QB “Assemblies”)
  • Multiple Inventory Valuation methods (e.g., FIFO, LIFO, Average, Standard)
  • Multiple inventory warehouse locations
  • Physical inventory cycle tracking
  • Routing and Staging of Resources
  • Shop-Floor Control
  • Vendor Price Monitoring
  • Work Order Scheduling

MISys is also getting a major facelift where users will enjoy a “Favorites Tab” for helping with daily operations.  A new MISys Manufacturing Mobile App is coming soon too.

MISys has always integrated with QuickBooks Desktop products and will talk to QuickBooks Online soon.

Conclusion on QuickBooks Inventory,Warehouse and Manufacturing Add-ons

Next time we’ll talk about other Inventory, warehouse and manufacturing management vendors among the copious other offerings out there, often offering special capabilities, including Inventory by Erplain, Cin7, AllOrders, Manufacturing Operations & Inventory Management by DataNinja, SOS, Hike, MarginEdge Order Time Inventory, SalesPad, DataQlick, WooCommerce, Primaseller, BigCommerce, DEAR Inventory, Magento, Linnworks, CloudMRP, Shopvox, Verify ERP, Zoho, Webgility and HandiFox.