QuickBooks Online Integration: Connect With The Best Inventory Software

QuickBooks is one of the most popular accounting platforms used by businesses of all kinds. And because inventory is one of the biggest assets a merchant has, QuickBooks offers inventory tracking, an important inventory management function that helps you stay on top of your inventory value. 

QuickBooks Online provides a cloud-based platform where businesses can track and manage a variety of accounting and inventory-related metrics and functions, including sales data, payroll, invoice creation, and budgeting, depending on what version you use.

There are five versions of QuickBooks Online, each with different features and functions. Each version is scalable and offers additional capabilities, so businesses can start with the option that makes sense for them, then move up as they grow.

QuickBooks Online Options for Your Business

The five QuickBooks Online versions are as follows:

• QuickBooks Self-Employed. This version is great for freelancers and independent contractors who need to track minimal business expenses, create invoices, and keep track of accounting for Schedule C tax filing.
• QuickBooks Simple Start. This plan provides you with all the tools needed to manage your small business’s accounting. It can monitor income and expenses, create invoices and payments, claim tax deductions, collect receipts, and track mileage.
• QuickBooks Essentials. This version is perfect for small businesses looking to grow and includes up to three users on the account. It offers all the features of QuickBooks Simple Start, along with the ability to track hours worked and manage bills and expenses for each customer.
• QuickBooks Plus. This plan includes up to five users and offers additional features such as inventory tracking, project management, and tax support. Because you can view and track metrics like project expenses and labor costs with QuickBooks Plus, you can accurately determine a project’s profitability and generate relevant reports on progress and revenue.
• QuickBooks Advanced. This version is ideal for midsized and larger businesses and includes up to 25 users. It offers additional support features such as a dedicated help team, workflow automation, data restoration, batch invoices, and online training. It also provides advanced reporting capabilities and detailed metrics regarding accounting and inventory data.

QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced

QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced are considered the best options for retailers, e-commerce businesses, wholesalers, and contractors. Both versions provide a number of features aimed at streamlining accounting and inventory practices, including:

• Managing and paying bills to multiple vendors
• Creating and using multiple currencies
• Identifying taxable and nontaxable items
• Tracking stock items and quantities
• Setting up alerts if you are running out of stock
• Automatically updating inventory levels
• Generating purchase orders for vendors and suppliers
• Tracking sales across multiple channels

QuickBooks Desktop

QuickBooks also offers a locally-installed version of their accounting software, known as QuickBooks Desktop. While QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based accounting software that you can access anytime and anywhere from any internet-enabled device, QuickBooks Desktop must be installed directly on your computer. Both offer income and expense tracking, invoicing, reporting, inventory management, project accounting, tax support, payroll capabilities, and third-party integrations with software such as Inventory Planner. However, there are a few key differences.

QuickBooks Desktop is preferred if you require industry-specific editions and reporting and in-depth inventory management tools such as inventory assembly management, advanced pricing rules, unlimited companies, and real vs estimated project cost comparisons. However, if you need cloud-based and mobile access to your accounting software, QuickBooks Online is the right choice for your business. The good news is that Inventory Planner can integrate with both. 

Smart Inventory Forecasting with QuickBooks Online Data

Purchasing the right amount of inventory to meet customer demand is fundamental to inventory management and critical to ensuring proper cash flow. To ensure your business is utilizing your QuickBooks data to make smart buying decisions, integrating intelligent inventory planning software is a must. Enter Inventory Planner.

Inventory Planner is the market-leading demand forecasting and inventory planning software for retailers, e-commerce businesses, and wholesalers. Seamlessly integrating with QuickBooks Online, Inventory Planner leverages sales and inventory data from QuickBooks to accurately predict future customer demand and offer reliable inventory purchasing recommendations. This means you’ll know exactly what to buy and when to order to avoid accumulating excess inventory that ties up cash flow or missing sales opportunities due to stockouts. Here’s how:

• Pooled data. Your inventory data, vendor information, and historical sales data are pulled from QuickBooks. Inventory Planner uses this data to predict demand, factoring in fluctuations like seasonality, promotional sales, stockout days, market shifts, and upcoming events that may affect sales to ensure accuracy.
• Intuitive recommendations. By combining sales forecasts and detailed inventory data, Inventory Planner provides you with intuitive replenishment recommendations, so you know exactly which items to purchase for each warehouse and when to place the order, ensuring that you make smart purchasing decisions that will maximize revenue and profit.
• Create purchase orders. Once you know exactly what you should be ordering, you can place purchase orders directly from those recommendations in minutes. You can also move them between each program, easily converting POs to bills to streamline ordering and accounting practices.
• Improve cash flow. Inventory Planner helps identify your overstocked items based on forecasted demand, offering critical metrics such as overstock units and costs, last sold dates, and more to help you determine which items need to be liquidated to free up cash flow. 
• Versatile reporting functionality. Inventory Planner goes beyond inventory purchasing recommendations to give you the complete picture of your inventory performance. You can run reports by variant, bundles, assembly, product category, warehouse, or vendor, so your decisions are always backed by accurate data. Inventory Planner’s 200+ metrics can create reports that are completely tailored to your business goals.  
• Additional integrations. Inventory Planner offers 30+ high-performance connectors to a range of e-commerce stores, marketplaces, inventory management systems, order and warehouse management systems, and accounting apps. Your multichannel sales and inventory data is seamlessly and automatically integrated with Inventory Planner to ensure accurate demand forecasting and reliable purchasing recommendations. 
• Expert support. Inventory Planner knows that accurate sales forecasting and inventory purchasing require a customized strategy that suits your specific business model. That’s why our knowledgeable experts are standing by to help you get the most out of Inventory Planner’s features and capabilities, from optimizing your forecasting and replenishment configurations to training your team.

Quick Inventory Planner + QuickBooks Integration

Connecting Inventory Planner and QuickBooks Online is simple. Here is how:

1. Connect and sync. Select QuickBooks Online Integration from your Inventory Planner account.
2. Configure your forecasting model. Once connected, you can customize your forecasting model in Inventory Planner to provide the information and insights your business needs—or let the experts at Inventory Planner guide your onboarding process.
3. Plan with confidence. Now that your inventory planning and accounting software are connected, you can use the most reliable and up-to-date stock levels, sales data and forecasts, and inventory purchasing recommendations to make data-driven decisions with confidence.

When you’re ready to put your data to work to make accurate, data-driven inventory decisions that will improve efficiency, free up cash flow, and increase revenue, consider integrating QuickBooks Online with the versatility and reliability of Inventory Planner.