Is QuickBooks Good for Inventory Management?

Does QuickBooks Track Inventory?

Every business is looking for the perfect CRM, ERP, Project, and Accounting tool rolled into one easy solution that will meet their needs and the needs of their customers. Is there a product on the market today that will fulfill all of their requirements? For many, the answer has been QuickBooks, an accounting software in the residential integration space that is used by AV integrators for project management and inventory management as well. But despite many integrators using QuickBooks to track inventory, is it really the optimum solution to meet all project and inventory needs? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

QuickBooks Inventory Management Review

Intuit launched QuickBooks Online in 2004 with the aim of offering software managed payroll, inventory, sales, and other accounting needs of small businesses. This software is now used by 683,000 businesses and has a whopping 1.3 million unique users. The list of awards the organization has received seems never ending. With all of the accolades and achievements attached to QuickBooks, it must be a great software, right? Well, great for accounting, but terrible for inventory. According to customers, Intuit has compromised the functionality of QuickBooks as a project management and inventory control software over mobile friendliness. QuickBooks even has a software based and a cloud-based version; nevertheless, the original functionality of the software solution is at stake, and there are more complaints from employees and vendors than praise these days.

Using Quickbooks for Inventory Control is a Bad Idea

Despite the advantages of being able to track projects and inventory with one solution, QuickBooks inventory management software is not a reliable software for project and inventory management. The bottom line is that inventory management is too important to leave to a system that is not designed to handle it. First of all, the cost savings are far outweighed by risks of loss and mishandled management of inventory. The upgrade into cloud accounting from desktop accounting seems to have gone against QuickBooks’ basic functionality. When compared to other similar class accounting tools, it falls behind in the important departments of inventory control, namely class and location tracking and for for the number of special users free of cost.

QuickBooks hasn’t yet been able to master the art of inventory control as a cloud based program. Moreover the negative inventory allowed in QuickBooks is also not quite to par, leaving your financial reports with potentially incorrect details and data files in less than perfect condition, which can be a nightmare for the people heading project management and investor control. According to Inuit itself negative inventory with QuickBooks may have a list of scare issues like incorrect profit and loss, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), Balance Sheet inventory, errors in vendor reports, cash basis Balance Sheet out of balance, bills for inventory purchases showing up on income and expense reports, and many other discouraging issues.

In a nutshell, Intuit’s QuickBooks inventory management software has a long way to go if companies will be confident in using QuickBooks for inventory control. In the meantime, it isn’t a bad idea for business to switch to a software that is dedicated to inventory management, including TRXio.

The Good News?

While using QuickBooks for inventory control may not be a viable option, the program does work well when it is integrated with inventory control systems, including TRXio. And, the good news is that TRXio is now integrated with QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online.

In full disclosure, we do use and support the QuickBooks ® accounting platform sold by Intuit. For accounting, it is a very powerful and stable platform. In short, QuickBooks keep doing what it does best (accounting) and leave inventory control to companies with a sole focus on inventory accuracy on both a physical and service and warranty liability stance.