QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop (Enterprise) for Manufacturing

by a searcher from Brigham Young University

1 year ago

Has anyone used Quickbooks Online (Advanced) for manufacturing? If so, did you tack on an inventory solution? Would love some perspective. It seems the options are to either do Quickbooks Desktop (Gold or Platinum) or else do Quickbooks Online and purchase a 3rd party inventory solution in order to manage bill of materials, track inventory, etc. I'm hesitant to go with Desktop because it's not the future, but I'm not sure QuickBooks Online can manage manufacturing. Tell me your horror stories and recommendations.

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investor from University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School

I run a chemicals manufacturing business in Thailand. And recently I went through a similar exercise trying to upgrade our accounting system to allow for multi-location co-working (I am based in Hong Kong, headquarters in China, and factory itself in Thailand). We initially looked into QBO and I can tell you the QBO's inventory accounting module is way too simple for any kind of manufacturing business. It is only good for trading or retail business. Any kind of inventory conversion (from raw material to WIP to final product) will be beyond it's capability. I don't have experience on QBD but my understanding is that QBD is a much more sophisticated software. You should try to contact a sales at Intuit. They are generally very helpful addressing your concerns. Cheers, Charles

5 months ago | like reply | 0 likes

professional from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I'm seeing this as a recurring theme among Searchers that successfully acquire a business. Getting an ERP in place can get painful (and pricey) working with system integrators. You need to be delivering value NOW instead of going through 6-12 months of scoping and implementation. Our team at Doss has built a lightweight ERP that you can get up and running with custom workflows **in just a couple days**, without paying any upfront consulting costs.

After we started working with a Searcher I realized that there's a ton folks here who might be interested in what we've built. Basically: if you're wanting a complete ERP with the rigor and modules from NetSuite / Dynamics 365 BC but don't want to burn through $100K and a year just trying to get it turned on... then send me a --@----.com

5 months ago | like reply | 0 likes

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