The following is a guest blog from our Partners at Ledger Labs
Key insights
- QuickBooks is a popular accounting solution that helps businesses track expenses, generate invoices, and process payroll, among other tasks.
- Fishbowl is an advanced inventory management solution that helps businesses improve supply chain management, track inventory levels, and make informed decisions.
- Integrating QuickBooks Online with Fishbowl increases productivity and operational efficiency.
- This integration eliminates the need for double data entry as well.
QuickBooks is one of the more efficient accounting solutions for small to mid-sized businesses – offering functions like expense tracking, invoice generation, payroll processing, and financial reporting.
While it is an all-rounded accounting solution, it is also known for its basic inventory management features that enhance operational efficiency and decrease manual errors.
To expand its functionality and give your business a competitive edge, you can integrate QuickBooks with Fishbowl, an advanced inventory management solution for tracking inventory levels, order fulfillment, and warehouse management.
Let’s explore how this integration can help you with inventory management along with its best practices!
What is Fishbowl – quick overview
Fishbowl is an automation platform that helps businesses run their warehouse and manage inventory in simple steps.
This advanced inventory management solution centralizes all of your information in one place, letting you manage your orders without a hassle and simultaneously track purchases, leaving no room for surprises at the end of the month.
You can easily view vendors, customers, sales, and other data.
It also speeds up all your processes, like picking, packing, and shipping orders. You can find detailed reports to simplify financial and inventory management.
Fishbowl seamlessly integrates with other systems, like QuickBooks Online, to simplify business processes and increase efficiency.
It eliminates the need to enter data twice or derive decisions from guesswork.
This inventory-management solution helps with generating purchase orders, manufacturing, tracking sales, etc.
In fact, it also offers plugins to manage tasks like employee time management and adding labor costs to a bill of materials. This added functionality makes it a scalable solution for growing businesses.
Fishbowl has an integrative ability to connect it with shipping platforms, payment gateways, CRMs, and other systems to reduce manual input and increase productivity and business efficiency.
How QuickBooks handles inventory management
QuickBooks Online is a popular accounting solution that is excellent for balancing the books – especially if you run a small or mid-sized business and want a seamless eCommerce accounting solution.
But if you’re wondering how this accounting solution works to support inventory management, you’ve come to the right place.
Let’s look at four ways it helps you manage your inventory.
1. Inventory tracking
Automation plays a key role in managing inventory levels. QuickBooks allows you to track real-time stock levels, so you have the numbers as you make more and more sales.
The data is right in front of you, from the time you add new inventory to the time it gets sold.
2. Creating purchase orders
You can use QuickBooks to create purchase orders and track all of your stock as it is, incoming and outgoing.
In addition, you can use this software to manage your relationship with your vendors as it provides you with detailed information regarding purchasing history and more.
Also Read: 7 top manufacturing ERP software solutions
3. Automated invoice generation
As soon as you make a sale, QuickBooks automatically makes the update in relevant departments. So your inventory levels are updated along with accounts in real-time.
In addition, it automates invoices and reduces the chance of human error. It speeds up order processing, making order fulfillment faster and more efficient.
4. Accurate reporting
You can use QuickBooks to automate reports to check your stock levels, sales performance, and overall profitability of a product. It gives you insight into inventory valuation.
It helps make informed decisions, and data-driven decisions are the only way to grow a business.
Integrating Fishbowl with QuickBooks – a detailed understanding of how it works
The integration of QuickBooks with Fishbowl helps businesses meet their accounting and inventory needs even better than with QuickBooks alone.
You should know that Fishbowl only integrates with QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced as these are the only plans that support order purchasing and other transactional recordings in your journal entry.
As soon as you integrate the two systems, you’ll notice how Fishbowl handles all of the inventory management.
Thus, you will disable all purchase orders and inventory records in QuickBooks from that point onwards.
Next, Fishbowl will be responsible for handling all sales and purchase orders. It will be used to automate invoice and bill generation. So, Fishbowl will send these invoices to QuickBooks as soon as orders are fulfilled and all exports are finalized.
As for bill payment, QuickBooks will handle this function. Fishbowl will accept and transfer payments through merchant services to QuickBooks as a sales receipt.
On the other hand, Fishbowl will update and modify the stock levels, sales orders, and purchase orders.
5 steps to integrate QuickBooks Online with Fishbowl
Here are the steps to integrate Fishbowl Advanced with QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced.
- Go to the Accounting Integration module in Fishbowl Advanced. You will select the Configure tab and choose “Connect to QuickBooks Online.”
- Next, you will click on “Connect to QuickBooks” and it will open a new browser window.
- Here you will provide your QuickBooks Online credentials. Enter your ID and password, then click the Connect button.
- The next step requires you to map out accounts payable and receivable information. You will also map Part Type Accounts between Fishbowl and QuickBooks Online.
- Click on Finish.
While the systems are well-integrated, you may be asked to repeat the same steps after every 90 days. This is a security measure on Intuit’s side.
Benefits of Fishbowl integration with QuickBooks Online
Let’s explore the top three benefits of this integration.
1. Streamlined operations
This integration makes business operations more streamlined, minimizing manual input and increasing productivity.
The collaborative effort is visible as soon as the integration is complete. Here are three examples.
Purchase
Fishbowl helps you create and process purchase orders and once they are fulfilled and reconciled, the data is shared with QuickBooks. This accounting solution then makes new journal entries and automates bills.
Sale
Fishbowl also allows businesses to track their sales orders, from picking to packing and shipping. It handles every aspect of inventory management and works with QuickBooks Online to create customer invoices and make other relevant accounting updates, like to the accounts receivable, cost of goods sold, and inventory asset accounts.
Accepting payments from customers
Another reason why businesses use this integration is its ability to accept payments. Shortly after Fishbowl accepts payments from customers, it transfers that information to QuickBooks Online to make adjustments to its records.
2. No need to enter data twice
This integration eliminates the need to enter data twice. You no longer have to separately enter data in the two systems.
However, what you do is schedule data migration regularly. It ensures data consistency and accuracy, and not to forget, it frees up your resources to focus on core business operations rather than data entries.
Here are a few examples.
New contacts
If you work with a new vendor or make a new customer in Fishbowl, their information will be added to both systems.
Inventory and stock updates
All inventory transactions, like sales, receipts, and returns, are automatically updated in Fishbowl, and the information is sent to QuickBooks.
Manufacturing information
All order fulfillment data is updated on the general ledger in QuickBooks. It allows manufacturers to track changes in raw materials.
3. Seamless integration
This integration is extremely smooth. It automates the recording of inventory information and quickly updates your accounting records. The data exchange is seamless and accurate, empowering businesses to make informed decisions.
Best practices for inventory management with Fishbowl and QuickBooks Online
Fishbowl integrates with many international versions of QuickBooks Online, such as Australia, Canada, and the U.K. While there are foundational tips to keep in mind, there are other best practices that make Fishbowl’s integration with QuickBooks Online a success.
Count all inventory beforehand
The most important step is to ensure you have the most accurate and latest information on hand before you start the integration process.
So make sure you review inventory, vendor, and customer data beforehand.
Also, do count all of your inventory so that you can proceed from where you left things, ensuring data consistency.
Make sure each value matches
Make sure all the values you added are consistent across platforms. So the data in Fishbowl should match with the data in QuickBooks.
You can go to Fishbowl’s Inventory Valuation Summary to ensure it is the same as the Inventory Asset account in QuickBooks. Here, you can make as many adjustments as you please to match it with your actual inventory.
Close every sales and purchase order
Lastly, you must close all purchase and sales orders open in QuickBooks.
While you can add this information to Fishbowl manually, which makes the transition a bit longer, you can also fulfill all orders on QuickBooks first and then continue with the integration.
The reason why you must close all open sales and purchase orders is to avoid duplication in invoices.
The bottom line
Fishbowl and QuickBooks integration makes accounting and inventory management simpler and more efficient.
It helps businesses automate and streamline operations, such as creating purchase orders, generating invoices, and inventory tracking.
Fishbowl is a more feasible inventory management solution that offers seamless benefits for any ERP integration. We’re an all-in-one inventory management solution designed to help you control stock, warehouse operations, manufacturing workflows, and more.
The platform also integrates with QuickBooks to promote financial visibility. Schedule a demo today for a seamless integration with QuickBooks.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Fishbowl Inventory. Any content provided by our guest authors is of their opinion and is not intended to malign any organization, company, individual, or entity.
Company Bio:
Ledger Labs, established in 2014, is a tech-savvy accounting and bookkeeping firm dedicated to serving small and midsize businesses. Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, and New York, NY, we specialize in building scalable accounting departments for our clients, offering bookkeeping, CFO advisory, tax compliance, ERP accounting, and controller services.
With over 12 years of expertise, Ledger Labs caters to industries such as online stores, retail, wholesale, distribution, and manufacturing. We leverage advanced technologies, artificial intelligence solutions, and industry-leading accounting systems like QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, and Fishbowl – the industry’s most flexible inventory management solution for QuickBooks and Xero users.
Ledger Labs is your trusted partner in navigating the complexities of Accounting, Tax Compliance, and CFO Advisory services. Our results-based approach focuses on measurable outcomes that drive long-term success, ensuring accuracy, compliance, and efficiency in financial management.