Small batch maker, inventory management system

[LoneStarSoapary]

Hello All, 

Looking for some suggestions for a small business for inventory management system.

[JK_Fiber_Art]

Hi Lonestarsoapary,

Have you looked at Quickbooks Pro ?

jk

[Candlestore]

When you create your items you can name them by what they are or name the UPC as what they are up to 30 characters for QuickBooks and up to 40 for Square I believe.  Then you can create Barcodes that can scan or if you sell online will track how many of each you sell.  You just need to update Received Quantity when you make them here in Square.  I do this for our Candles that we make and some other items we also make and want to see how they sell.  I make souvenir magnets with a Laser cutter in a few different designs.  I mark each with a barcode to track which designs people like more than others.  You would need Square for retail to accomplish this either the free or paid version.

[LoneStarSoapary]

@Candlestore Thank you for the info. I think I am looking for more for a raw materials and manufacturing systems.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Sam

[Candlestore]

Look into QuickBook Build Assemblies:

Here is a video about them:

Build Assemblies 

I have QuickBooks Desktop Premier for this.

Not sure if you can do this with QuickBooks Online.

Here is an article from QB's

https://quickbooks.intuit.com 

[NaturalWineGuy]

Lucky you. You can use QuickBooks with SquareUp. As a wine retailer I can not because SquareUp can't do math. If a bottle of wine costs $12.333 SquareUP rounds up to $12.34 and if I sync with QuickBooks...every single invoice will be off. 

I have to manually enter every single invoice twice! Once into SquareUP and then again into QuickBooks. This is an issue SquareUp has known about since 2017 and has done absolutely nothing about it. But they will lie to you and say "sure you can sync with QuickBooks!" Lie! 

My favorite response from SquareUP has been "we just don't have enough requests for this." Seriously?! The thread from 2017 has hundreds of requests.

SquareUp will only focus on what makes them the most money. And they could careless about issues that don't. 

[Candlestore]

@NaturalWineGuy ;

I run into other obstacles too.  Since I manufacture my own candles I need to use QuickBooks Desktop and not QuickBooks Online.  The integration from Square to QuickBooks Desktop is not good from what I have read in these forums.  I found Transaction Pro Importers which imports CSV files to QuickBooks Online or Desktop depending which version of TPI you buy.  When I import my Square data I set it up to import the sales tax that Square records and not let Quickbooks calculate the sales tax because of the rounding errors you mentioned.  Here is a video I made of me importing my Sales data as a Sales Receipt to Quickbooks Desktop, but you can also import Invoices to QuickBooks if you can export a CSV file from Square.   TPI Video Link   I use Quickbooks or just an excel spreadsheet to make my invoices and put the data into Quickbooks manually since I do not do a lot of invoices.  I currently do about 6 invoices a year.  The other nice thing if you use TPI is that you contact them for help and they help you out and support their products.

Have a great day!!

[Helen]

@LoneStarSoapary This is a great question. I went ahead and pinned your post to the Seller Community homepage so that other sellers can share their suggestions. (Thank you to everyone who has shared a suggestion so far!)

Also, you might be interested to join a Seller Group, where you can start discussions business owners the same industry. We have one for Artists and Makers, and another for Food & Beverage business owners for example. 

[Bronze_Palms]

We use Square for inventory management. 

We created a separate category called OPERATIONAL SUPPLIES and it includes everything we use for services, cleaning, products, and more, but we set everything as $0.00. Staff is responsible for "checking out" items as new bags are opened and it helps me keep track of items without being there, thanks to low stock alerts.

The purchase of this inventory is an expense on our credit card.