Cloud Inventory for QuickBooks | Blog

Tim Tips Thursdays: A Review of Order Time

Written by Michael DeFelice | Oct 25, 2019 4:20:26 PM

The march in the evolution of technology over the last 10 years boggles the mind. Would you have thought you’d be communicating or performing your tasks as easily as you do now way back in, say 2009? A good example of this binary evolution is how inventory management for small businesses has gone from what I call, ‘locked in a box’ on the desktop to amazing, nearly unlimited capabilities in the cloud.

One of the early inventory software products I worked with a decade ago was, ‘All Orders®’ by the company, ‘NumberCruncher.’ It performed all of the basic inventory functions like receiving, lot and serial number tracking and fulfillment. However, this was still the desktop world. Later, they added, ‘All Orders Mobile,’ for picking, receiving and adjusting inventory in the warehouse via scanners, and, ‘All Orders Web,’ essentially a web portal to allow customers and vendors to place and receive orders. These add-ons still connected to the base All Orders program which, in turn, connected to the three flavors of QuickBooks’ desktop programs.

Last year, the company came out with, ‘Order Time,’ an online SaaS product that builds on the All Orders product. It incorporates E-commerce functionality and works with the QuickBooks Desktop and Online products, as well as Xero. I’m skeptical of most software products when they first hit the market, but after going through it and, ‘kicking the software tires,’ I came away impressed with all of the features of this product.

A lot of inventory clients have expressed needs for what I call the, ‘nuances’ of inventory – secondary approvals of purchase orders, lead times for items and vendors, work orders, and item forecasting. The manufacturing clients want to see production schedules. And sometimes, both have a need to see ‘matrix’ inventory lists for the retail industry. This product has all of these features; and the ability for multiple languages by changing your browser’s default language.

Order Time was designed to, ‘target small Enterprises,’ according to Michael DeFelice, OT Marketing Director. The emphasis was on the user interface in order to maximize speed of using the program. We wanted the user to, “see what they need to, get to what they need to, and create what they need to, quick!” he stated. And they seemed to have achieved that in the design.

The Home screen is simple, allowing users to preview upcoming events and tasks, as well as entering new list or transaction information right from the Home window (shown in the blue box in the illustration below). There’s also a guide to walk the new user through the program (shown in the yellow box in the illustration below)

The Settings are the hub for all of the integrations and feature sets available in the program.  Under the Ecommerce settings are pre-set plug-ins for six of the major online portals: Shopify, WooCommerce, Volusion, Big Commerce, 3DCart and Magento, allowing for omnichannel inventory control. From the settings, you can also arrange form and email templates, connect to your accounting package, shipping program or EDI, and import up to 20 different types of lists. This makes the program very flexible in terms of working with multiple types of clients, and integrations.

 

One of the nice things about Order Time, for the user, is how organized the program can be for finding information. There are detailed tabs for customers and vendors that are easily accessible. It shows the user list information, as well as open transactions for reference. All of the screens are also customizable.

 

Additionally, if the client doesn’t like the layout of the screens, or the headers, they can make changes to ‘fit’ the style of the client. According to Mike DeFelice, the “entire interface is customizable, including relabeling all of the headers.” (Like those shown in the blue box above, all of those fields can be relabeled to fit the specific need of your client.) For example, changing the ‘Purchase Orders’ tab under Vendors to read, ‘POs to Vendors’ took us only seconds. Think about your client who may need to relabel what they call their customers, or types of lists.

 

 

Tim Tips Thursdays: A Review of Order Time Inventory. Originally published in the Insightful Accountant on February 28, 2019. Authored by QuickBooks ProAdvisor Tim Grant.

 
 Follow us!