--- title: Quickbooks Inventory Taken to Another Level With Order Time description: Order Time Inventory is a simple-to-use QuickBooks inventory integration for purchase order management, sales order management, and vendor management. --- [![Order Time Inventory Main Logo](https://info.ordertime.com/hubfs/Ordertime-May2018/logo.png)](https://www.ordertime.com/?hsLang=en) - [BOOK A DEMO](https://info.ordertime.com/webinar-registration?hsLang=en) - [START FREE TRIAL](https://www.ordertime.com/register/?hsLang=en) - [LOGIN](https://app.ordertime.com/account/Login) # Compare Order Time to Quickbooks ## Order Time Inventory maximizes the effectiveness of QuickBooks > **Order Time is a simple-to-use [QuickBooks inventory integration](https://info.ordertime.com/quickbooks?hsLang=en) for production and order management. It is designed to augment the tools available in QuickBooks Inventory by adding features such as multiple warehouses, lot and serial number tracking, routing and more. The table below summarizes the key differences between Order Time Inventory and QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Enterprise. Additional explanation is provided below the table.** [Start Your Free Trial](https://ordertime.com/register/?hsLang=en) --- ## Feature Comparison   | Feature | Order Time | QuickBooks | | --- | --- | --- | | **Items / Inventory Control** |   |   | | Assemblies / BoMs | Yes | Yes | | Jobs | Yes | No | | Configuration | Yes | No | | Routing / Operations | Yes | No | | Min/Max/Reorder | Yes | No | | Multiple Vendors | Yes | No | | Pricing Levels | customer, item, company, volume, item group | customer, item | | Units of measure | Yes | Yes | | Item categories (groups) | Yes | No | | Item replacement / up sell | Yes | No | | Lots and Serial # | Yes | Ent. 2012 with Adv. Inventory See below why Order Time is better! | | Multiple warehouses | Yes | Ent. 2011 with Adv. Inventory | | Bins | Yes | No | | Bar code printing & scanning | Yes | No | | Work in Process | Yes | No | | Multilevel BoMs with cost roll-up | Yes | No | | Changeable components per work order | Yes | Ent. 2010 | | Single user mode to adjust inventory | No | Yes | |   |   |   | | **Order Processing** |   |   | | Sales Order | Yes | Yes | | Quotes | Yes | Yes | | Release dates | Yes | No | | Item Configuration | Yes | No | | Ship-to-addresses | Yes | Yes | | Payment on SO | Yes | No | | Customer info page | Yes | Yes | | Ship complete | Yes | No | | Auto fill | Yes | No | | Ship negative | Preference | Yes | | SO to PO | Yes | Yes | | SO to WO | Yes | No | | Drop Ship | Yes | Yes | | Batch Filling | Yes | No | | Back order reports | Yes | No | | Last products ordered | Yes | No | | PO ETA | Yes | No | | Stock by Location | Yes | Ent. 2011 with Adv. Inventory | | Order duplication | Yes | Yes | | Sales rep filtering | Yes | No | | Foreign currency | Yes | Yes | | Sales taxes | Yes | Yes | | Customer Part #s | Yes | No | | Email | Yes | Yes | |   |   |   | | **Shipping** |   |   | | Scan-out | Yes | No | | Serial / Lot #s | Yes | Ent. 2012 with Adv. Inventory | | Bin Picking | Yes | No | | Auto-allocate | Yes | No | | Count packages | Yes | No | | Count weight | Yes | No | | UPS World Ship | Yes | No | | UPS / Fed Ex Internet | Yes | Yes | | Sales Tax | Yes | Yes | | Payment (cash sale) | Yes | Yes | | Foreign currency | Yes | No | | Shipping labels | Yes | Yes | | Product labels | Yes | No | | Batch shipping | Yes | No | | Auto-return | Yes | No | |   |   |   | | **Purchasing** |   |   | | Purchase Orders | Yes | Yes | | Release dates | Yes | No | | Order approval | Yes | No | | Batch creation | Yes | No | | Filter items by vendor | Yes | No | | Lead times | Yes | No | | Min order and order increment | Yes | No | | Vendor part #s | Yes | No | | Manufacturer's part #s | Yes | No | | Drop ship | Yes | Yes | | Email | Yes | Yes | | Reorder Points | Dynamic | Static | | Min/Max | Yes | No | |   |   |   | | **Receiving** |   |   | | Scan in | Yes | No | | Serial / Lots # | Yes | Ent. 2012 with Adv. Inventory | | Bins | Yes | No | | Product Labels | Yes | No | | Charges | Yes | No | |   |   |   | | **Production** |   |   | | Bill of Materials | Yes | Yes | | Routing | Yes | No | | Work Orders | Yes | No | | Disassemblies | Yes | No | | Auto pick | Yes | No | | WO to PO | Yes | No | | WO to WO | Yes | No |   --- ## How are Bill of Materials different? Item Assembly is a type of item in [QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise](https://info.ordertime.com/quickbooks?hsLang=en). The Item Assembly represents finished goods items. So if you already have your items set up as inventory parts, you will have to re-enter them. Within the Item Assembly you specify the components which are only inventory items and their quantities. Service items, other charges, and non-inventory are not allowed. To create an Item Assembly, you go to an entry screen that looks like an “Inventory Adjustment” and you specify how many you want to make. QuickBooks will tell you how much components you need and how many finished goods you can make based on components “On Hand.” You cannot change the components on each build; in order to do that you need to change the original assembly item. QuickBooks Assemblies do not have routing. By contrast, **Order Time** uses a Bill of materials (BoM) instead of an Item Assembly. It allows you to specify which of your existing Inventory Parts are finished goods and which are components. You also specify an item's “unit of measure.” BoMs work with your existing inventory parts, non-inventory parts, service and other charge items. You can immediately determine the costing and margin information because **Order Time** sums the cost of all of its components for you using either the average costs or purchase costs. With **Order Time** you can have sub-assemblies with full cost roll-up. If you change the cost or quantities in a bill of material of one of the sub-assemblies, it will immediately be reflected in the costs of the items that depend on it. --- ## What is the difference between a Work Order and a Sales Order? A sales order tells you what you have to ship, whereas a work order tells you what you need to produce. A work order in **Order Time** is derived from the sales order template which simply shows the items that were ordered. The work order is a management document that tells the user three key pieces of information: - The steps in production - The components being used - The status of the work order A sales order does not show you anything about production status or component status. ## How do work orders help manage inventory? **Order Time** provides a number of tools that help you efficiently manage inventory. These include locations and bins, lots and serial # tracking and units of measure. In addition, **Order Time** allows you to do the following: - **Knowing what's available Order Time** keeps track of goods in production. Components 'In Production' may be 'On Hand' but they are not 'Available'. Finished goods are not available until production is finished.** ** - **Components required **In QuickBooks on the Item Assembly screen, you can see how many of each component is 'On Hand' for the assembly being view. [You can do this as well on a work order]. With **Order Time** you can see how much is required for all the components that need to be produced. Since more than one finished good use the same component, this is an invaluable tool. - **Batch purchase orders **Based on components required, **Order Time** can create a batch of purchase orders for numerous vendors and items all at once. This saves a tremendous amount of time and aggravation. --- ## How are **Order Time** sales orders different? **Order Time** sales orders have a number of additional features not found in QuickBooks Premier or Enterprise. You can ship to multiple addresses on the same sales orders. Additionally you can ship multiple sales orders on the same packing slip. **Order Time** information provides back order and “can ship” information, as well as complete inventory status and costing for each product. You can create work orders and purchases orders for short stock directly from the sales order, that way you can track dependency information. An **Order Time** sales order turns into a shipping doc/packing slip. You can also track an order’s ship dates and whether an invoice has been created for the shipment. --- ## **Comparison of Lot and Serial Number Tracking between Order Time and QuickBooks** **What can Order Time Lot & Serial Number tracking do that QuickBooks cannot?** - QuickBooks forces you to select either Lot OR Serial # tracking. You cannot do both. - QuickBooks does not let you specify tracking for only specific items. Once you turn it on for the company, the tracking is enabled for every item. - QuickBooks has no way to store expiration dates or any other qualitative information associated with a particular lot or serial number. Order Time has expiration dates, tons of custom fields and attachments for EACH lot or serial #. - QuickBooks has no way to force lot/serials to be entered leaving the possibility for data entry errors. It means that I can sell an item without specifying a lot/serial even though in my business it should be required. While there is an option to be warned if a lot/serial is not entered, because it is enabled at the company level it will warn for EVERY item. In addition, when selling an item, a manually entered lot/serial can be used that has never been entered before and should not be available for sale. - There is absolutely no connection between the total quantity from all lot/serials and the quantity on hand for an item. You can have lots with a quantity that is greater than your quantity on hand, for example. To illustrate this, a new lot/serial adjustment can be created which will change the quantity in a specific lot/serial but that will not change the overall quantity on hand for the item. A separate item adjustment must be created for that. - QuickBooks has no specific lot/serial costing so there is no way to properly see the costs when quantity is debited or to audit QuickBooks to make sure it is using the correct values. - QuickBooks does not allow any spaces in lot/serials. - QuickBooks does not support specifying which lot/serials from components go into which lot/serials of the assembly when building. In essence this means that true tracking is not supported for all but the simplest of builds and will not work for most multi level assemblies. - QuickBooks does not support scanning of lot/serial barcodes. - QuickBooks has no way to prevent the entering of duplicate lot/serials. - QuickBooks only supports a single lot for each line on a transaction. To enter multiple lots you must create multiple lines. As an example, if you want to sell 200 units of an item and have 2 lots with quantity of 100 each, you must create two separate lines to sell both lots. - QuickBooks limits lot/serials to 40 characters - QuickBooks does not support lot numbers on single lines with quantities over 999. - QuickBooks has no way to auto generate new lot/serials. - QuickBooks lot/serial reports are extremely limited and offer no real customization. There is no report to get a list of lot/serials for each item and how much is in stock for each one. In addition, if a single item has a long list of lot/serials it will only display a limited number of them. - The only way to do a lookup on a lot/serial is through the reports. There is no quick lookup screen. - Requires QuickBooks Enterprise and the purchasing of the Advanced Inventory feature.     --- ## AUTOMATE YOUR Inventory PROCESS today! 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