Order Time is a simple-to-use QuickBooks inventory integration 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.

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. 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.