Outgrowing QuickBooks inventory

QuickBooks is the most common system our customers already run, and it's the one case where you should not be exporting spreadsheets at all. There's a native two-way integration for both editions. You don't migrate off QuickBooks — you connect to it.

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1.Where QuickBooks inventory actually runs out

QuickBooks tracks what you own and what it cost, and does that well. The wall people hit is that it doesn't:

• keep a versioned bill of materials with scrap and routing, or roll cost up through sub-assemblies with those included — Desktop's assemblies build, but that is where they stop (what each edition does with a BOM);
• run a work-order lifecycle or reserve components so you can't oversell them;
• trace a lot forward to the customers who received it, or backward to the supplier;
• plan delivery routes or invoice from a truck;
• keep receiving, selling and counting offline on a warehouse floor or a rural delivery run;
• net demand against stock and on-order to tell you what to buy this week.

If you're reconciling a spreadsheet against QuickBooks every month, that's the same wall wearing a different hat.

2.Connecting, by edition

QuickBooks Online

One click from the QuickBooks page in the app. The initial pull brings customers, vendors and items across, and from then on the sync is two-way and automatic: items, invoices, bills, COGS journal entries and inventory valuations post as they happen, and work-order production cost moves through a work-in-process account.

QuickBooks Desktop

Connects through the QuickBooks Web Connector. The setup has more moving parts than the Online flow, and there's a dedicated walkthrough for it — the QuickBooks Desktop integration guide — including how setup imports your customers, vendors and items the first time the Web Connector connects.

3.The thing to know before month-end, not after

If your company uses FIFO, your COGS figures will not tie out exactly, and that is by design. AegisSwift uses a moving average. QuickBooks Online lets a company choose FIFO or Moving Average once, before its first inventory item, and uses FIFO if no choice was made. Two different costing methods applied to the same transactions produce two different cost of goods sold — permanently, not as drift that settles.

This is not a sync fault and there's no setting that reconciles it. It's worth ten minutes with your accountant before go-live, because the alternative is discovering it during your first month-end and assuming something is broken. Moving average vs FIFO works through an example of exactly how far apart the two land, and why.

4.What actually posts back

The point of the integration is that your books stay right without manual journal entries. Every inventory movement creates the correct QuickBooks entry:

• Receipts against purchase orders, with landed-cost allocation;
• Adjustments from cycle counts and write-offs;
• COGS on sale, at the moment of sale;
• Work-order production cost, into work-in-process as parts are issued and out to finished stock as units complete;
• Inventory valuation, kept aligned rather than reconciled.

5.Questions people ask

Do I have to export my data?

No. Connect instead — the initial pull brings customers, vendors and items across.

Do I have to stop using QuickBooks?

No, and most don't. It stays the accounting system; AegisSwift runs operations.

Why don't my COGS numbers match?

If your QuickBooks Online company is on FIFO: FIFO versus moving average. Different methods, different answer, by design. See §3.

Which edition do you support?

Both. Online connects in one click; Desktop connects through the Web Connector.