Jaclyn Anku, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: On today's episode of In the Know, we'll be exploring inventory enhancements in QuickBooks Online.

Here's what to expect. You'll see an Intuit product leader give a deep dive demo, and then we’ll hear from ProAdvisors Nayo Carter-Gray and Erin Vukelich, who weigh in on how they help their inventory-based clients.

Hey ProAdvisors! I'm Jaclyn and you're watching In the Know. It's the show designed to keep you in the know on the most exciting updates to QuickBooks Online. So here's the scoop. We heard that the functionality around inventory management needed to be improved in order to meet the needs of inventory-based businesses who use QuickBooks Online. So we're introducing variance and inventory accounts. Also, you can now import products and inventory directly from sales channels in order to accurately track the cost of goods sold (COGS).

And now for the Fast Facts:

• These enhancements are available to U.S. users of QuickBooks Online Advanced and Plus.
• To access, navigate to sales, then products and services.
• We've been rolling out this functionality gradually since September 2023, and it was live to all users as of summer 2024.

If you find this update interesting or helpful, be sure to like, comment, and subscribe.

We'll hear now from Intuit product leader Keith. Keith, welcome to the show. We’re looking forward to seeing the demo.

Keith Crowther: Thank you so much for having me, Jaclyn. I'm really excited to share what we've done for inventory over the last few months and share some of these updates. 

So the first thing we're going to go into with inventory is the introduction of a bunch of new features. Specifically, variants. This is new for QuickBooks Online.

So you can see the screenshot on the left hand side. We see an example of a water bottle and it comes in two different size variations, so that’s what you actually track for inventory. The product itself is really at the parent level, so the variants become the child that has the information such as the SKU, quantity on hand, cost, price, and other important details you need to know. So when we launch this introduction of variants, we’re not only tracking all of this information, but a bunch of new fields that are now introduced.

QuickBooks allows us to manage the products two ways. You can import these via CSV import manually within QuickBooks, or connect to one of the existing sales channels and bring in all that detail from Shopify or Amazon. Here, QuickBooks will automatically import your products and create them in that same structure of your products and your variants. Along with all of this, we've introduced notifications to know when your inventory is running low and when you’re out of stock. And again, you'll see on the left-hand side at the top we have the two indications, marking down which products are out-of-stock and which products are low in stock. This allows you to filter that table and convert that into a purchase order to replenish your inventory.

The next feature we're going to go into is the update we have to existing sales channel integrations when we look at importing sales orders, the product catalog, and all of the fulfillment information. So what we've done here is we've made some updates to our sales channel integrations across Shopify, Amazon, eBay, and now Etsy, to allow for the automatic import of your entire catalog from all of these channels.

Let's say you sell the same product across Shopify and Amazon, and want to have one catalog in QuickBooks Online. It [the software] allows you to import those products, match them with what already exists in QuickBooks, and create a single source of truth for the inventory. Along with sales orders importing, you also now have the ability to create them as invoices linked to those inventory items, so your clients can automatically track their COGS. Then, as fulfillment statuses come in from these channels and orders are fulfilled, you'll see that there's not just the quantity on hand; there's also a quantity that's on a sales order yet to be fulfilled and the available quantity that's left to sell. This allows you to get a deeper understanding of what you can sell and what's available to actually sell to customers, versus what is physically on hand and stored in your warehouse.

You'll see that the payments are coming in and marking those invoices as paid. More importantly, this is also broken down by payment gateway, so if your clients sell on a channel like Shopify, you can now see the breakdown of not just your Shopify payments, but those that are paid via other forms of payment, such as PayPal or cash manual transactions, all separated into their own clearing account.

This is our third release we have in inventory counts, a complete new transaction that we've introduced in QuickBooks Online, allowing your clients to perform an actual cycle count of their inventory. At the end of a month and a quarter end of a year, they're physically counting everything they have on hand and comparing that to what they have recorded in their books. This [the new feature] allows them to open up and get real-time inventory counts of all of their products, either a select few or doing a bulk add of all of their items.

This is something you can do progressively in a workflow: Physically count inventory over multiple hours or multiple days, save it, and come back to it later and complete it. You'll see that on the screen, it shows the current product and the quantity on hand, and will allow you to enter in what the new quantity is and what you've just recorded. Then it will show you the quantity change, either plus or minus from what was recorded in the system.

And that's what we have for inventory updates. Thank you so much for having me, Jaclyn, and I will pass it back over to you in the studio.

Jaclyn Anku: All right, thank you so much, Keith. That was fantastic. We'll turn now to our ProAdvisors, Nayo and Erin, to hear what they have to say.

Nayo, Erin, thanks so much for being here and for hanging out on In the Know.

Today we're diving into inventory and talking about some exciting updates, including being able to keep track of inventory variants. Nayo, let me start with you. Why is this such a big deal?

Nayo Carter-Gray: Especially if you have clients that have products, this will be super cool to keep track of all the different styles or sizes of whatever product it is that they're selling. In my case, we work a lot with service-based businesses, but every once in a while they'll throw something out there like selling T-shirts or some merch at an upcoming speaking engagement. You may have just one shirt, but there are multiple sizes. Really understanding how many they have in which size is going to be important for them, so that whomever is working their vendor table won't sell out, and they'll be able to accurately keep track of what they have on hand. In my practice, this is going to be huge because this is something we've been able to work into our advisory moments. My wheels are spinning!

Erin Vukelich: I totally agree. I think that in the past, inventory has always been like manufacturing, restaurants with inventory on hand, but more and more companies in professional services such as dog grooming are creating merch to have for sale. So I think having this inventory system inside QuickBooks with the ability to do the different variants is incredibly important, especially when you know more and more people are selling product.

Jaclyn Anku: Erin, you brought up an interesting point a bit earlier in conversation about how this might also help with retailers who are taking a multichannel approach. Could you unpack that a bit?

Erin Vukelich: Definitely. So if you have a client who's selling through Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, or multiple different channels, it can be hard to make sure you have accurate inventory count. By aggregating it all into QuickBooks, you can see exactly what's on hand and make sure you don't oversell your stock, accidentally. It's huge to have that information aggregated into one place so you don't have to check three or four different websites to see what you have on hand.

Jaclyn Anku: Okay, so Erin brought up a keyword, which is “information,” and Nayo, you already brought up “advisory.” Nayo, how does having this better information on hand enable you to deliver better advisory insights?

Nayo Carter-Gray: We can look at many things, such as which shirts or which sizes are selling the best, and which ones are you holding on to the longest. Then we can use those moments to advise on, for example, if the client needs to negotiate with whomever they're purchasing the products from to say, "Hey, if we buy more in this size, can we get a better discount?" Or, if they're holding on to shirts for too long, it might be time to put those on sale.

There are a lot of insights we can draw from just really understanding what's selling, when it's selling, and how long or how fast it's selling out. I know Erin deals with this more than I do, but those are just some of the ways I can think of right off the top of my head.

Erin Vukelich: The other part that I think we can also talk about is pricing. If you notice something's really selling really quick, and then start comparing your margins to what is selling, you can see that maybe it's selling quick because it's not priced appropriately. Or, do we just need to reevaluate where our prices are compared to the costs? Having accurate, accurate inventory information is going to be great.

Jaclyn Anku: Well, Erin, Nayo, thank you so much for hanging out on In the Know and dropping some serious knowledge about inventory and how this can lead to advisory conversations. So great to have you.

Nayo Carter-Gray: Thanks again. 

Erin Vukelich: Thank you so much. 

Jaclyn Anku: And thank you for watching this episode. I'm Jaclyn, the host of In The Know and leader of ProAdvisor Training and Certification. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. We'll catch you next time.

Meet the ProAdvisors

ProAdvisor Erin Vukelich: Director of Accounting, Prix Fixe Accounting

ProAdvisor Nayo Carter-Gray: CEO, 1st Step Accounting