QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop (Enterprise) for Manufacturing

searcher profile

December 14, 2022

by a searcher from Brigham Young University in Dallas, TX, USA

Has anyone used Quickbooks Online (Advanced) for manufacturing? If so, did you tack on an inventory solution? Would love some perspective. It seems the options are to either do Quickbooks Desktop (Gold or Platinum) or else do Quickbooks Online and purchase a 3rd party inventory solution in order to manage bill of materials, track inventory, etc. I'm hesitant to go with Desktop because it's not the future, but I'm not sure QuickBooks Online can manage manufacturing. Tell me your horror stories and recommendations.

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commentor profile
Reply by an investor
from Stanford University in Dallas, TX, USA
Hey, Seth. I wish I had the perfect solution for you but this topic has vexed me in a custom manufacturing business for years. Feel free to DM me if you want more details on below. Or, looks like you’re in Dallas, so you’d be welcome to come out to the shop if you’d like to see anything in person. A few things I’ll mention in the meantime…

1) I’ve been told by an expert as recently as 6 months ago that QBO is still not ready for primetime for manufacturing when it comes to inventory and build assemblies.

2) We’re in QBs Enterprise and find accessing it remotely through our VPN to be convenient enough.

3) To link revenue and COGS, we create a build assembly for almost every line on almost every invoice. It’s manual, tedious, and painful. But currently we are having an amazingly positive experience by outsourcing the process to the Philippines. We ship in the late afternoon, go home, then return in the morning to have our invoicing complete and accurate. We will continue to look for a more automated solution but in the meantime I’m loving this <$10/hour option.

4) We tried implementing an ERP (ECI’s M1) in part due to our frustration with QBs inventory but it would qualify for one of your horror stories 😊.

5) We recently saw a demo of Fishbowl. Doesn’t seem like the right solution for our particular business.
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Reply by a professional
from University of Illinois at Urbana in San Francisco, CA, USA
I'm seeing this as a recurring theme among Searchers that successfully acquire a business. Getting an ERP in place can get painful (and pricey) working with system integrators. You need to be delivering value NOW instead of going through 6-12 months of scoping and implementation. Our team at Doss has built a lightweight ERP that you can get up and running with custom workflows **in just a couple days**, without paying any upfront consulting costs.

After we started working with a Searcher I realized that there's a ton folks here who might be interested in what we've built. Basically: if you're wanting a complete ERP with the rigor and modules from NetSuite / Dynamics 365 BC but don't want to burn through $100K and a year just trying to get it turned on... then send me a redacted
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