New QuickBooks Add-on In Development

Have a look at: http://cardinalarmory.com/  Under "6.8mm AR-15 upper assemblies" you will see a category of "Custom 6.8 AR-15 uppers"  Each one in that category is a BTO product.  It is a product made up of sub-assemblies.  I make very extensive use of conflict management, and this has given me a competitive edge.

 

The top level product is a holding place for an assembly charge, that's all.  Every component in the customizable list is an item or assembly in my QB item list.

 

When I download an order, I need to see each line item in the customized list of parts so that the individual item parts and assemblies can be removed from inventory and increment COGS correctly.

 

I would like it to work so that the transfer simply provide the price of each item.  In other words, the +/- change in price from the standard BTO assembly (the way the customer sees it) is NOT the right way to enter the item into the QB sales receipt.  It should simply list the price of each item in the customizable tiem list.  The total will be the same.  That way if my items or subassemblies are linked to different sales and COGS accounts, they will be incremented and decremented correctly (the price/cost of the part.)

 

If the price of the BTO product comes across as a lump sum total for the top-level item (the BTO product), we will need to edit each individual line item and check that the total matches.  If the items come across with the regular online or list price, then the order will need little or no editing.

 

Also, I manage my inventory with QB, not ProductCart.  In PC I set all products to ignore inventory levels.  I do this because many products are assemblies, and having a specific quantity on-hand does not reflect the fact that we may be able to assemble a sub-assembly in minutes.  We also have one-to-two weeks to build our products, and in that time more items can arrive from vendors.  Having inventory levels synchronized between QB and PC would make the system too jittery.   Better (IMO) to leave it alone and let the value of the inventory be managed in one place, QB.  Let a customer order an item regardless, if we are out-of-stock for a period of time we will inform the customer and ask him what he would like us to do.  I don't want to turn a customer's order away for a very temporary out-of-stock situation.

 

I am also concerned that synchronization be controlled.  Limit synchronization to only a carefully selected list of items, and provide a means to insure that in case of conflict I can decide which will override which.

 

Also, I have three or four times as many inventory items in QB as I do in ProductCart, and it will stay that way as long as I have subassembly parts which are not sold to customers (i.e. forever.)  Don't assume that every item needs to be synchronized in each direction.  When I set up last nights QB download experiment I was surprised to see no mechanism for identifying what parts needed to be synchronized before I got to the manual synchronization process. 

 

I was in the computer business for 25 years before starting Cardinal Armory.  I am sure this can be done well.  Just please make sure you don't deliver it before a LOT of testing.

 

I would be glad to be a beta tester as long as I can get phone support as-needed.

 

- Tim