QuickBooks Online adds Inventory Tracking!

As I predicted, QuickBooks Online has added basic inventory capabilities. To try it out, go to the "Preferences" menu and choose "Products and Services." There you can turn on the "Quantity on Hand" option. The functionality is a bit limited, but I'm sure that more robust capabilities are not far behind. According to their product page, you can create purchase orders too, although I have not seen that in the product yet.

What does that mean for OE Companion? Nothing really ... maybe a few less sales in the short-term. It definitely doesn't change our focus. As I mentioned in that prediction post, OE Companion was developed with the assumption that QuickBooks Online would add inventory capabilities in the not-too-distant future. In that regard, things are going exactly as planned.

We are committed to being the best add-on for QuickBooks Online, and we continue working toward that goal. We've got some exciting things planned for the next few months. As always, please email me at neal@oecompanion.com if you have any questions.

Introducing Easy Edit for QuickBooks Online

Today we released a beta version of our new “Easy Edit” feature. You can find it under the Data menu in OE Companion. I’m really excited about this feature, because it eliminates a major pain point of using both QuickBooks Online and OE Companion. If you’re wondering what the heck it does, read on…

Have you ever tried to add or edit a large volume of data in QuickBooks Online? Takes a while, doesn’t it? Actually it takes a while in the desktop version too. I’m certainly not faulting QuickBooks. They have made it about as easy as possible. There just aren’t a lot of good design options for data entry on thousands of customer records that have 50-100 fields each. Similarly, in OE Companion trying to update inventory counts for hundreds or thousands of items individually is quite cumbersome. What you really need is to use software that was built for editing large amounts of data.

So we set out to solve that problem, and we did! Easy Edit is the result. It is a 3-step process:

1. Download your data to Excel (or another program).
2. Make your adds/edits in Excel (or another program).
3. Upload your data back to OE Companion, which then sends it to QuickBooks Online.

It sounds ridiculously simple, and it is. That’s the point. It’s very simple and it’s very fast. This will save you a TON of time if you do lots of data entry with QuickBooks Online. If you are paying someone to do data entry (and I know many of you are!), this feature will save you money. There is no doubt about that.

Right now you can only use Easy Edit for items (products/services), but we’ll have support for other things shortly after we gather some feedback from our users about the way Easy Edit works. Please email me (neal@oecompanion.com) if you have any questions, and be sure to let us know what you think about Easy Edit.

PayPal Integration for QuickBooks Online

We just released a beta version of a really cool new feature. We’ve integrated PayPal with QuickBooks Online in what we call our “PayPal Automation” feature. Here’s how it works.

OE Companion now has the ability to receive PayPal Instant Payment Notifications (IPNs) on your behalf and process them according to your instructions. You simply enable the IPN feature in your PayPal account and instruct them to send the notifications to us. Then fill out a quick form in OE Companion to tell us how to process them.

That’s it! Your PayPal account is now linked with your QuickBooks Online account. For example, now when you receive a PayPal payment, OE Companion can automatically generate a sales receipt and post it to QuickBooks Online. Even better, if you track inventory in OE Companion, the software can automatically update your inventory counts as PayPal payments come through. Think about that. No more manual data entry or manually importing transactions. Set it up and forget it!

As with all our new features, we’ve introduced PayPal automation in a “beta” phase, which means we need you to try it and give us lots of feedback on how it works. We’ve tested it internally, and we know it works pretty well. Now we need your help to polish it and take it from good to great.

If you’d like to try out our PayPal integration with QuickBooks Online, go to the “Admin” menu in your account and enable it. Or if you don’t have an account, sign up for a free trial today.

Document Management for QuickBooks Online

Can’t ever find the documents you need? Do you want to make the move to a paperless office? In either case, OE Companion can help. We just released the new “Docs” module of OE Companion to give you anytime, anywhere access to your files, organized by QuickBooks transaction.

Now you can upload files to OE Companion and link them to OE Companion and QuickBooks Online. For example, you could upload all of your vendor W-9 forms and have them linked to each vendor for easy access. You could scan purchase orders and link them to shipments. You are limited only by your imagination.

Currently the Docs module is in a beta phase, which means everyone can use it for free. It also means that we need feedback from you. We want to hear your thoughts so that we can improve the product.

Here are a few of the key features:

• You can link documents to customers, vendors, invoices, sales receipts, purchase orders, sales orders, inventory items, or anything else tracked by QuickBooks Online or OE Companion.
• Each document can be linked to multiple transactions, and each transaction can be linked to multiple documents.
• All uploaded files are backed up regularly to a secure offsite backup.

Try it out for yourself. If you are already a subscriber, look for the "Documents" option under the Company menu. If you aren't yet a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Start a free trial today.

Rolling out new features

One of the great benefits of using SaaS (Software-As-A-Service) offerings like QuickBooks Online and OE Companion is that you automatically receive any updates to the software. As a user, you are always using the latest version.

Now that we are out of beta OE Companion will typically roll out at least one release per week. Sometimes the update will be minor and sometimes major, but basically we plan to push out new features as soon as they are available. For example, last week we added packing slips. This week we made a bunch of usability enhancements.

On occasion, we might label a new feature as "beta." That designation is usually reserved for complex features that require testing from a broad pool of users. We love to get feedback from customers in general, but we especially encourage you to send us feedback on beta features. That helps us to improve them quickly.

As always, please email me if there are any features that you would like to see in OE Companion. Who knows? You might see it show up in next week's release!

Strange user showing up in QuickBooks Online

June 5 Update: I did hear back from Intuit on this (thanks for the quick response guys!). It appears to be an issue on their side and they are looking into it.

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Third-party applications (like OE Companion) are not allowed to access the user list in QuickBooks Online. That's a security feature put in place by QBOE, and it's a good one. Instead what happens is that the app is listed in the Connections List in QBOE. It's not considered a "user" like someone who logs in. It's considered a connection, which makes sense.

So imagine my surprise this week when my user list looked like the screenshot below. Somehow, a strange user had been added to my user list. When you click on that user for more information, it's clearly related to a third-party app (mine). Strange!



I have two QBOE accounts that I use with OE Companion - one for testing and one for the service business I own (the reason I developed OE Companion in the first place). This odd user only showed up in one of my companies, not both. I deleted the user, and OE Companion still works fine, so hopefully it's just a temporary glitch in QBOE. I have heard one other report of this happening to someone.

I contacted Intuit support to ask them what happened. I'll post here when/if I find out any details from them. If you have seen a user like this in your QBOE account, whether you use OE Companion or not, please drop me a comment or an email and let me know. At this point, any information would be helpful to figure out the explanation.

The good news is that it doesn't appear to affect either QBOE or the third-party apps in any way. It appears to be more of a curiosity thing at this point.

What if QuickBooks Online adds inventory and purchase orders?

I get that question a lot when talking about OE Companion. It’s a good question. Here are my thoughts.

First, I assume that the question is “when,” not “if.” I would be stunned if Intuit has no plans to add those features to QuickBooks Online at some point in the future. So I’m proceeding on the assumption that they will.

What does that do to OE Companion and what would happen to your inventory data in OE Companion?

First, your data. If QBOE introduces inventory and purchase order features, OE Companion will give you the ability to export your existing inventory data to QBOE (assuming of course that QBOE allows us to do it). OE Companion sends all the data you need for inventory accounting to QBOE already, so it shouldn’t be a big problem.

Now, what happens to OE Companion? Keep in mind that inventory and purchase orders are just the first thing that was implemented in OE Companion. There is much more to come, and frankly the other stuff is much cooler! The bottom line is that OE Companion is a supplement to QuickBooks Online. If QBOE adds an inventory feature two years down the road (or whenever), then I encourage you to use it and I will do everything I can to support it. OE Companion will focus on other things. I assure you that there is plenty of functionality that we can add-on to QuickBooks Online.

OE Companion is Online!

The beta version of OE Companion is now available. To create your free beta account, go to http://www.oecompanion.com/.

This release includes mainly the inventory and purchase order functionality of OE Companion. Other features will be added as soon as they are available.

The beta trial will last somewhere between six weeks and several months. As described in a previous post, a monthly fee will be required to continue to use the service after the trial ends. Active beta testers (those who send us feedback) will receive a 50% discount on the first three months of service after the beta trial ends.

Certainly I want to eliminate any bugs or errors in the software, but most importantly I want your feedback on how well OE Companion works in your business. Your input will drive the future direction of the product.

I can’t wait to hear your feedback.

Demo of Inventory for QuickBooks Online

Click the link below for a video demo of the inventory functionality in OE Companion. Let me know what you think.

http://www.oecompanion.com/inventory.aspx

I'll post more details later this week about the upcoming beta release.