Top 12 Features of QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturing Businesses

Effective accounting practices play an essential role in the success of any business, regardless of its size or the industry. QuickBooks Enterprise for the Manufacturing industry is a versatile and reliable accounting software solution that simplifies the accounting processes while ensuring financial data accuracy. Its powerful features, such as transaction recording, revenue collection, and bill payments, make accountants’ lives easier.

QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturing & Wholesale has everything a manufacturing business needs to account for costs and inventory and analyze business performance.

Moreover, its advanced features allow manufacturing companies to better manage their inventory and production processes. With QuickBooks Enterprise Manufacturing, manufacturers can ensure their financial operations run smoothly and efficiently while keeping accurate records. However, an added element can take your manufacturing business to an even greater height—hosting QuickBooks Enterprise on a reliable cloud server.

Here, explore the top 12 features of QuickBooks Enterprise that every manufacturing business needs.

1. Tailored Chart of Accounts for Manufacturing and Wholesale Businesses

The chart of accounts for a manufacturing business differs significantly from that of a retailer or service-based business. Therefore, it’s imperative to have an industry-friendly solution such as QuickBooks Enterprise offers you tailor-made charts of accounts with essential balance sheets, income, and expense accounts common to most manufacturers. 

With QuickBooks Enterprise, you can choose a predefined industry that aligns with your business, generating a default chart of accounts per your business needs.

The major advantage it brings is saving your employees valuable time creating a new chart of accounts from scratch. 

QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturing & Wholesale understands the unique requirements of manufacturing businesses, reflected in its industry-specific chart of accounts. By hosting it on a cloud platform, you can enjoy the added benefit of QuickBooks Enterprise Hosting with real-time financial visibility from anywhere while having the flexibility to add or remove accounts as necessary. 

2. Streamlines Business Operations with Salesforce CRM Connector

The Salesforce CRM Connector streamlines your business operations by seamlessly syncing with QuickBooks, eliminating the need for duplicate data entry. Your sales and support teams can effortlessly access key customer information, such as order status, payment history, and account details, all in one place.

This ensures faster and more informed decision-making, empowering your team to provide excellent customer service. Additionally, with automated invoice generation, you can accelerate the payment process and improve cash flow, ensuring your business gets paid promptly and accurately.

3. Efficient Bill of Materials Cost Tracking

Manufacturing is not only about building and assembling a product but involves major tasks such as combining inventory parts and supplies, known as Bill of Materials (BOM) – it’s essentially like a shopping list and recipe for creating the final product to ensure the job is done right. 

QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturing allows users to track BOM costs for each product the company manufactures, including labor, overhead, and even the cost of subassemblies. 

When the costs of specific components change, QuickBooks Enterprise can automatically update labor and materials costs, so you don’t have to update that information manually. In addition, you can track expenses using either FIFO or average cost accounting so that QuickBooks Enterprise can adapt to your inventory accounting methods.  

It is important to note that the Bill of Materials (BOM) feature is not available in QuickBooks Online. For manufacturing businesses looking to track inventory efficiently and costs associated with materials used in the manufacturing process, the desktop version of QuickBooks Enterprise is the ideal solution. 

4. Easily Manage Customer Prepayments

Easily record and track customer prepayments and deposits on sales orders to boost your team’s productivity and improve financial accuracy. This feature ensures payments are automatically applied when sales orders are converted to invoices, reducing manual work and the risk of errors.

Integrating prepayments directly into your workflow allows your team to streamline their tasks and focus on more strategic initiatives while enhancing customer satisfaction through efficient financial management.

5. Streamlined Inventory Management with Available-to-Promise (ATP):

As manufacturing businesses grow in complexity, managing inventory and ensuring client availability becomes paramount. 

Small manufacturers might have just one warehouse and a relatively small number of items in inventory. Eventually, you could have several warehouses and thousands of inventory items and need to navigate a complex supply chain. 

QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturers offers a powerful solution through its “available-to-promise” (ATP) functionality. 

Available-to-promise (ATP) is a type of inventory analysis that allows manufacturers with complex operations to maintain low inventory quantities while maintaining client availability. You unlock valuable information by activating ATP when adding items to a sales order in QuickBooks Enterprise. 

When you add an item to a sales order in QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturers, click the button in the Ordered column to activate ATP. 

Upon activation, you can access a screen showing the total quantity of the item you have in hand, how many are currently on sales orders, the number of purchase orders, the quantity reserved for assembles, and the number available at each inventory site. As a result, the salespeople in your organization can efficiently respond to customer orders with accurate available inventory data and fulfillment projections.    

Additionally, hosting QuickBooks Enterprise Manufacturing on a secure and reliable cloud server further enhances the benefits of the ATP feature. You can access your inventory data and ATP information from anywhere, anytime. This flexibility enables remote collaboration, empowering your team to efficiently manage inventory and respond promptly to customer demands, even when working from different locations or on the go. 

6. Enhanced Cost Flexibility with Custom Price Levels

Every business owner knows that while all customers are important, some are more valuable than others. That’s why manufacturing businesses sometimes reward their best customers with custom pricing, offering discounts for high-volume or preferred customers.

Offering such discounts can be labor-intensive if your accounting software accommodates only one price level per product. But QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturers allows users to establish customized price levels so that you can set different prices for different customers.  

This is another useful feature not available in QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Pro. If you’re using one of those versions and constantly having to customize the prices for certain customers, upgrading to QuickBooks Enterprise and using the price-level function can save time. 

When combined with the advantages of hosting QuickBooks Enterprise on our secure cloud server, the benefits of Custom Price Levels are further amplified. It ensures that your pricing information is consistently updated and accessible from anywhere, facilitating seamless collaboration and real-time adjustments to pricing strategies. 

7. Mobile Barcode Scanner

Mobile barcode scanning revolutionizes your manufacturing or warehouse operations by automating key processes. With this technology, workers can quickly scan items, speeding up the picking process and significantly reducing data entry errors. Whether on the floor or in another warehouse, sales orders can be instantly dispatched to team members, enabling faster and more accurate fulfillment.

The real-time inventory updates sync directly to QuickBooks, giving you up-to-the-minute insight into stock levels, order status, and product availability, enhancing operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

8. Simplify Order Fulfillment with Multiple Customer Shipping Addresses:

Keeping your customers happy and running your business is crucial for the long-term success of any manufacturing business. So, what happens if your customer is a retail chain with multiple ship-to addresses?  

Efficiently managing shipping addresses for your customers is vital to ensure accurate order fulfillment and customer satisfaction. QuickBooks Enterprise recognizes the importance of this process and offers the convenient feature of Multiple Customer Shipping Addresses.  

QBE for Manufacturers allows you to set up an unlimited number of shipping addresses for each customer. It becomes easy for you to accommodate customers with multiple stores or locations.  

Select the correct shipping address from a drop-down menu in the ‘Ship To’ box when generating a sales order. You can also add a new address if your customer recently opened a new location and you haven’t yet set up the system. Now, you can tailor your sales orders for each customer and each shipment address. 

Integrating Multiple Customer Shipping Addresses with QuickBooks Enterprise enhances customer service by enabling accurate and prompt delivery. It offers even greater benefits when hosted on our secure cloud server. It allows seamless access to customer information and shipping addresses from anywhere, anytime. This facilitates efficient team collaboration, ensuring everyone has up-to-date and consistent customer address data. 

9. Gain Valuable Insights from Key Manufacturing Reports 

Manufacturing businesses need access to accurate and insightful reports for making informed decisions and driving operational efficiency. QuickBooks Enterprise offers a comprehensive suite of key manufacturing reports that provide valuable insights into various aspects of your business. 

These reports provide critical information about your business and where it stands financially. One of the perks of using QuickBooks Enterprise has always been its robust reporting features, which allow business owners and stakeholders to customize and run powerful reports that aid in decision making.  
QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturers is no exception. The software comes pre-loaded with several report templates designed with manufacturing businesses into consideration.  

Examples include:

• Inventory Valuation Summary Report: This report shows what your inventory is worth, how much you have on hand, what it costs, and the current sales price. If you have slow-moving inventory taking up shelf space, this report will help you identify it to consider offering discounts to get it moving again.  

• Inventory Stock Status by Item Report: Staying on top of how much inventory you currently have on hand is essential for keeping customers happy and orders flowing. With the Inventory Stock Status by Item Report, you can see your current inventory  

You’ll also get insight into whether that inventory is committed to an outstanding sales order and how much is available for assemblies.  

• Assembly Shortage by Item Report: Component shortages can cause production delays, so you don’t want to start production when you don’t have enough raw materials or supplies to finish the run. That’s where the Assembly Shortage by Item Report comes in.  

This report provides a snapshot of the inventory needed for critical assemblies and the next delivery date for items. Regularly reviewing this report can help you focus on shortages that need to be handled before they start holding up production. 

Those are just a few of the manufacturer-specific reports available in QuickBooks Enterprise. And since QuickBooks Enterprise comes with Advanced Reporting, you’ll have access to an extensive library of industry-specific reports. Besides, you can always build and customize the reports you need to get better insights into your business. 

When QuickBooks Enterprise is hosted on the cloud, you can further enhance the accessibility and collaboration around these reports as they are readily available from anywhere, allowing you to access real-time data and collaborate with team members seamlessly. 

10. Centralized Source of Vendor Information

The Alternate Vendors Center provides a centralized and accessible hub for all vendor-related data, including contact details, item specifics, and pricing. This feature allows you to swiftly import vendor list prices and reduce the time spent hunting down vital vendor information. Purchase orders can be created with vendor information automatically pre-filled, saving time and minimizing errors.

With new alternate vendor reports, you can gain even deeper insights by reviewing vendors within critical inventory reports, offering enhanced visibility and control over your supply chain management.

11. Streamline Order Fulfillment with Backorder Tracking

No matter how well you manage inventory, customers occasionally place orders that require stock or supplies that are not yet available. Improper tracking of those orders might often lead to a logistical nightmare. It will require you to keep records of all the outstanding sales orders with items on backorder and place rush orders for missing items.  

QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturers makes tracking those backorders easy. On every sales order and invoice, you’ll see a backorder column showing which items still need to be shipped. There’s also a backorder column on purchase orders showing what you are expecting to receive from vendors.  

This can help you manage customer expectations, ensuring you can communicate delays before customers cancel orders. 

12. eCommerce Integration

Having a strong online presence and the ability to sell products online is essential for manufacturing businesses. But if your e-commerce platform doesn’t integrate with your accounting solution, you’ll waste countless hours managing, tracking, and re-entering data between the two. QuickBooks Enterprise understands this need and offers seamless eCommerce integration to help you expand your reach and streamline your operations.  

QuickBooks Enterprise integrates with some of the most popular e-commerce sites, including Shopify, Amazon, and WooCommerce. When your separate systems talk to each other, you can ensure that each sale, return, and addition to your stock will be automatically updated in your accounting software. It also significantly reduces the time spent correcting data entry and shipping mistakes due to manually entered orders. 

Moreover, when it is hosted on cloud, you can leverage the availability and accessibility of your integrated systems from anywhere, allowing for real-time updates and collaboration among your team members. 

The Bottom Line: Unlock the Power of QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturing Businesses 

Accounting for a manufacturing company is about more than just crunching numbers. It impacts everything from productivity to customer satisfaction and long-term profitability. That’s why you need the right accounting system in place.

QuickBooks Enterprise offers a comprehensive suite of features specifically designed to meet the unique needs of manufacturing businesses. From industry-specific charts of accounts to advanced inventory management and powerful reporting capabilities, QuickBooks Enterprise equips manufacturers with the tools and insights necessary to drive efficiency, profitability, and growth.

QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturers comes with all the features and functionality you need to run your manufacturing business your way. If you think QuickBooks Enterprise for Manufacturers is the right fit for your company, contact one of our Solutions Consultants at +1-855-223-4887 for genuine licenses or try QuickBooks Enterprise with hosting.