Complete QuickBooks Integration

Anyone use Volusion to do this?

[mida68]

Hello again, I'm still on my quest to find a great ecommerce cart that is integrated with QuickBooks. I've checked out IA Modules and their integration is perfect but the cart itself is not as feature-rich as I'd like.

I checked out and demo-ed Volusion and LOVE it, every feature is a perfect match *except* QB integration which is totally lacking. Unfortunately QB integration is the top priority for my clients who have POS at retail locations.

ERR. I've talked to Volusion and they just don't have it on the drawing board right now and don't have time to create a customization for us.

I'm grasping at staws... Does anyone use Volusion and QB - have you found a way to synch up inventory?

My idea cart would allow the retail store to scan an item, check it out using QB POS, and then that item would be removed from the online inventory -preventing false orders.

Any ideas?

[MrFishGuy]

Have you looked at Shopping Cart Assistant by Write it Once? It's a shopping cart to QuickBooks integrator. Maybe that would work for you.

[rocknbil]

We recently went through this exact, or a very similar, issue. Wife installed QB 2007 Premiere Retail edition, I am her site programmer.

The short answer is no, unless it's a solution offered by Intuit.

Longer answer: I know the description that follows is inherently different than your situation, but follow along to see how the way QuickBooks works would interefere with your plan.

I figured out how to export QB items from our website as IIF files and import them into a test company. I managed to import all her inventory items which presented us with two walls impossible to cross.

First is the inventory value. I properly exported the inventory values in the correct field, but when brought into QB the inventory values all read 0 (zero.) We discovered that in order to get an inventory value in QB, you must have invoices from vendors and sales receipts that correctly reflect increments in and out of QB.

That is to say - Quickbooks automatically increments the inventories based on the inventory you buy from vendors and sales receipts entered. You spend $XX on inventory from a vendor, it increments the inventory items. You make sales, it decrements the inventory. Even if you try to manually alter inventory on the item it warns you, and uses the inventory value you enter to change the sales and expenses charts. It's insane!

The second rediculously stupid problem was that all the inventory items go into the QB items list, along with all other items - sales, services, and even Invoice subtotals are part if the "items" list. There is no specific area for inventory items, which is really faulty for the Retail edition. You can create categories and subcategories but they all go into the "items" list, which makes it huge.

I believe QB has an integrated solution that involves the POS and online sales, but it would be strictly proprietary. We threw in the towel on this and rely on manual daily sales entry for now until we get the POS. Even then, it will not help much unless you purchase their ecommerce integration modules, or manually enter all online sales into the POS. For more info you can try digging around the QuickBooks community forum, which is sometimes helpful but most often vague and sporatic.

Quickbooks is often an all-or-nothing solution. In your case, I might suggest an export of the Items list on a daily basis and upload it to your site. A script would then parse out the plain-text IIF and update your online inventory. Even this is bereft with possible problems, not to mention yet another daily task.

[Barney Stone]

There is another problem with using QuickBooks to manage orders from an ecommerce Website: unless you spend $3,000 for the Enterprise Version, QuickBooks is limited to 14,500 each of orders, customers and products. That is not nearly enough for a growing ecommerce business. I suggest that you and your client look for a different POS system that is designed to integrate with shopping carts like Volusion and do real-time inventory tracking between the two. If you Google "order manager" you will find several possible solutions.

[CernyM]

Have you looked at Shopping Cart Assistant by Write it Once? It's a shopping cart to QuickBooks integrator. Maybe that would work for you.

We use SCA to link our cart to Quickbooks. It works, mostly.

There are some annoying bugs (e.g. dates not importing correctly, not understanding some discounts, crashes) that the developer won't fix. Indeed, won't even respond to repeated customer service inquiries on.

[mida68]

Great suggestions! I am starting to think that QuickBooks is the part that we need to get rid of and I agree that looking for other point of sale solutions may be the ticket. Too bad that the accounting world revolves around QuickBooks, the one application that doesn't seem to play well with ecommerce sites!

If anyone works with Volusion and a POS system regularly, I'd like to know details ;-)

Thanks!

[midoriweb]

Thought I'd throw this out there in case someone is interested.

Their website clearly states they have quickbooks integration... and it works to some extent if you host with volusion. But here's the kicker... if you pay $10,000 for a lincesned version and host it on your own, quickbooks won't work at all. Support told us QB isn't available since we're a licensed user.

We bought our license in 2003 when Volusion was then called Store2003. The developer at that time told us QB should be available within 6 montbs. We've now been with using Volusion's cart for almost 4 years and have given up on QB working.