BatchMaster for QuickBooks – Part 2

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Editor's Note: This is the second in a mini-series regarding BatchMaster ERP for QuickBooks. You will find our Introductory (Part 1) article here.

About a month ago, I wrote a feature introducing you to BatchMaster. This application is specifically designed to formulate, produce, ensure quality control and manage the related inventory of your food, nutraceutical or environmentally friendly chemical business.

Complicated formula- or batch-based products are beyond the scope of QuickBooks, whether you're talking QuickBooks Enterprise or QuickBooks Online Advanced. QuickBooks wasn't designed to do the types of complex work that goes into these products, especially when they require an advanced level of quality control.

Maybe you're trying to make salsa with QuickBooks, so I tell you, "How many pecks of peppers can a QuickBooks track if a QuickBooks could track peppers?" How do you ensure the peppers you track are of good quality, and what do you do with the ones that aren't?

These are questions you cannot answer if you're using QuickBooks.

Oh sure, there are other industrial manufacturing apps you can add to QuickBooks that, with some time, effort and creativity, you can turn making a widget into brewing a batch (of salsa). But why not just select an app that's specialized for formulas and batches from the start, and that also has the quality control features built-in.

BatchMaster is simply the best solution, and now it offers integration for QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Online Advanced, QuickBooks Enterprise and QuickBooks Desktop Plus versions.

When integrated with QuickBooks, BatchMaster effectively manages all the complexities inherent to the products, processes, and variables in process or batch-based manufacturing industries.

BatchMaster supports Sample Management, Lab, Formulation, Production, Quality and  Compliance to ensure your finished formula or batch-based products meet the high standards expected for food, nutraceutical or environmentally friendly chemicals.

Inventory, Warehousing, Sales Orders and Purchasing are under BatchMaster's control because BatchMaster's Master Production Scheduling (MPS) and Material Requirements Planning (MRP) require access to critical, granular manufacturing, customer, sales and purchase order data to perform the detailed planning for how much product needs to be made and when it must be made.

As a bonus, these features generate the proper purchase orders for the materials required to execute the production plan at the right time.

At the same time, QuickBooks serves as your general ledger. It will be responsible for receiving your customer payments related to Accounts Receivable. It also is the source of payments to vendors associated with your Accounts Payable.

QuickBooks also provides payroll processing unless you use a third-party app or service.

The graphic below displays the overall relationship between BatchMaster and QuickBooks, regardless of your version.

But you might be asking yourself if BatchMaster is the right app.

Let's face it: If your business has unusual manufacturing requirements that you are trying to track with QuickBooks, you are in for problems. Only recently did QuickBooks Enterprise even begin allowing you to track expiration dates.

QuickBooks Enterprise lot and serial tracking still is limited to one or the other on a global basis rather than permitting you to choose lots for one item and serial numbers for another. 

Still the same, you started with QuickBooks, and you cannot seem to give it up until you find yourself approaching the point of no return, trouble about to happen or a mistake that could cost you everything.

Maybe you're a small food manufacturer making salsa or you make dressing or sauces (like the state's best BBQ sauce). You could even be a bakery sending a dozen varieties of cookies and half a dozen cupcake offerings to 50 locations across your state.

And now you find yourself trying to produce quality control records for a hot under the collar inspector waiting for you to produce documentation that QuickBooks simply won't give you. 

Maybe you are producing nutraceuticals like dietary enzymes, mineral supplements or pre- and probiotics. Or, even worse, you produce pharmaceuticals and are on your third different inventory app for QBO-Advanced. It still won't allow you to swap equivalent components in different measures.

You might be making cosmetics like nail polishes or concealers, and you're having a problem making QuickBooks Premier's multiple units-of-measure work with the different quantities you need for your raw materials.  

Maybe you got into the chemical additive business producing algaecides and fungicides, and it has mushroomed (that's a pun if you didn't catch it) into something more significant than your QuickBooks Online can handle.

You might be manufacturing paints and coatings like polyurethanes, epoxies, or zinc-based primers. Now, you find yourself painted into a corner (that's another pun) trying to make QuickBooks Enterprise formulate your batches. 

But off the shelf, BatchMaster offers you the essential and unique distinctions required by your industry. It's preconfigured for a process manufacturing industry like yours.

No matter what formula or batch form of business you have, BatchMaster speaks the language of product formulation at its core. It's designed to be the solution you need to formulate and produce your end products within a quality-controlled environment and maintain every QC record you require.  

That one specific car company that shall remain nameless isn't the only one where "Quality is Job One" because you have the same goal in your business.

With all of that said, let's look at just one aspect of how BatchMaster and QuickBooks work together to ensure the critical aspects of customers, sales and accounts receivable ensure that your business will operate better than ever.

Take, for example, your customers. They are the lifeblood of your business. Without them, your company wouldn't exist. Yet you need to be able to understand and measure that lifeblood. What revenues do you generate from what customers and what's the actual cost of producing that revenue?

So, while you might concern yourself about the satisfaction of your customers, you also need to understand whether you're profiting from those customers or are they costing you. 

QuickBooks is great at keeping customer information and tracking simple sales orders. Still, it doesn't have an internal calculator to measure your profitability regarding complex product sales costs.

But when combined with the BatchMaster, you will have a trustworthy source of information flowing back and forth that details every customer order. Whether it is fulfilled from production or stock-on-hand, it not only reflects the appropriate pricing, but the most accurate cost available right down to the microgram, milliliter or 16-ounce bottle of whatever you're producing. 

Whether your final products sold are tracked from warehouse stores of inventory or produced to order, you will have accurate measures of your cost per fulfillment. And that brings me to another reason why QuickBooks can be faulty if you're not working with BatchMaster. 

No matter what version of QuickBooks you use, Desktop Plus, QuickBooks Online, Enterprise with Advanced Inventory or QBO Advanced, they are all stuck with one specific cost methodology. You are either using weighted average cost or first-in, first-out; once set, you are stuck with the methodology, and not all versions offer both options. 

Regardless of the option, it's an all-items selection. Every item, from raw materials to bulk goods, progressive components, or finished goods, will use the same method. But in batch processing, you may need different cost methodologies depending on the items you require to produce your products.

Depending on how your stock of finished products is managed, you might need different methodologies for your saleable goods.

It boils down to BatchMaster offers you this flexibility; QuickBooks doesn't. It's just that plain and simple.

Regardless of the items, their costs, units of measure or source, when inventory from raw materials is used in processing, appropriate journal entries are posted from BatchMaster into QuickBooks (any version), impacting the value of your inventory in stock, work in process and finished goods inventory.

The supporting details within BatchMaster will always match the financial values reflected in QuickBooks. 

Customer sales orders in BatchMaster will value identically to sales order values in QuickBooks. Once production orders fulfill committed sales orders, customer invoices will be generated from BatchMaster and posted into QuickBooks as your Accounts/Receivable.

Upon collection and payment, recorded in QuickBooks, the bi-directional sync will update both systems regarding invoice status.

For more information, or to schedule a demonstration, see the BatchMaster website.

Next time, in Part 3, we will examine your business' purchasing and inventory control aspects and see how they will work when BatchMaster is integrated with QuickBooks.

Disclosures:

Materials within this feature, including graphic illustrations, were developed from resources provided by BatchMaster, or the BatchMaster website.  All such source materials were adapted by Insightful Accountant solely for educational purposes.

BatchMaster® Process Manufacturing Software, aka: BatchMaster, is the registered trade name of BatchMaster ERP Software for Process Manufacturing, a privately held company with corporate headquarters in Irvine, California, USA. 

As used herein, QuickBooks®, QuickBooks Desktop Plus (all versions), QuickBooks Enterprise, and QuickBooks Online (all versions) refer to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit Inc., a NASDAQ "INTU" publicly traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California (USA).

Other trade names used herein, including any other vendor (app/software) products discussed, may be registered, trademarked, or otherwise held by their respective owners and are now acknowledged accordingly. They have been referenced for informational and educational purposes only.

This is an editorial feature, not sponsored content. No vendors within this article have paid Insightful Accountant or the author any remuneration to be included within this feature. This article is provided solely for informational and educational purposes.

The publication of this article does not represent any form of endorsement by either the author or Insightful Accountant.

Note: Registered Trademark ® and Copyright © symbols have been eliminated from the articles within this publication for brevity due to the frequency or abundance with which they might otherwise appear or be repeated. We attempt to credit such trademarked products or copyrighted materials within our respective article footnotes and disclosures.

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