Small Businesses – Complex Requirements

By Douglas Sleeter

A common refrain I’ve head from QuickBooks advisors is the challenge their clients have in using QuickBooks to manage more than just the accounting part of their business. This is particularly true in the case of growing businesses, where the increasing volume and complexity of their operations quickly outpaces the built-in capabilities of QuickBooks.

Don’t get me wrong – as you know, I am a strong advocate of QuickBooks. QuickBooks does an outstanding job of managing a small or mid-size business’s accounting needs. And, QuickBooks does provide some basic business management functionality, such as inventory and order processing, for business with basic needs in these areas.

However, many companies find that QuickBooks does not have some of the advanced features they need to manage the more complex workflows of their business. This is particularly true in the areas of inventory management, sales order management, and purchasing. Specific examples I have seen include:

• A company that leases home care medical products needs to manage its inventory at the serial number level. It needs to determine what’s on order, what’s in stock, and which specific products have been sent to which specific customers. This company needs a way of tracking this inventory – by serial number – from the time it is purchased all the way through shipment to a customer, and finally all the way back into its inventory.
• A clothing distributor with a large and complex variety of inventory needs to clearly organize these items. Items come in a variety of product lines, brands, styles, colors and sizes, creating a seemingly infinite amount of inventory permutations. This business needs a way to categorize and manage this array of inventory, so it can easily determine what’s in stock and what needs to be replenished.
• A computer systems reseller with a complex, multi-stage sales process needs to streamline the flow of sales-related documents. This company needs to efficiently move a sale from a quote to a sales order to a pick slip to an invoice, and does not want to manually recreate the associated documents each step of the way. This company also “buys to order” and wants to automatically place a purchase order for sub-components once a sale is finalized.

Companies such as these are seeking to solve their requirements in a number of ways. Most often, they are using discrete, standalone applications to supplement QuickBooks functionality. Not surprising, the most common of these applications is Excel. However, customizing these applications to fill the gap can be quite a challenge. Also, feeding data into them can be a nightmare. Not only is this administratively time consuming (and expensive!), it also creates the likelihood of data entry errors and associated data discrepancies.

Mid-sized companies generally look at higher-end accounting and ERP packages to address these issues, but as we all know, the costs of these systems are way above the affordability range for most small businesses. When you factor in all the charges, including licensing fees, support costs, installation costs, consulting fees, etc., the systems nearly always exceed $50,000. Furthermore, the conversion process is something that many businesses just don’t want to hassle with.

iHarmony

I have recently come across a new product designed to address this problem: iHarmony, from Serenade Solutions. iHarmony is a complete business management software solution for companies using QuickBooks. iHarmony consists of a set of easy-to-use, tightly integrated management modules, including inventory management, sales order management, and procurement. Unlike the enterprise accounting and ERP systems mentioned above, iHarmony is fully integrated with QuickBooks, so companies can continue to use QuickBooks for their accounting needs, and iHarmony to manage the other aspects of their business. And, unlike these other solutions, iHarmony is affordable – the pricing structure looks to have been developed with the small and mid-size business in mind.

I have had a chance to review iHarmony, and my initial impression is very favorable. In my upcoming issues, I will be doing a multi-part review of iHarmony, as well as highlighting some other potential solutions to the challenges outlined above. In the meantime, visit or call Serenade Solutions at 800-686-4525.