Preparing your information

Before you start working with any new system you want to ensure that your data is as clean as possible.  The data you will need to operate All Orders is as follows.  

1. Users: your users that will log into All Orders

2. Item list:  A listing all of products and services sold, purchased and produced by your company.

3. Customer list

4. Vendors list

5. Location list:  A listing of the location which has inventory that your company OWNS.  If you use bins or rack #s, compile a listing of these numbers BY LOCATION.

6. Open sales orders

7. Open purchase orders

8. Opening inventory by location, bin and serial or lot #, if applicable

9. Other lists:

   • Units of measure

   • Item categories (Groups)

   • Customer and vendor types

   • Price levels

   • Production centers and steps

   • Discounts

   • Tax codes

   • Accounts

   • Classes

   • Sales Reps

   • Terms

   • Shipping methods

   • Payment methods

   • Manufacturers

   • Currencies

We will expand on this list as we proceed through the setup.

The above information may already be in QuickBooks or in another system.  As a result, the rest of this topic is divided into 'Current QuickBooks Users' and 'Converting from another system'

Current QuickBooks Users

If you are already using QuickBooks then you may not have to do much, as All Orders will import most, if not all of the above list.   See what information is imported from QuickBooks into All Orders.   Notwithstanding the above,  you may take the opportunity to clean up your QuickBooks data particularly if one of the following applies:

1. You are not using items in QuickBooks:  If you are not using items in QuickBooks then you likely have one or more accounts on your balance sheet that represent the monetary value of your inventory (e.g. Inventory Assets).   Furthermore, cost of sales is derived by formula + Inventory Value - Beginning of Period  
   + Purchases
   - Inventory Value - End of Period  
   = Cost of goods sold .  Using All Orders will change this for your company because All Orders is a perpetual inventory using the QuickBooks inventory sub-ledger.   See our topic on QuickBooks and Inventory for more details.

2. You are using non-inventory parts:  Non-inventory parts should be used for any item that you don't want to track quantities (e.g. drop shipments or high volume low cost materials).   You can change your non-inventory parts to either parts or assemblies simply going into the item editor and changing its type.   When an item is changed from a Non-Inventory Part to an Inventory Part, all the purchases of that item from the beginning of time will be placed into the Inventory Asset account.  That result may be undesirable because it may affect prior year's profit and loss.  To avoid this, In QuickBooks do File -> Archive and Condense before changing the item's item type.  Note however that all detail for the period will be lost that is archived and condensed. Another alternative is to change the name of the old item and then make it inactive.

3. You use sub-items:  Sub-items structures may be used for various reasons such as categorizations, setting up kits or size/color matrices.  You will notice that this is not necessary in All Orders because there are better ways to categorize your items.  Furthermore, if you intend to bar code your items,  sub-items do not translate well. Therefore we recommend that you do not use sub-items.  You can condense your item by using the merge function in QuickBooks.   See our article on best practices in setting up product number.  

4. You have a separate item number for each location, serial or lot # or vendor:   This is completely unnecessary; as All Orders can track multiple locations and serial #s as well as you can associate multiple vendors per item. You can condense your items by using the merge function in QuickBooks.

5. You have many inactive items: You can condense your items by using the merge function in QuickBooks.

If you have open purchase order and sales orders within QuickBooks, you have 2 choices:

1. Process the orders in QuickBooks but create all new orders within All Orders

2. Convert open purchase orders and sales orders to All Orders (File --> Import --> QuickBooks) and mark them as closed within QuickBooks.

Converting from another system

If you have information in another system, try using the All Orders Excel templates to organize your data. You can then import these templates into All Orders. For more info, see Importing Data from Excel.