Question
I work for a small online retailer who uses Magento, and we need a POS that mostly controls inventory and works as a database. We also use Quickbooks Pro to run our business, but I know there are many versions of Quickbooks. I am looking for something that is compatible with Quickbooks Pro, can handle many SKUs and can integrate with Magento. Please let me know what might work for us!
Answer
Let me see if I can explain the Quickbooks product landscape and what you’ll need to get it integrated with Magento. The following pieces of “software” are needed:
- Quickbooks Pro (Financial Software)
- Quickbooks POS (Inventory Management & Point of Sale)
- Quickbooks Integrator (Modern Retail’s “connector” running on the Quickbooks POS computer)
- Magento (Website)
Here’s the flow of information:
PRODUCTS:
- Quickbooks POS > Quickbooks Integrator > Magento
Our integration pushes all the products from Quickbooks POS to Magento. Once the products are in Magento, you can merchandise the products to be sold online. By merchandising, I mean uploading images, writing a nice description of the product, cross sell / up sell, lookbooks, etc. All of this will be done directly in Magento. The Integration will copy over what’s been entered into Quickbooks POS, but retailers never do a very good job with their descriptions, product names, etc. because the products were entered into Quickbooks POS for in-store purposes only. However, when you sell products online, you need your products to sound and look great to entice shoppers to make a purchase. All this merchandising is done directly in Magento.
ORDERS:
- Magento > Quickbooks Integrator > Quickbooks POS > Quickbooks Pro
Our integration also sends all Shipped Orders from Magento to Quickbooks POS. I say ship because the order must actually be completed (shipped) in Magento for it to go down to Magento. You will see these web orders in Quickbooks POS just like any other in-store purchase, although it will be designated as a web order so you can distinguish between the two. Sending completed orders down to Quickbooks POS works great because it lets you use popular shipping extensions in Magento like ShipStation, ShipWorks, OrderCup, etc. Quickbooks POS pushes all order and customer information to Quickbooks Pro for financial and reporting purposes.
Basically, Quickbooks Pro is the financial software that is Intuit’s bread and butter. Intuit later added Quickbooks POS for retailers to help them manage their in-store sales and inventory. Our Quickbooks Integrator connects Quickbooks POS to e-commerce platforms such as Magento, but it does not directly connect to Quickbooks Pro, Quickbooks POS does that. Make sense?
Please let me know if you have any questions, I’d be happy to explain all of this on a conference call with you. Thank you.