Over the years QuickBooks has become an increasingly powerful and sophisticated accounting software suite, and QuickBooks Enterprise is the most advanced and capable member of the QuickBooks family. Enterprise 2017 includes a variety of features that will be appreciated by busy entrepreneurs regardless of business size.
Integrated Enhanced Payroll
For any company with employees, payroll can quickly become a chore as the business scales up. Accuracy and timeliness of both pay itself and associated payroll tax, withholding, and unemployment insurance assessment filings and payments are an absolute must, yet those demands can quickly outpace any manual solution. Employing QuickBooks Payroll Services with Enterprise provides an easy-to-use, fully integrated system for not just paying but also hiring and managing employees. It also makes it easy for even the smallest company to provide Direct Deposit of employee pay.
Batch entry of employee hours speeds up the payroll process, and state-specific forms and worker’s compensation tracking tools ensure that no detail gets missed. For businesses that track job costs, Enterprise automatically assigns employee hours to both customer billing and job costing reports as appropriate. Built-in templates provide legally-compliant forms and other documents for managing employees without the need for a separate HR reference service.
QuickBooks Advanced Reporting
Payroll is not the only challenge facing the busy entrepreneur, of course. For the business owner, the accounting process is about providing data to manage the business, and the Advanced Reporting feature offered by Enterprise provides access to powerful data analysis without the need for extensive manual manipulation in a spreadsheet. The system even makes the right reports easy to find—industry-specific reports are already bundled by business category for retailers, manufacturers, contractors, and wholesalers.
With added power comes extra complexity, of course, but Advanced Reporting is designed to avoid the common pitfalls that can accompany complex data analysis. Template reports auto-fill critical company data to eliminate the need for manual entry and the accompanying risk of entry error. A logging function makes it easier to identify errors in reports, and should it become necessary to enlist the assistance of Intuit’s Customer Care, agents can use that information to quickly determine the source of the problem and the appropriate solution.
Enterprise Advanced Inventory
For businesses that maintain an extensive product inventory, the Advanced Inventory solution in Enterprise provides more power than ever to manage it. Advanced Inventory has the ability to track a specific item down to the bin level, and receipts and pick lists can be sorted by location to make work easier for warehouse personnel. Serial or lot numbers can be entered when inventory is received or sold, and a recall reporting function makes it possible to track a defective lot whether it is sitting on a warehouse shelf, built into an assembly or subassembly, or even already purchased by a customer.
Advanced Inventory is also able to set up multiple locations—and a “location” isn’t limited to a warehouse. Depending on how the business is structured and functions, locations can include service truck stock, consigned inventory, multiple staging areas inside the same warehouse, and even product that is “afloat” during the importation process. Tracking the transfer of inventory between locations becomes simple. Based on stock levels at each location, Enterprise can automatically calculate reorder requirements based on par levels.
For accounting staff, Advanced Inventory offers a choice of FIFO (first in, first out) or average cost methods for inventory accounting, plus the ability to easily switch between the two methods on demand. Better yet, all of this happens within the existing QuickBooks interface without the need to learn a new piece of software.
Enterprise Advanced Pricing Feature
A final boon for the busy entrepreneur is Enterprise’s Advanced Pricing feature. This solution uses a rules-based system that can integrate potentially thousands of pricing rules. These can range from simple quantity discounts to scheduled promotions starting at some future date, with begin and end dates for the promotional pricing already built into the rule. Manufacturer markdowns can be governed by rule as well, with conditions and date ranges automatically tracked. The rule structure is also sophisticated to allow exclusion, so that a given discount will not combine with any others.
These are just four of the solutions available in QuickBooks Enterprise. There are plenty of others, as well as apps that can be integrated as well for such needs as EDI compliance and CRM. In short, Enterprise 2017 has the power and flexibility to offer a wide range of solutions for the busy entrepreneur.