QBO App First Look: Boxstorm by Fishbowl

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When it comes to inventory for QuickBooks who knows better than Fishbowl, the # 1 QuickBooks Inventory solution.  Of course almost everyone thinks of Fishbowl as an inventory add-on for QuickBooks Desktop, even though Fishbowl also works with QuickBooks Online.  But now, Fishbowl is offering an entirely new 'web-based' Software-as-a-service (SAAS) application called Boxstorm that provides inventory features specifically for cloud accounting software such as QuickBooks Online.

So your first question is probably something like, "isn't this just Fishbowl running on a cloud server and connecting to QBO?"  Sorry folks, that's not what Boxstorm is, Boxstorm is an entirely new application designed for cloud computing.  Your second questions is probably, "does Boxstorm have all the functionality of Fishbowl?"  Again I must say, sorry folks. While Boxstorm has a lot of features and functionality, it isn't as capable as full-blown Fishbowl (yet).

With those two questions answered, I think it's best to share some of what Boxstorm is and can do. As I said, Boxstorm is the recently released online inventory App from Fishbowl that allows you to manage your inventory and inventory related processes from a Web browser, iOS App device or Android App device. In other words, you can pretty well 'do inventory' from anywhere, anytime with any device you want to use.

Boxstorm integrates with QuickBooks Online and Stripe to offer a range of features including Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Barcoding and more to help you effectively manage your inventory. So let's look at these five (bolded) features, and a few more to give you an idea of what all Boxstorm offers.

QBO Integration

Boxstorm integrates with QuickBooks Online in a variety of ways. First they share list information. If you update customers or vendors in Boxstorm they update automatically into QBO.  When you fulfill a Sales Order in Boxstorm, it will create an invoice in QBO. and When you receive a Purchase Order in Boxstorm, it will create a vendor Bill in QBO.  Boxstorm can also transfer journal entries to add, remove and adjust inventory.

And,multiple account mappings insure that your purchasing, sales, COGS, and manufacturing accounts will always remain in-sync between Boxstorm and QBO.

Stripe Integration

Boxstorm isn't reliant upon QuickBooks Merchant Services for payment processing, you have the option of integrating with Stripe. You will quickly accept payments via credit or debit cards, or checks when using the Boxstorm Sales Order feature.

Sales Orders

Speaking of Sales Orders, we all know that QuickBooks Online doesn't have a Sales Order feature, but major inventory situations ranging from large retailers to wholesalers need a way to track and schedule Sales commitments that need to be fulfilled but that aren't ready for invoicing. 

With Boxstorm you will easily transition bid or quotes to sales orders for fulfillment, and then transition those orders to fulfilled when the order is ready to invoice.  Sales Orders have an almost unlimited degree of flexibility allowing you to include specific items, misc. items, per-line discounts, group discounts, individual tax rates and even fulfillment notations on a line-by-line basis. You can then elect to send the paid or unpaid Sales Order to QBO as a paid or unpaid Invoice depending on how you want to use Boxstorm.

Purchase Orders

Of course Boxstorm offers Purchase Orders that allow you to see your orders on hand and how they will impact the ability to fulfill pending Sales Orders. But just as important as PO's themselves is the ability to set-up automatic minimum and maximum inventory quantities and reorder points on a per-location basis for each inventory item.  (Did you catch that, I said on a per-location basis which of course means that Boxstorm supports multi-location.)  You will use the Auto PO Wizard to automatically generate Purchase Orders for any quantity that falls below location reorders points.

Multi-location

I just mentioned that Boxstorm does multi-location, and sub-location for that matter. You can set-up locations around-the-world, across-the-country, even across-the-street, and then set-up sub-locations (as many as you want) for each locale.  Best of all you can call them anything you want: country, state, city, warehouse, sector, row, shelf, bin, barrel, crate, roll, etc.  You will optimize the receiving, fulfillment and shipping features by assigning your items their own default and even 'pending' locations.

Barcoding

To further streamline your receiving, fulfillment, shipping and inventory count procedures, Boxstorm supports barcoding and scanning.  You will easily add, move, remove and cycle-count your inventory

You will have the option of using barcode scanners like the Motorola Android based TC70 or TC55 or Motorola Bluetooth CS3070. You can also use your smartphone or other mobile device with barcode reader functionality.

Inventory Tracking and Auditing

Boxstorm has been designed with inventory tracking and compliance auditing in mind so you will not only be able to identify the location and quantities on-hand of items in your inventory, but you will be able to see log and revision numbers as well as expiration and best-by dates of current and past stock.  You will finally be able to produce those reports that insure you are compliant with the 'regulatory-forces-that-be'.

Reporting

Speaking of reports, compliance isn't the only reason you need reporting from your inventory system. Boxstorm offers a variety of reporting including Inventory on hand and valuation summaries, Sales order summary, Purchase order summary, Inventory by location, and more.

That isn't all...

Boxstorm does a lot more than I have elaborated in this App First Look, in fact here is a list of features which are still being expanded.  The people at Fishbowl aren't done with Boxstorm, then intend to continue to expand the feature set but they wanted to get the product out-there so you could begin experiencing their version of cloud-inventory-management.

You can sign-up for a 2-week free trial of Boxstorm (without even having to provide credit-card information), or if you are ready to let Boxstorm manage your inventory then you can sign-up through the Intuit QuickBooks App Center Boxstorm page or the App Tab in your QBO or QBO-A.