Inventory and Manufacturing Product Overview: ERPAG

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Editor's Note: November is "Inventory and Manufacturing Month" at Insightful Accountant, where we shine the light on a few lesser-known apps. This feature takes a lighter look at ERPAG.

ERPAG is an all in one ERP cloud solution that covers Sales and Customer Relationship Management, Purchasing and Supplier Management, Production, Warehouse and Inventory Control, Finance and Accounting, Point of Sale, and Business Intelligence for a small- or mid-sized company.

ERPAG uses QuickBooks integration to synchronize all documents that generate financial and accounting entries, and correctly record the accounting associated with these activities.

As a result of the integration between ERPAG and QuickBooks Online, every Sales Order in ERPAG that's invoiced is synchronized to QuickBooks as a Customer Invoice, while every Purchase Order that's converted to a Supplier Invoice is synchronized to QuickBooks as a Vendor Bill.

In addition, ERPAG synchronizes inventory levels and quantities when exchanging data with QuickBooks to reflect inventory assets accurately. Users also can sync Work Orders from ERPAG to QuickBooks.

ERPAG Supports the following transaction types:

  • Invoices
  • Bills
  • Work Orders
  • Voided documents
  • Customer returns (Credit Memo)
  • Returns to suppliers
  • Inventory/Stock Adjustments

Customer Relations (CRM) & Sales

  • Track your customers from Lead to Quote to Sales
  • Using the Add New Customer feature, you can add all your customer's basic information, categories, contact person information, etc. You also can add a customer when you are creating a new sales order. Of course, you can always go back to that particular customer in the customer list (Sales > Customers) and add additional information.
  • Create a quote (estimate) with tiered pricing and parameterized products.
  • A quote is the first step in the sales process. You will see the list of all existing quotes in your company and their different statuses from the Sales > Quotations screen. This also is where you can "Create" a new Quote.
  • Easily convert a successful quotation into a sales order.
  • Once the status of your quotation becomes "closed and won," you can use the "copy to new" option to copy the contents of your quotation to a new sales order.
  • Sell your items with ERPAG's integrated Point of Sale software or connect it with Square or Shopify POS.
  • Save time integrating business-to-business (B2B) platforms and enable customers to input orders and check their order status with ERPAG's Customer Portal. (see example below.)
  • By selecting the products and placing them in the shopping cart, your customers will create a sales order that will appear on your sales order list.

eCommerce Integration

Thanks in part to the pandemic, sales over the internet have mushroomed the last few years. In many cases, brick and mortar stores have either closed or reduced the size of their operations in favor of going to ecommerce operations.

In addition, many new small businesses have grown from startups to mid-size companies in a short time, thanks in part to systems that enable them to easily manage their sales and inventory from websites or ecommerce channels.

  • ERPAG enables users to sell directly through Shopify services by creating a connection using ERPAG's Application Programming Interface (API). The connectivity is straightforward. Synchronization between ERPAG and Shopify relies solely on the SKU, so items defined in Shopify should have a unique SKU for each product and variant when they are created in ERPAG. Details beyond this brief integration are outside the scope of this discussion. For more information, contact ERPAG.
  • Similarly, ERPAG enables users to sell directly through WooCommerce by creating a connection using ERPAG's Application Programming Interface (API). The connectivity is direct. Synchronization between ERPAG and WooCommerce relies solely on the SKU, so items defined in WooCommerce should have a unique SKU for each product and variant when created in ERPAG. Details beyond this brief integration are outside the scope of this discussion. For more information, contact ERPAG.

Additional ecommerce integrations may be available or under development. Contact ERPAG for more information.

Inventory & Manufacturing

ERPAG features manufacturing and supply management chain functionality with multi-level bills of materials, supply chain forecasting, costing, estimating and quoting designed to support your business from start to end.

  • Manufacturing Work Orders track everything, including time, labor and materials. Get crucial information leading to potential bottlenecks like missing or late arriving parts right from the Work Order. Get information on the item level direction from missing part details on the Work Order report.
  • Multi-level Bills of Material (BOM), including components, sub-components and work operations filtering with simple, add or remove components from the BOM during operations. Easily create a new variation of an existing BOM when needed.
  • Compare BOMs against inventory in real-time and initiate Purchase Orders from the BOM for missing components or insufficient quantities.
  • Inventory Tracking via Barcode Numbers, as well as Lot or Batch series. Tag your items with cloud label printing. Speed up scan/receive processes using the Mobile App. Intelligent Status Tags signal when terms are fulfilled—start, pause and complete manufacturing processes with the click of a button.
  • Manufacturing Report driven by intelligent machine learning provides multi-dimensional information about the status of each work order and manufacturing process in progress.
  • Earlier time-tracking was mentioned as a part of Manufacturing Orders. You can record time directly on work orders as shown below, or with the ERPAG Mobile App, which enables you to load material, receive products, check inventory and pick orders.
  • ERPAG offers POSTMEN Shipping Service as one integrated method of order fulfillment because it supports 46 carrier services, including the best-known carriers worldwide. It also offers very acceptable carrier rates. By connecting ERPAG to POSTMEN Shipping Service via ERPAG's integrated API, users can get (1) calculated shipping rates and available service types along with expected delivery dates and (2) generate labels in PDF format with tracking numbers.

Purchasing

You really cannot sell without buying, so obviously if you are going to have inventory, or even drop-ship it to your customers, you still must go through the purchasing process.

  • Automatically generate purchase orders based on missing items or quantities below minimal stocking levels and email them to your suppliers.
  • Purchase by price is you prefer using vendor price comparison.
  • Evaluate availability based on historical order compliance.
  • ERPAG has double SKU tracking, permitting you to send purchase orders to your suppliers with their SKUs while tracking the same items using your own SKU/part numbers.
  • Each warehouse can have its own tax and currency settings, and its own cost and price lists.
  • ERPAG offers landed-cost so that you can include fees, customs duties, taxes, insurance and currency conversion factors in your overall cost.
  • Define inventory by geo-location so you can see inventory on geo-map reports.
  • Drop-ship tracking and inventory tracking with order fulfillment when using third-party order processing centers.

Payment Features

If you choose to accept payments via ERPAG, you have a choice of Square or Stripe integration. To enable ERPAG to sell through Square, users must connect ERPAG and Square using the ERPAG Application Programming Interface.

If users choose to connect their Stripe account to ERPAG, they must log in to their Stripe account and find the API keys that Stripe provides. They must then go to the Stripe Administration set-up within ERPAG and paste those keys into the ERPAG Stripe Dashboard to connect their Stripe account.

Reporting

ERPAG can generate a variety of reports and charts—they are based upon the workflow. This is because so many of them are built into your workflow and are accessible within your everyday processes. However, the illustration below shows the major report types while highlighting one type we shall look at—"sales by (product) categories."

Like most standard reporting, you can filter and sort reports. ERPAG is nothing spectacular in how or its capabilities in doing this.

The results are minimalistic, but it is what you would expect for the sample size used in the data set.

Overall Impression of the App

ERPAG seems straightforward, easy to set up, easy to learn and easy to use. It appears to offer fundamental inventory sales and purchasing functionality, basic manufacturing capabilities and reasonable reporting for the price point. There are a limited number of reviews on the ERPAG App Page in the Intuit App Center, of which most are favorable and recommend the app. The overall score on the Intuit site is 4.8.

If you are looking for an Inventory or Manufacturing App that works with QuickBooks Online, check out the ERPAG website and give one of its four Demo Companies a whirl. If you find those interesting, consider a 15-day free trial.

Acknowledgments and Disclosures:

Graphics and content used within this feature were derived and/or adapted by the author in part from ERPAG source materials, including ERPAG Website Resources, the ERPAG (Online) Manual, ERPAG Video Material(s), the ERPAG Blog, ERPAG Website content, ERPAG Demo Companies, and ERPAG 'Free Trial' related content. Adapted source materials published within this feature by Insightful Accountant are for educational and product promotional purposes only.

ERPAG, as used herein, refers to one or more registered trademarks of Erpag.com, Inc. with a US Registered Office in Wilmington, Delaware.

QuickBooks, as used herein, refers to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit, Inc., a publicly-traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Various other trade names used herein refer specifically to registered trademark products held by their respective owners. And are used for informational and educational purposes only.