Dear Inventory – #1 must-have Xero inventory management Add-in

DEAR SYSTEMS XERO INVENTORY

What type of software is Xero?

Looking to find answers about Xero Inventory management?
When it comes to accounting, Xero is exceptional online accounting software. In fact, the Xero mantra is synonymous with Xero and beautiful business. Of course, Xero is extremely powerful in terms of features and logic for calculating the GST, cost of goods sold, tracking categories, purchase order control, sales, and invoices, not to mention the excellent features for bank reconciliation and its many integration options.

xero inventory management

Primarily Accounting Software

But it must be kept in mind that Xero is primarily an accounting software that integrates with other software via API. This allows development teams and organisations around the world to focus on their niche and do it properly without trying to solve all the problems in one solution. Have you ever heard of SAP, or Oracle? Those giants are slow to move and labour intensive to feed every day, but yes they can do quite a lot and can deal with large organisations with complex and/or unique requirements.

Inventory in Xero?

Small business owners far and wide, potentially even you, are or will be trying to use Xero inventory to run your business. Our customers typically contact us to find out how they can use Xero for accounting and inventory tracking purposes, and then once they made a little progress they run into a few roadblocks like e-commerce integration, payment reconciliation, unique pricing, stock code and description management, customer-specific pricing and stock take issues to name but a few.

Growing industry

More and more retailers, wholesaler and distribution companies, especially as they grow, get to grips as to how important stock control and real time tracking is, but often fails to understand where, if at all, their Xero account is capable of handling their various inventory management requirements.

Managers know what they want.

Now, we acknowledge that Xero inventory management is a thing, but it has limited capabilities, especially when comparing Xero inventory management with the likes of Dear Inventory, for example. Xero inventory management, unfortunately, lacks all the OOMPH and more tricky but necessary components business managers want.

Consider stock takes and inventory adjustments for example, or purchase orders with batch numbers or expiry dates. What about multi-location and tracking serial numbers. Not to even mention barcode scanning stock in and out or selling those items via eBay, Amazon or Shopify and let it automatically link to Courier companies when it needs to be delivered. So in short, if you ever even thought about using barcode scanners in your business, then Xero must make room for a specialised add-on module. Oh, and don’t even think about running a warehouse full of stock with just Xero. No.

Not doing stock control is dangerous.

Stock Control is a specialised task, and it should not be limited to rights reserved Xero and beautiful excel files. That is just plain dangerous as many Excel versions will be floating around and it will end up being 20 times more labour intensive than a proper solution, guaranteed. In the realm of specialized cloud-based systems, Xero is an amazing accounting software program, but there is a reason it promotes its accounting functionality. You need something better to manage your stock, and online sales.

Beautiful Dear Inventory

Dear Inventory however and beautiful business are trademarks, not just for Xero anymore, but for almost everyone who uses Dear. People swear by the amazing integration capabilities of Dear Inventory and Xero (or Quickbooks) and how their new business software (aka Dear Inventory) and the way they do business is not limiting anymore. Rather Dear Inventory allows and promotes small businesses to grow exponentially in sales and revenue into large corporations and even then, can still cater for complex scenarios. We have clients with annual revenue of over 100 million dollars running on Dear Inventory.

Why you should not really bother with inventory in Xero?

So even though Xero is great for real time accounting software with simple steps to generate invoices, for example, it really offers little when it comes to inventory management. Software4Business recommend that you start using Dear Systems as your business operating software as it fully integrates back into Xero anyway. This will give you the best of both worlds. Best in accounting and best in stock control. Give us a call, we work with Dear Inventory all day, every day and have converted and implemented Dear projects for many businesses in Australia.

SSALES 10.S4B XeroHero Dear Systems Inventory Manage customers smoothly 1
Manage Customers

More links

11 Little Known Dear Inventory Features you would love

Dear Systems: Amazing Business Software

Dear Systems Xero – Easy Integration

Dear Systems Training: Easily integrate Shopify or WooCommerce with Dear Systems

Shopify WooCommerce Banner Dear Systems Training

Dear Systems Training #1

Shopify WooCommerce Banner Dear Systems Training

How to setup product feeds between Shopify or WooCommerce and Dear Systems

  1. Setting to update Category / Brand <-> Dear / WooCommerce
  2. Setting to change QTY globally or individually
  3. Never change too much in WooCommerce (Dear will handle that)
  4. Descriptions can be pulled from WooCommerce and update Dear
  5. Leave the pretty interface changes and images for the web-developer
  6. Dear’s Product Descriptions and SKUs can be changed but needs to be manually synced to WooCommerce.
    1. Via the item self
    2. Via the integration interface
    3. Qty and Price changes happens automatically
    4. Push Qty and Price changes to WooCommerce

The benefits of integrating Dear Systems with WooCommerce and/or Shopify

  1. Stock levels are automatically updated from DEAR systems to WooCommerce and/or Shopify
  2. DEAR inventory then allows online orders to be Picked, Packed, Shipped and Fulfilled
  3. Order information can be synced with your shipment applications to create manifest
  4. Dear inventory then sync inventory costs and movements to Xero or Quickbooks
  5. This means one integrated/centralised inventory management to manage all channels of sales
A list of the types of data that are exchanged between Dear Systems and Shopify and/or WooCommerce
  1. Downwards -> Orders and additional charges
  2. Both ways of making payments (setting)
  3. Both ways of new products (setting)
  4. Upwards -> DEAR to WooCommerce/Shopify stock quantities
  5. Downwards -> Customers
An example of what happens when you integrate
  1. The existing products can be downloaded from WooCommerce or Shopify, or listed/uploaded from DEAR
  2. Each sale from WooCommerce/Shopify will first go into Pending Sales, where stocks will be allocated
  3. Consolidation of online sales for the day can be enabled (settings)
  4. Changes to stock levels are pushed from DEAR SYSTEMS back to WooCommerce / Shopify
It is important to take note of what does not integrate
  1. Stock quantities are not imported automatically from WooCommerce to DEAR and need to be set in DEAR.
  2. It is recommended to ensure the quantities are the same on both platforms before you start.
Other useful links to CIN7 and DEAR systems training you might like:

Dear Systems Academy

Back to video

 

Cin7’s Accounting integration enhancement eliminates allocating payments manually

This Cin7 integration enhancement eliminates an unnecessary step for Xero and QuickBooks Online users.

Cin7 allows for partial payments on individual sales orders. To clarify, with this new Cin7 integration enhancement, they no longer require you to enter invoice payment details manually. The process eliminates manual steps and saves you even more time.

What do you need to do to be able to use this feature?

If you use the Accounting Dashboard, nothing. You’ll see all reconciled invoice payments in the “Payments” section of your sales order. On the other hand, if you’re not currently using the Accounting Dashboard, get it from Cin7 App Store. 

How does this update to Cin7 change the way you use it?

Until now, the payments from Xero or QuickBooks Online invoices would only appear in the main Sales Order section of the Sales module. As shown below.

Payment information from Xero or Quickbooks online
Payment information from Xero or Quickbooks online

Further, with this new Cin7 integration enhancement the payment details are automatically recorded under “Payment Type” in the corresponding order.

Information regarding payment from Xero or Quickbooks online
Information regarding payment from Xero or Quickbooks online

The Cin7 integration enhancement allocates payments to the sales orders. This eliminates the need for you to manually enter payment information in the Payments section of every order. We could all agree that Cin7 made a really good choice.

Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about Cin7, data migration, system implementation, expert consulting, operational support, design work, or integration with other add-ons.  

Originally published here.
Created by Simon Eskow and modified for S4B and XeroHero by Hanno Winterbach February 09, 2021