Podcast WSW - Shipping Label
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[00:00:00] [00:00:30]
[00:00:38] Dan DeLong: Welcome to another workshop. Wednesday brought to you by schoolbookkeeping. com. There it is. A little blank thing at the bottom there. And we're just having casual conversations for serious workflows and but today on the workshop, we're going to be talking about a couple of things, dealing with, a new feature inside of QuickBooks [00:01:00] online. That allows you to do shipping and we have, we have added that as a submodule for, all of our courses, as we, unpack that here today.
But before we get into that, I wanted to talk a little bit about one of the, one of the aspects of school bookkeeping that people may not know about but that is the community especially today in today's world. All of this being a. An election year.
Social media is is a great way to [00:01:30] connect. But there's a lot of noise. Let's just say that and and distractions and there's various Facebook groups that are out there. We have one in the ABO, A BBO Facebook group where we can get together and talk about.
Some of the things that are concerning to to us as accounting pros and business owners. But School of Bookkeeping has its own built in community, and all members of of School of Bookkeeping have access to that community. It [00:02:00] allows you to be able to pop in, ask your question, and it looks like Rachel's coming back here.
Did we lose you?
[00:02:09] No One: Oops, Rachel. Oopsie.
[00:02:19] Dan DeLong: That's okay. Sorry about that. I
[00:02:22] Rachel Dauchy: just, for a minute there, I was like, I don't want to talk about QuickBooks online. I love QuickBooks online. You know [00:02:30] that.
[00:02:31] Dan DeLong: Yeah I set up I set up a joke and you were frozen and I didn't have my laugh track, which is Rachel Dauchy.
[00:02:38] Rachel Dauchy: Was my face frozen in a really bizarre way?
[00:02:41] Dan DeLong: I don't think it was too awkward, but it was it was definitely awkward for me talking to you when you weren't responding. We were just talking, we were just talking a little bit while we, me, I was just talking.
[00:02:55] Community and Social Media Challenges
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[00:02:55] Dan DeLong: Without you but we were talking about the community that's built [00:03:00] into a school of bookkeeping, and a lot of people may not realize that there is a community that's built in there.
But all members will have access to the community. And I was going to just share my screen here real quick. And I forgot to do that ahead of time, but let me go ahead and do that. Hopefully there's not too much of a lag when I turn it on, but in the inside of the community, which when you go into your library, you'll see an option to access the community, but you can access [00:03:30] this on a web browser or through the mobile app.
If you have a mobile app downloaded for for school bookkeeping, what you can do we'll talk about that probably next week. But inside of there is all sorts of what the community calls circles. But we have them broken down into various areas. So if you have questions about payroll or QuickBooks desktop or just QuickBooks online Maybe you have a payments question you can pop in there and see what the feed [00:04:00] is and see what and just like any other Facebook group that has these types of questions, we try to break them down into various areas or topics so that you don't have to go searching for, one particular topic, you can go into the, to that area and look inside and see if that question's already been asked and see what others
[00:04:21] Rachel Dauchy: organization.
Oh, it's so great.
[00:04:24] Dan DeLong: And it keeps you out of social media, right? So all those distractions that we have with [00:04:30] with built in that are built into social media. I get stuck
[00:04:35] Rachel Dauchy: I know me too. It's like this group that I really like. It's in a Facebook group, but then I'm, I scroll past recipes.
I want to look at, and then I get. sidetracked.
[00:04:45] Dan DeLong: All right. R going to start doing here is one of the neat things in this particular co where you can earn po of things. And so we're [00:05:00] g Starting some challenges and first challenge will be to share the workshop Wednesday on your social media preference, right?
So sharing,
[00:05:11] Rachel Dauchy: I thought you were gonna, I thought you meant like challenges Sudoku or like word games or something. I was like, yes,
[00:05:17] Dan DeLong: there's all sorts of other challenges that we could do. And you can earn little rewards and those types of things. But what we're going to be doing in with school bookkeeping specifically is having this share challenge for the workshop.[00:05:30]
Cause we want to make sure that we're able to share our conversations because they are so serious.
[00:05:38] No One: Yes.
[00:05:38] Dan DeLong: Those serious conversations with as many people as possible. So if you share the the live workshop, just let us know that it's been done. You can do that in, inside of the challenge.
When we start launching it, we'll probably start next. Next week or so then you can earn some points. And what we're going to be doing with those points is entering you into a school bookkeeping drawing [00:06:00] to be able to earn or get some swag. So just a nice little way to thank you for sharing the message here, but that's in the community, but you can but all members of school bookkeeping have access to this community.
If not, let me know and I'll make sure that it's available for you. But it's a nice way to able to ask questions of of us or or other members as well.
[00:06:26] Rachel Dauchy: By the way, I don't know about you, but I [00:06:30] am not a super big fan of contact doing contacting Intuit. tech support. How do I do this?
How do I do that? So every single bit of information that I've ever needed, I get from these types of communities. So I have learned so much in, and I don't want to, I've probably been, I've been doing this kind of work for a long time, but really just working with QuickBooks online, maybe five years.
And I feel like [00:07:00] I have learned so many things just by asking community. Yeah,
[00:07:07] Dan DeLong: because it's definitely, um, there's so much to know. And especially when you start getting into a specific workflow or niche or, however, wherever you live on the Canadian border, if it's
[00:07:23] No One: north or south
[00:07:24] Dan DeLong: of that, however you pronounce that word.
But when you start to get into specific workflows, [00:07:30] then that gets a little requires a little bit more intimate knowledge with regards to what QuickBooks can offer.
[00:07:36] Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, because it's also like it made, you made, it may have the functionality of doing it this way, but. you may need the specific experience of somebody that's done it that way.
And so that's a lot different than the standard way it should be used. And so you're not going to get the answers to that kind of thing [00:08:00] from a chat bot that's going to send you an article. You know what I mean? That's just not, so this type of, Information is a wealth of knowledge.
[00:08:09] Dan DeLong: Yeah.
[00:08:09] Deep Dive into QuickBooks Online Shipping Setup
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[00:08:09] Dan DeLong: And speaking of specific niches and niches we are in the process of finishing up the e commerce fundamentals course where where we'll be talking and Rachel and I did did have a series of really great discussions about a year ago, and now we're taking those and turning them into an e commerce course.[00:08:30]
Fundamental course which is available. You could see it now if if you are a premier member of School of Bookkeeping it's not quite finished just yet, but you can start to go through some of these topics and give us some feedback on how it's laid out for you. But we broke down e commerce fundamentals in various Sections of what does it take?
What are the sales tax considerations when it comes to e commerce, what about inventory management different online sales [00:09:00] channels and those types of things. And then how do you account for all of that when, when you're doing all these And one of the discussions that we actually had was involving around shipping and fulfillment, right?
And so there's no one size fits all answer when it comes to e commerce of saying You're going to always use this. Are you going to always use that? Because there's so many different choices and options, which leads us to our topic of today, which is. Guess what? There's a new way in [00:09:30] QuickBooks
[00:09:30] No One: to do
[00:09:31] Dan DeLong: shipping.
So let me go over here. Okay.
[00:09:35] Practical Demonstration of Shipping Labels
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[00:09:35] Dan DeLong: So the first thing that you want to do when you're setting up shipping is to make sure that you have shipping turned on. So you would go to the gear and go into your company settings. And it's under sales, right?
[00:09:50] Rachel Dauchy: And Dan, can I ask you, this is, you're, we're implying that they have inventory turned on, yes?
[00:09:57] Dan DeLong: I I would assume if you're shipping [00:10:00] something, then you would track that as inventory.
[00:10:02] Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, because I can't imagine you wouldn't be using the shipping module if you didn't have inventory turned on, unless you're shipping.
[00:10:12] Dan DeLong: Like in, in most cases, the answer is it depends, right? You can still ship a non inventory item, right?
If you're not it's all in the tracking.
[00:10:21] Rachel Dauchy: You're right. You're right. Okay. Okay. I guess I, I, Okay, because I know we would have a lot of things set up as non [00:10:30] inventory items, but I guess okay, I get it.
[00:10:33] Dan DeLong: How you have it tracked on set up in QuickBooks and the reality of whatever it is that you're doing, as can be two different things, right?
Yeah. You don't necessarily have to have a quote unquote inventory item as the only option in order to,
[00:10:49] Rachel Dauchy: You could be doing inventory related things, but you still technically have inventory turned off. Okay.
[00:10:54] Dan DeLong: And I have this this box here. I just picked it up off the table. Right?
[00:11:00] However I set this up inside of QuickBooks, if I incorrectly set it up as a service item, I can still ship it. In reality. It's just what is QuickBooks going to do with the accounting of that when I enter this on a
[00:11:14] No One: Yeah.
[00:11:15] Dan DeLong: Invoice or sales receipt or whatever. So
[00:11:20] Rachel Dauchy: it's just cause all I do is think about inventory.
It's like turning my mind crazy. I just can't not think about inventory.
[00:11:28] Dan DeLong: So our first step [00:11:30] is you need to turn on shipping inside of the settings, which is under, Sales and then shipping, just making sure that toggle is, turned on. because otherwise you won't see any of these, cool functions.
So you want to make sure that it's turned on first. Now there are multiple ways to access this landing page, which is talking about simplifying your, shipping. one of the things about shipping, and we talked about [00:12:00] this Rachel in, in our shipping and fulfillment. Discussion about e-commerce is that, you're not quite sure what is the best way and the best rates to ship something, right?
So you can always just measure this, put it on your scale, and you've got, the dimensions and cost of or the dimensions and weight of this particular item. But as far as, should I send that? [00:12:30] through UPS or FedEx or USPS? I don't know. QuickBooks desktop had a shipping manager.
that was, is basically a way to put in your account, at USPS or UPS or FedEx and be able to, print shipping labels and track that information back into QuickBooks. Back into the QuickBooks sales transaction, but it [00:13:00] wasn't that holistic. What's the best carrier to choose? It's a, you just go out to the USPS account that you've connected and put in that information.
But, that's what I like about this particular online shipping manager is that. it's a, once you put in that information, it will shop the various other
[00:13:24] Rachel Dauchy: carriers, like ship station. So it's really mimicking something like [00:13:30] that.
[00:13:31] Dan DeLong: Now, particular, feature did, and this is part of the challenge and, the, situation that, that happens when it comes to when you're doing all this stuff inside of QuickBooks, right?
This precludes the fact that you're doing all your shipping inside of your QuickBooks, right? if you're using something [00:14:00] outside of QuickBooks, like Shopify, when we talked about Shopify, obviously you wouldn't be doing the shipping from Shopify at that point. So now you have to make a decision.
Where am I going to, where is my source of shipping? So is it going to be inside of my QuickBooks? then I need to make sure that my sales transaction has the To be able to, have that information be usable inside my QuickBooks, because if you're sending [00:14:30] your information from Shopify through bookkeep as a journal entry, guess what?
You won't be able to use this.
[00:14:35] Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. It's only going to work if you're actually importing transactions, right?
[00:14:39] Dan DeLong: So you don't have to have that detail.
[00:14:43] Advanced Shipping and Integration Tips
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[00:14:43] Dan DeLong: This particular online shipping, shipping manager is a partner, Intuit has partnered with ShipEngine which is the, which is the platform that is utilizing that.
And they, talk about that you can get a discount, [00:15:00] off of regular rates. Just by, this is one of those things where it's like the power of community, right? Because they're bringing a lot of users to the, to their table. So they're able to, negotiate better shipping rates more so than you going over to the post office and, mailing this or shipping, which would be incredibly
[00:15:23] Rachel Dauchy: expensive.
If you took something and even took it to UPS and said, ship it ground, it's Big difference than using these [00:15:30] aggregators, especially if you were using something like Shopify shipping, because you really do get more reasonable rates. All
[00:15:37] Dan DeLong: right. So the first thing you want to do is you want to turn on, you, when you connect to, to go to buy a shipping label, then you're going to need to set up a ship engine account and.
I have not actually done this, so we'll see what we need to do. Does
[00:15:57] Rachel Dauchy: it prompt you to do it within QuickBooks or do you have to go [00:16:00] externally out to ship in?
[00:16:01] Dan DeLong: No, this is all, this is what's nice is it's all within, without leaving QuickBooks. so all of the things that you're going to be setting up and doing those sorts of things is directly within QuickBooks.
and it's going to be pulling the information from a sales transaction. So the ship from, and the ship to is already pulled in from the invoice. and then all you need to do then is, so this particular one is being sent to Everything's
[00:16:29] Rachel Dauchy: [00:16:30] so integrated! Yeah.
[00:16:32] Dan DeLong: Alright, so let's just say Let's see, what is, what does that look like, 8 inches?
I can't even see, it just looks like a box. My eyes are so
it's just a box of candles. let's just say it's, two inches wide and, maybe an inch high. and then how much it weighs. I was [00:17:00] planning to put my scale here, but
[00:17:01] Rachel Dauchy: yeah, I was just going to say, did they have an integrated scale? Cause otherwise that they
[00:17:06] Dan DeLong: do not.
so you're going to have to weigh the box somehow. let's see. This seems to weigh about four ounces. So I'll say that and then I click on get shipping rates.
[00:17:19] Rachel Dauchy: I do have to put a valid phone number. I don't know. I'd be weirded out if I didn't know exactly how much it weighed.
[00:17:28] Dan DeLong: Yeah. [00:17:30] yes, that's correct.
So apparently you have to put in the right phone number and then we get the option for getting the shipping rate. So this tells me UPS grounded bandage. the parcel select ground. So USPS, and then if I choose more, Oh, there we go. My add carriers option. So then this takes me out [00:18:00] to the other carriers to be able to connect with, other, other carriers.
So being able to, at this point, it's, it looks like it's a USPS. But if you have your own accounts with other carriers, you can add them here so that it will do that shopping all at once. So it looks like this particular
[00:18:24] Rachel Dauchy: does it allow you to connect into your other accounts for free or do [00:18:30] they charge you a fee to do that?
Cause Shopify
makes you pay to connect in your external accounts with UPS. I'll have
[00:18:41] Dan DeLong: to do some digging or double checking.
Because they
[00:18:47] Rachel Dauchy: want you. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
[00:18:51] Dan DeLong: All right. So let's see here. So by, by default without, putting any billing information in here at all, [00:19:00] I was able to get the rates for USPS, based off of the dimensions and weight of the, And they ship from and to of where, where it's, coming from and where it's going to.
And then once I do that, let's see what I have to choose one. Then it had, now it's giving me the option for, the summary. And then I can buy and print that from, here. So [00:19:30] there's my shipping label. and giving me the ability to do that. Now, this was the questions that I had about it because.
When you're thinking of shipping, you're thinking of, those shipping labels, right? The four by six, thermal printers that, that print the, print the label, or what is it actually going to do, right? Like when you're thinking about, QuickBooks and printing, oftentimes it just uses the browser's printer [00:20:00] settings and, potentially.
Yeah, potentially, setting up a particular, a dedicated, shipping thermal label printer. And, what is actually going to happen with that shipping label?
[00:20:16] Rachel Dauchy: It's really easy. I have it. I just got a Dymo printer from Amazon. Easy peasy stickers. You have to just in your, you hit print and then you go to your printer settings.
You have to select the right printer. Like I have a little Dymo one [00:20:30] and you just select it, not your default printer. And. Super easy.
[00:20:35] Dan DeLong: Yeah, I'm just a little, leery of, this is, when you're printing from QuickBooks, sometimes that alignments off or, things like that,
[00:20:47] Rachel Dauchy: Oh, yeah.
Yeah. I know what you're saying. It, it'll usually work though. Cause I have that, printing from QuickBooks, no, but I get what you're saying. You probably have to like tinker with it a little bit and then it'll line up right. Yeah. [00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Dan DeLong: Worst case scenario, if you don't have, a dedicated thermal printer to print your shipping labels, you can print it on plain paper and then you just to fix it to, to, to your package,
And then that will still work. Hopefully there's no rain that washes it away because it is just pay, paper at that point. So you would then want to laminate or, cover it up with, packing tape and those types of things so That shipping label [00:21:30] is, protected
[00:21:31] Rachel Dauchy: at the, at the post office and at UPS, I don't know if you've noticed, they tell you do not tape over The code
[00:21:40] Dan DeLong: that could mess with the, the barcode,
[00:21:45] Rachel Dauchy: that doesn't mean I don't do it.
I, do, but, every time I'm like, they don't want me to do this, but I'm doing it anyway, but I'm telling you that the little, thermal label printers, you can get them at staples or [00:22:00] Amazon. It's couldn't be easier. At first I was like, this is too technical for me, but I figured it out. All
[00:22:07] Dan DeLong: right. And if Rachel can figure it out, then there's hope.
now, when you actually do buy and print the label, that information, the tracking information It gets fed back into the invoice so you can track the shipment, directly from, from QuickBooks. there's various ways that [00:22:30] you can get to printing a shipping label. You can go right now from the global, the global plus new button, I like to call it.
it's right underneath, customers. You can access the shipping label and then you just pull in the invoice. that you want from there. If you're on an invoice, I gotta say no. So let's go to an invoice, historical one, historical, here we go.[00:23:00]
So down at the bottom you have this buy shipping label option which will start the wizard from there. If you start from a, if you start from an invoice, obviously you don't have to select that invoice as the, as the option of where it's going from and to, and so it's going to pre populate with the from and, shipping address, from and to shipping address, [00:23:30] from the, right from the invoice, and then you just enter in the, package information in there.
there's a variety of, resources that we've, made available on. on the school bookkeeping sub module that we're making here. So you can take a look at that as far as the, the various, codes or, statuses, status, what's pro status statuses. I don't, it can't
[00:23:58] Rachel Dauchy: be set. [00:24:00] I it's gotta be.
[00:24:03] Dan DeLong: but you can see what those mean, and track those, track those shipments and packages directly within your QuickBooks, which then leads to, This allows you now to be able to communicate that shipping process, directly from QuickBooks inside of your customers. If you're using QuickBooks online advanced, you can start to take, some of the advanced, workflows and make those things, automated.[00:24:30]
so that, that information as, status is update, you can keep track, track of that. And that's one of the things that those, like the ship station and the Shopify shipping, that's what those things are designed to be able to do is to communicate the shipping process, through, through your customer, to your customer automatically.
So that.
[00:24:56] Rachel Dauchy: Wait, so now in [00:25:00] the invoice, you know how there's that little timeline where you can see, it was sent, it was opened, da, is it going to show it was shipped, it arrived, I would think that would be really helpful.
[00:25:14] Dan DeLong: I would imagine, but I, don't know. I have, again, I haven't, this is, I'm seeing this for the first time, just as much as you are.
So, that would be, that would be good for it to add if it's not there. I'm sure it's something that they're, [00:25:30] they're looking into making sure that, you have visibility, into that, because of its deep integration, I can see that being,
[00:25:39] Rachel Dauchy: yeah, that's really, I would, that's what I would want if I were to make a list of.
Things I'd want with this installed. I would have that.
[00:25:51] Dan DeLong: so that is, that's the idea behind the online shipping manager, a little bit different than the QuickBooks desktop, [00:26:00] integrated shipping manager, but, allows you to compare, and shop the various ways, various ways of shipping.
And then, allows that to, to know that inside of, Inside of your QuickBooks.
[00:26:18] Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, it's cool. I really like it. I think they did a good job with it. again, like you always have those, will it work for really high volume? I don't know. Really? You wouldn't be [00:26:30] having individual sales transactions come over if it were ultra high volume.
there's always a. Consideration. It's but if you are, doing the size of operation that would work to do this, it seems like it's really integrated and it would work great.
[00:26:50] Dan DeLong: Yeah, I don't see this as, and this is typical for any new offering or integration, directly within QuickBooks online.
I don't see somebody who's got a [00:27:00] well established. shipping operation, leaping to change over to this. This is in most cases with any new function inside of QuickBooks, it's for the people that didn't even know what to do. this is the kiddie pool of shipping. but it is, end to end, right?
Like you have the whole experience. for, that, for, for somebody who's wanting to figure out, okay, how [00:27:30] do I ship this product inside of my directly inside my QuickBooks? I have an entry point to be able to do that. And then, that will lead them to as they grow. Okay, now I've reached the limitations of what this do.
I need to take off my floaties and go into the big pool, right?
[00:27:51] Rachel Dauchy: Cause sometimes the more advanced, systems will include the accrued accounting and that kind of thing. And it's [00:28:00] really for high volume that stuff comes into play, but. Yeah, I think like you described it for somebody that, just isn't sure.
And there's a lot of moving parts in e commerce. And so to be able to have something like this as in your source of truth is the way they like to call it. And to have something like this, to really have a solution to help people. And then maybe like they're okay, now I've got the shipping thing underway and now maybe my needs are [00:28:30] changing and now I can look to something else.
[00:28:33] Dan DeLong: Exactly. So we've, we've taken, the resources that are out there about, about this shipping manager. We've made a sub module. I started putting it, excuse me, got choked up there. started putting it in the, QuickBooks online, simple start. and then I'll copy that into the other, versions of, courses that we have for the different levels and flavors, cause there, there wouldn't [00:29:00] be any difference.
In functionality, for this in QuickBooks online, simple start versus, versus, advanced, short of, like you said, if they're tracking inventory,
but. You can still put, non inventory or service items on a, on an invoice and ship them, even though you may not be tracking them as legitimate inventory items, it's [00:29:30] just what's going on underneath the sales transaction when they're inventory versus non inventory.
so we'll put that in the.
[00:29:39] Upcoming Workshops and Conclusion
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[00:29:39] Dan DeLong: put that in the updated courses, and then look for, so next week, we're gonna, we're gonna take a break, and then we'll skip over, next week cause I have another followup for my wife's, surgery to, to go to, and that's a whole day's event, to go across the Puget Sound from where we're [00:30:00] at.
won't be making the workshop next week. So we're going to pause on that. But the week after is we're going to start a new series, and we're going to start a new series with Sean from Katana, where we're going to be comparing the advanced inventory functions in QuickBooks Enterprise with Katana
[00:30:22] No One: for
[00:30:24] Dan DeLong: those people who are considering moving from, a desktop product [00:30:30] and, what is, what are those workflows that I use in QuickBooks enterprise and how do they translate to an online, cloud based solution?
and we'll talk about specifically with Katana. I love
[00:30:43] Rachel Dauchy: Katana. I have. Few clients in Katana. It's, I love it
[00:30:48] Dan DeLong: because, as we talked about in the e-commerce discussions, there are a variety of inventory management, solutions out there. And there, there is not a one size fits all.[00:31:00]
Especially when you're used to those workflows inside of QuickBooks Enterprise, how do they translate, to a cloud-based solution? maybe it doesn't do exactly the same thing that it does in, QuickBooks Enterprise, but. Maybe it doesn't better, or maybe it doesn't do it at all.
[00:31:20] Rachel Dauchy: And this other connector, if maybe it's not going to transmit the information the way you want. So yeah,[00:31:30]
[00:31:32] Dan DeLong: We'll start that series, in two weeks, and we're not gonna, we're not going to overload you with doing it every week. We'll maybe take a week off in different topics there so that you don't get to burn out on inventory.
[00:31:48] Rachel Dauchy: I'm already burned out.
[00:31:54] No One: That's all right.
[00:31:55] Dan DeLong: so we'll see you next time on the, workshop.
We appreciate you joining us here [00:32:00] today and you hope you all have a great day and we'll see you next time. [00:32:30] [00:33:00]
