Podcast WSW - Advanced Inventory w/ Katana - Multiple Locations
===
[00:00:00] [00:00:30]
[00:00:38] Introduction and Workshop Overview
---
[00:00:38] Dan DeLong: Welcome to another workshop Wednesday brought to you by schoolbookkeeping. com where it's letting you be the best bookkeeper that you can be because we have casual conversations for serious workflows and no more serious workflow than inventory management. Is that right, Shawn?
[00:00:57] Shawn Coultice: I would totally agree.
Not only did you [00:01:00] have a great music intro, but also a solid introduction into something that Bookkeepers are often quite concerned about, nervous about, and that's inventory management.
[00:01:13] Inventory Management Challenges
---
[00:01:13] Dan DeLong: Yeah, nothing causes bookkeeping and accounting professionals to run screaming more so than a client saying I have inventory, right?
So you may notice that Rachel looks a little More masculine. [00:01:30] So she's got a little bit of explaining to do. No, Rachel is is camping at, Appy camp in my old stomping ground of Arizona.
[00:01:41] Introducing Shawn and Katana
---
[00:01:41] Dan DeLong: And so joining us today is Shawn Coultice from Katana because we are starting a new series about, Inventory workflows.
And we what I wanted to do is put a side by side comparison of the advanced inventory [00:02:00] functions that are in QuickBooks Enterprise, paired up against cloud based inventory solutions. And Katana is, one of them. I invited Shawn to come on to, to talk about some of those differences.
Because if if you have a client or if you are a client of somebody who is looking at Potentially transitioning from QuickBooks desktop to QuickBooks online and you have [00:02:30] these advanced inventory needs or workflows already in place, it would be super helpful to know what you're getting into ahead of time.
And so we want to just do a little comparing and contrasting of things that are in. Advanced inventory workflows that are in QuickBooks Enterprise and hold them up against some of the cloud based solutions that are there and appreciate Shawn joining us here today to do that discussion.
But before [00:03:00] we get into, the nuts and bolts of what we're gonna be talking about today, I wanted to talk a little bit.
[00:03:05] Community Announcements and Challenges
---
[00:03:05] Dan DeLong: about some announcements that we wanted to make. If you are part of the School of Bookkeeping community you probably got an email or notification or an announcement. I'm not quite sure what the terminology is that's being used, but We are trying we talked about it last time with Rachel inside of school bookkeeping there is a community, [00:03:30] that is much like the social media communities, Facebook groups LinkedIn communities those types of things without the social media aspect of it.
Now Shawn is in you're, in Canada. Yeah. I was almost said, Canadia, but, if if there's any time to get off of social media, it's during an election year. I don't know how, what it's like in [00:04:00] Canada. If social media is so divisive up there, I'm sure you have your, Sides of the fence that that people sit on, but I have no idea what it's like as far as any kind of like discussion, and I probably don't want to know, but
[00:04:22] Shawn Coultice: It's, I would say similar, but not quite as.
Dramatic. [00:04:30]
[00:04:31] Dan DeLong: That is a very politically correct way to say
[00:04:34] Shawn Coultice: that.
[00:04:36] Dan DeLong: Lots of drama going on there. I'm sure you're looking down across the board and be like,
[00:04:42] Shawn Coultice: Oh, it's it's definitely killing our social media. For sure. More of the Canadian political news is filled with what's going on down south.
That's for sure.
[00:04:54] Dan DeLong: Yeah, there's more things to look at, than than [00:05:00] on, your side, we have a community that allows you to, be specific about what it is. That you want to talk about specifically around bookkeeping QuickBooks getting the most out of it. If you have questions you can talk to to us or or your fellow school bookkeeping members and to make sure that you're aware of that community, we started a couple of challenges.
So we're [00:05:30] doing a couple of challenges in, the community and you have to join those those, challenges. To get them started and there's points and we're going to do some swag and all sorts of things once the challenges are completed. But you want to go into the community, join the challenge and follow the instructions there.
But one of them is share this workshop. So if you're in the workshop. Go ahead and share it on your [00:06:00] social media platform of choice, whatever that might be LinkedIn, or Facebook or YouTube. And then you just let us know that you've done that. And then that will qualify you for completing the challenge.
And then the other thing is we're going to do a bookkeeping bingo. So you can join the challenge, you get your own Personal bookkeeping card it'll be like some tasks that you do, reconcile a bank account or create an invoice or [00:06:30] transfer inventory as we are going to be talking about today and then if you get a bingo, Then submit the bingo card.
Only regular bingos. We're not going to be talking about postage stamps or little diamonds or for all of you hardcore bookkeep bookkeeping bingo players out there. However, you're, just going to want to download the bingo card, keep track of those [00:07:00] things to get a bingo, upload it.
And that'll complete the challenge there for you. So I have a couple. What do I have? Here's the there's a QR code there in the upper right. You can just snap out your phone and that will take you to the challenge. And then we also have the bingo challenge as well. So I've got some QR codes there.
If you missed it. Watch the replay [00:07:30] And we'll also actually i'll just put those in the Chat, so there's the share the workshop challenge, which should show up on youtube and facebook if you're watching there and then the share the workshop challenge, it will be a link there as well. And I misspelled the word challenge in one of them.
So
[00:07:55] Opening: apparently
[00:07:56] Dan DeLong: typing is a challenge for me, but I don't get [00:08:00] points for miss spelling thing.
[00:08:02] Advanced Inventory Workflows in QuickBooks
---
[00:08:02] Dan DeLong: So let's unpack and take a, step back of why Shawn is here. Advanced inventory needs and we have done some some webinars and workshops with with Shawn and Katana in the past and and talked a little bit about the, needs of of tracking inventory, even from the point of.
Do I [00:08:30] really need to track inventory all the way up to, I need to know exactly where my inventory is at any given point in time. And, the answers to all of these questions that, that clients sometimes have is typically the adult diaper answer of it depends. How, does this all work?
And what's the best. Solution for that, then then that answer turns to what, [00:09:00] what, technology am I going to be using to, in order to track that? Enterprise desktop has, had a really great. All inclusive one stop shop for the bookkeeping and tracking the inventory management advanced inventory management functions.
But as we are experiencing Intuit is encouraging the [00:09:30] transition of that to QuickBooks QuickBooks Online. And as we have talked about, Ad nauseum before those advanced inventory workflows don't really translate to QuickBooks online natively. And then a lot of times people will end up having to look at what else is out there in order to, to trans, to, do these workflows and things in.
In a in, a cloud based [00:10:00] environment.
[00:10:00] Katana's Inventory Management Features
---
[00:10:00] Dan DeLong: So Shawn, you want to talk a little bit about Katana, what Katana is maybe some of the origins of Katana and we'll set the stage there.
[00:10:11] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, for sure. Katana is a. Cloud based inventory management system. We have the most success with businesses that I would classify as light manufacturers where they're going beyond that sort of just buy and sell environment, and they have [00:10:30] some form of advanced inventory requirements.
And could be called light manufacturing. They might sell across multiple sales channels like e commerce as well as point of sale. And then often they'll have some sort of value added process that they'll do to that material to create a finished product that could be packaging. It could be through some sort of manufacturing process, and it could be also combining multiple components together.
In the form of a bill of materials. [00:11:00] And we do get into quite advanced manufacturing, whether it be through traceability in the food and beverage space. You can get into 7 layers deep in a bill of material, but when we start to get into that engineer to order heavy, continuous manufacturing environment, that's where that probably is outside of our sweet spot.
So we sit in that light manufacturing space and help businesses is. Utilize and manage Katana to, create [00:11:30] more efficiencies and visibility around their inventory management, and then connect that operational side of the business over to their financials and QuickBooks online.
[00:11:39] Dan DeLong: Gotcha. So what would a business or or an accounting professional who's advising a business, say, okay, this is the ideal client fit for something like Katana. What, what will be the litmus test of am I a light manufacturer or am I [00:12:00] more heavy? manufacturing.
[00:12:02] Shawn Coultice: Yeah. So one of the, one of the most common things that Katana is 1700 customers.
So one of the most common things that we would see within our customer base is they do have some form of a bill of material. So they would have a finished product and then they would have components that go into that product or they have a raw material that has operations done against that raw material to create.
Some form of a finished product. So that is common through the vast majority of our [00:12:30] customer base. And then another aspect would be that they're selling across multiple sales channels so that they're using e commerce or they have a point of sale as well as typically like a B2B environment.
So they have this sort of hybrid order fulfillment. And sales strategy as well as they have this light manufacturing. And then some of the industries that we see the most success in would be food and beverage businesses, often because they have traceability requirements. So they want to know. When [00:13:00] my raw materials are going to expire, they need to be able to trace finished goods through to that raw material from a lot tracking perspective.
And that's an aspect that's quite strong within Katana. Further to that, if we look into the cosmetics industry, the furniture industry those are areas where we have quite a bit of success as well. When you think of all those. Different areas. There's this component of their, the business is bringing together multiple materials [00:13:30] whether it be liquids or, wood, and they're creating some form of finished product.
One of the other aspects that we have quite a bit of success in is this outsourced manufacturing perspective. So where businesses are, they're often managing the sale, they're even buying the materials, but they're not. physically putting the products together. They're outsourcing that to another company and that's something Katana helps manage and can help [00:14:00] businesses track what's at the outsource manufacturing from an inventory perspective, what should we be expecting back and then including the costs associated to the finished product relative to the outsource manufacturing services, as well as the raw material that went out to them.
[00:14:18] Dan DeLong: So that's a, that's one of the things that I appreciate about Katana is they're not they're not one of those companies that'd be like, we can handle it all. [00:14:30] Yeah. Bring, us all and we'll figure it out. You definitely understand. Your sweet spot what lane you can drive in on this super highway of inventory manufacturing or advanced inventory workflows, and you know what you do well, and you know what have an area of opportunity on, and, are not like, pillaging everyone in order to, get folks into [00:15:00] into Katana.
You're, you want people to be best served, by the things that you do.
[00:15:07] Shawn Coultice: totally, absolutely. The jack of all master of none. Perspective, right? Where Katana, we try and focus on a couple of key things that our customers appreciate. One is the ability to get the system up and running relatively quickly.
The return on investment you're seeing relatively. Quickly with our average [00:15:30] implementation being around 30 days. And then the other aspect that, is very important, I guess there's two, one would be the ease of use. So then navigation of the system, just being intuitive colorful and logical.
And then the other aspect that I think, especially on the inventory management space is the support. So we do have dedicated support managers onboarding. Reps to support whether it [00:16:00] be the bookkeeper or accountant supporting their client and extending their service offering, or be it just working directly with that client and getting them up and running on the software.
So that support arm is a big focus for our business. And probably one of the most common things I hear in the space is, people just being frustrated with the amount of support they receive from the software provider that they might be working with. And that's something Katana really focuses in ensuring.
Whoever we're working with, [00:16:30] whether it be at the partner or the client, they have someone that they can call, talk to and get, good answers to the questions that they have.
[00:16:40] Dan DeLong: And then this is one of the reasons that I wanted to have this kind of like side by side comparison because as we were talking yesterday about what we were going to talk about today we're going to be talking about just One of the, one of the features or the advanced inventory functions.
And [00:17:00] I've I've put a QR code of our advanced inventory landing page on school bookkeeping. So talks a little bit about how you can track. Where does QuickBooks Online do well as far as inventory management is concerned and talk about some of those more advanced inventory workflows and there are, we, I do break it down into the six main components of what makes QuickBooks Online.
Enterprise [00:17:30] an advanced inventory function. So that's what I wanted to make sure that we're, discussing here is if there is somebody who is in QuickBooks Enterprise Platinum and has the advanced inventory functions, how do those translate to something else? And the. One thing that surprise that we were talking through yesterday is that migration path, right?
Of if you're, going from QuickBooks Desktop to [00:18:00] QuickBooks online, first thing is what's gonna happen to my inventory? If I've got set if I've got my items all set up and I've got these advanced inventory functions, what's gonna happen with them when they go to QuickBooks Online?
And then knowing that. Okay let's say that Katana would solve my needs. How do I get from, how do I get from, QuickBooks enterprise to Katana? [00:18:30] Because not going through QuickBooks online to get to Katana, probably not going to be the path that, people are going to be choosing because it's going to.
Homogenize the inventory management into into what QuickBooks online can handle. And as you mentioned, things like bill of materials, assembly items, some of the, multiple units of measure as we unpack some of those just core [00:19:00] functions of inventory management, they don't translate at all to QuickBooks online.
So what is the, what have you found? Has been the best way for someone to transition or implement going from a desktop software product or, a product that has, a more robust inventory management component. Into the cloud of, QuickBooks online being their business management, but [00:19:30] then having to, add on a, a more specialized workflow of the inventory management piece.
Long question. Sorry.
[00:19:40] Shawn Coultice: No, all good. So I, there really is two, two options. Depending on the, I would say resource availability. At the customer, and they're I would describe it as like data expertise. The [00:20:00] first would be, within the business and it could be the accountant or bookkeeper at times they have, offer this as a service, but for the most part, say 95 percent of the time, the client is tasked with, you doing the doing the implementation.
And so the first option being they take that on on their own. And that's where our onboarding team is available to them. So our onboarding team would support what I would call coaching them through the [00:20:30] process. And the first thing you would do in an implementation is populate Your Excel documents to then upload the data into the system.
And so that can take the form of downloading the data from your desktop product organizing it into the format that fits within Katana and then uploading that into the solution. And our onboarding team is going to help ensure that the data has some integrity related to it and went through [00:21:00] and was uploaded it appropriately.
And that it's actionable when you do have it set up within the system. And so that's the first step in the process, but it also is the highest risk point in any implementation is the data conversion. It's, if you don't get it right, it can cause a lot of frustration. And doing it in general, just it takes longer than people anticipate.
And that's where you were mentioned,
[00:21:27] Dan DeLong: you were mentioning the average is [00:21:30] 30 days, but there's, I'm sure there's others. There's, people on both sides of that average, right?
[00:21:37] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, of course. So if someone has very straightforward data they can load it up, connect it to Shopify, QuickBooks online, and you're up and running within a day, right?
It can happen really quickly. If you have complex bills of material, you've got lots of customers, lots of vendors getting that data all to flow from the current [00:22:00] systems that you have in place. Can be a bit of a task. And so that's where depending on the business complexity size again and resource availability, you might be look at the second option.
And so the second option is bringing on a partner to help with that data conversion. So, that would be in the form of an implementation partner. And there's a number of businesses that we work with. So one would be four Lane, they're pretty well known in the, in the Intuit ecosystem [00:22:30] or another would be SAS Direct.
So SAS Direct, specializes in that data conversion arm. And they can also support the implementation. So they're a great option to get the data set up within the system. And four lane similarly offers some form of data conversion support, but also implementation support. And so those are two options of, or examples of partners that you might engage with to help support getting up and running on [00:23:00] Katana and getting that data set up within the system, especially when you have more complexity involved, be it.
Bills of material. You're you, maybe have some bin locations, or multiple warehouse locations and you're trying to get the data set up appropriate, appropriately across those different locations.
[00:23:20] Dan DeLong: Perfect.
[00:23:21] Setting Up Inventory Locations and Bins
---
[00:23:21] Dan DeLong: And and as we were talking yesterday, we wanted to set the stage and [00:23:30] baseline some of the fundamental terms that are used because as we were talking, One person's inventory location is another person's bin, right?
So we want to make sure that, those terms are understood when it comes to what is going to happen? Because, let me let's just let me just share my, my QuickBooks enterprise here. [00:24:00] In Enterprise Platinum Edition, when we go into the items and inventory preference, we have this advanced inventory settings.
And I know this is hard to see if you're, especially if you're looking at this on on, a smaller screen, but this tab here is labeled as multiple inventory locations. So this is the feature set that we want to compare and contrast with, with, Katana here. [00:24:30] And now. What is an inventory location?
It's an inventory site and right here on the screen, they've basically conflicted the terms that they're using. An inventory location is where is my inventory located. And so there's this terminology of a physical location. And then there is a Terminology of where in [00:25:00] that physical location is that inventory?
They physically located.
[00:25:06] Shawn Coultice: Where is it housed? So yeah, different, the way I picture it as locations are physical buildings, right? So what warehouse is this stuff located in? And then within that building, where is it housed? So what bin is it currently being stored in? And so [00:25:30] that's how I think.
general vernacular would be communicated around, warehousing. But I think with an enterprise, you have this sort of locations and then sub locations, which is actually your bin. And that's where I think the difference is.
[00:25:47] Dan DeLong: Yeah. And in, in the way that the bins are handled between the two softwares is different, right?
Katana will have. The physical location [00:26:00] of the building as, a location, but the bin of where it's actually stored within that is going to be set up on, on the item per se, as opposed to, where the way that QuickBooks enterprise handles it. Just real quick, just want to illustrate that, that we have an inventory sites being enabled.
It's just a check box here in the, preferences. And then you have a sub. Setting of to track bin locations within [00:26:30] inventory sites as they're calling it a row, shelf, or bin. This is entirely up to the user to call or label whatever these bins happen to be. And then when they save that preference, then they're going to get another list.
Option from their list menu called inventory site list, which, when we're talking about inventory locations and they now change the terminology to sites, [00:27:00] it becomes, quite a challenge when you're like, what is this? So that is your multiple inventory location in the way that they're functioning inside of QuickBooks is this parent child relationship where here we have the Atlanta warehouse.
And as a sub, as you can see by the indentation, they've labeled the bins, however, you want to, right? [00:27:30] That is the biggest I think difference when we hold up against enterprise up against something like Katana is where how the bins are going to be handled because, it's a, big difference because in the.
In the enterprise space, if you have one inventory location that you want to track things or more more than one because it's called multiple locations, you need to have [00:28:00] the platinum edition and then there's the question of how many locations can I have? There's a physical limitation and then there's a practical limitation.
The physical limitation is the Dr. Evil answer of 1 million, locations, but that also includes the bins within those locations. So each location is. A list element [00:28:30] and then the bin is also a list element as well. So it's something to keep in mind. Now how does Katana translate to, locations and bins?
[00:28:43] Shawn Coultice: Yeah. As I was describing it previously, you would have your different locations set up in Katana relative to the physical housing of that inventory. All right. For example I have a point of [00:29:00] sale store. I've also got a warehouse where I distribute goods. And I might even have an outsourced And I want to manage inventory at each one of those individual locations.
And within those locations, I have a bin that I store specific items in, and it could be multiple items in that one bin. And so we would identify that per each location what inventory location, the bin that item is stored. And you could then see [00:29:30] Across each location. What do I currently have in stock as well as potentially demand?
So you could have sales orders going to specific individual locations that are creating demand against that location. And potentially you could then transfer inventory from one physical location to another to fulfill that sales order. So those are the things that Katana is getting into and supporting.
[00:29:53] Dan DeLong: Got it. Do you want to so I have your screen here, so this is just give us a overview [00:30:00] of, navigating around in, Katana, because clearly if you're that's going to be one of the. Biggest differences when you're coming from enterprise to to something like Katana is, just getting, around and getting used to what the look and feel and use of that.
So you did say it's very colorful and I can see that right there on the screen. So there you
[00:30:28] Shawn Coultice: go. Exactly. [00:30:30] That's right. The traffic light, the stoplight functionality is how, we refer to it. So you come to a stoplight and green means go red means stop and yellow means slow down.
There's something I need to take a look at. And so that stoplight functionality right on the sales or screen, which is what we're looking at today, gives me some insight into, can I fulfill that order or not? So Katana really provides that great visibility. [00:31:00] Intuitively, as far as how do I stand with my current orders and can I go and fulfill them?
We've also, this product is completely cloud based. So you can see I'm operating in a browser and all the sort of things that go along with operating in a browser here. So if I wanted to go and open. One of these up in a new tab, I could go and do that. Now I'm looking at this particular sales order, but I haven't lost where I am with that previous tab.
And if I maybe wanted to dive into [00:31:30] a certain product, I could go and do that right from the screen that I'm on. And now I'm digging into this dining table, for example, and I can see the information relative to this individual dining table. I can also see. For this configuration, what bin it's set up in across my main location, and I haven't set up the bins within those warehouse.
But just from a navigation standpoint, you can see I can use the inherent functionality built into a browser [00:32:00] with Katana because it is a native cloud based solution. And like any SAS product in the market today that you're used to using in your sort of personal life, we also have the chat bot along the bottom.
And so again, that speaks to the support availability within Katana. So if I do need to message someone and get some support, I can do that here and send a message through the chat. And you can see the different team members that are available today. And we do have 24 7 support.
[00:32:29] Dan DeLong: That's good. [00:32:30] Good to know.
So can you, just show us maybe like some of the settings when it comes to where would I go to set up my my, my inventory locations and where would I go to to set up the bin the bin locations within the those, those physical locations.
[00:32:49] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, absolutely. So you'll see that over on the settings tab.
I'll jump into there and we have this locations section. So I'll dive into location and you can see here we've got a [00:33:00] warehouse storage bin and default locations that sort of sub tabs. So we'll start with warehouse. So right now I've got three warehouses set up within the system. You can have different legal names associated to each one where their address is set up and then you can see there's different functions I can do within each one of those locations.
So for example, maybe I have a man facturing location. So this would be a location that I only [00:33:30] make things. I don't actually go in. I can buy there. I just transfer inventory. I make it there. And then once I have that finished product, I ship it to one of my other locations. So you can set up what you can actually physically do at that location as well.
[00:33:46] Dan DeLong: Yeah. So that's a big difference between desktop enterprise and something like this is being able to assign workflows to the specific locations as well. So that's, good to know. [00:34:00] One of the things I want to make things clear, like for, where QuickBooks Enterprise is concerned, if you have more than one, you need platinum and then you have up to a 1 million locations, how does that translate to something like Katana?
[00:34:16] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, so we have our starter package, which is just one location. So that's where Katana starts. And then we have our standard package, which I believe is three locations. [00:34:30] And then you move up to our pro package, which I think it's eight locations. And then you have your pro plus package, which is unlimited locations.
[00:34:44] Dan DeLong: In the, in locations now, is it, is just a physical location as opposed to a sub location within that location. It's just important to understand oh, if I've got three bins, I'm, I need to go into the, [00:35:00] certain package, right? It's more of where the warehouse component of that, physical building.
You don't, do you have limitations on the number of bins, within those locations? Or is it more of. If you can dream it, we can build it type of thing.
[00:35:18] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, you can have unlimited bin locations set up within, your warehouse. Within an individual physical building or warehouse, you can have [00:35:30] as many different storage bins as you would like.
And then just quickly back on just to speak because I think a big difference that is important to bring up is the future of technology as well. So when you think of Katana, we are continuing to evolve and develop the solution. One thing that we're very focused on in particular in Q4 of this year Is improving this multi [00:36:00] location requirement that many businesses have, especially ones that are selling online.
And one of the big challenges is order routing. So if I receive a sales order from one look through e commerce that needs to be shipped to a certain location, how do we route that order to the closest warehouse that can then fulfill that? And so that's where we're looking at utilizing and building into the package.
AI that will help analyze the order, where it's getting shipped [00:36:30] to where we actually currently have that inventory available and make sure that we're fulfilling that order in the most efficient fashion. And so we're starting to incorporate AI into that process, which can get rather complex when you get multiple warehouses involved that all have their own inventory that they're managing.
And then this shipping it anywhere in the world challenge that is starting to come up with businesses that are moving to fulfilling orders online directly through something like [00:37:00] Shopify.
[00:37:01] Dan DeLong: Yeah. And that's, and that brings up another great topic about efficiencies. And we were talking about those efficiencies that are in Katana yesterday.
When it comes to you, when you have.
[00:37:14] Efficiencies in Inventory Management
---
[00:37:14] Dan DeLong: When you have a location and then you have someone who needs to go out and find that either putting it receiving it, putting it in and, or, picking and packing and shipping, fulfilling that order [00:37:30] the efficiencies of a physical person meandering around the warehouse, it.
You would want to make sure just like when you go grocery shopping, you want to get all your produce at once. You don't want to be going over to the dairy and the, Oh, I forgot. I forgot my peppers and then schlepping all the way back to the produce because they are, they're always on the opposite sides of the, supermarket for the for, a specific reason.[00:38:00]
But to going back and forth, there is. is inefficient. And talk about some of the efficiencies that you can, do with regards to inventory locations with with Katana.
[00:38:15] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, absolutely. That's, it's such a great point. And and we worked with a couple of partners that actually go on site to help organize people's warehouses.
And one of the things that they'll do is they'll set up bin locations [00:38:30] for their products. And they'll analyze what are their high moving items and what are their lower moving items. And you can see you might identify your bins as like a. Items, which would be your higher moving items, your B items, lower level, and then you might have like C, D and F.
And so those are just based on volume of movement and how often you're picking and going to those bins. So from a picking perspective, you think of we have these different sales orders out into the system and we want to make sure [00:39:00] if someone's going and picking that order from the warehouse.
They're efficient in having to go and do that. And so what we do with our picking lists or picking orders. So here's a, what an example of what, excuse me,
[00:39:17] Dan DeLong: you're allergic to inefficiencies.
[00:39:19] Shawn Coultice: Exactly.
But here's what the device might look like. I
[00:39:28] Dan DeLong: stopped sharing. So let [00:39:30] me go ahead and share that again for you.
[00:39:32] Shawn Coultice: Okay. So
[00:39:33] Dan DeLong: incidentally, Rachel's watching. So she does say a great, job guys. So
[00:39:38] Shawn Coultice: perfect. Thank you, Rachel. So when we're talking about picking on the shop floor or putting away, we think of the locations as efficiently grabbing the right items as you logically walk through the warehouse.
And when I started actually. I work for a distribution company and one of the first jobs you would have to do to get up to speed with the [00:40:00] company was go and pick orders and you drive around and you have to fill up your, crate with the different items that you were picking.
And the guys that were really efficient, they had memorized the warehouse and they would go through and they would scan the order and they would know, Hey, I'm going to go grab these three from this row. And they had memorized the entire warehouse. That's not. Logical. And you could see there was this big learning curve for employees to be efficient.
Now the system can do that for [00:40:30] you. So when you look at an order that you might want to start to pick, this only has one line item on it, but it's saying, Hey, been 22 is the location I need to go to first. And then it would have subsequently all the other items that you might need to pick on that order.
Would be an alphabetical order. And so that's how you've organized your warehouse so that you're efficiently going through picking the items and then completing it for that particular sales order. So it's just a way that you can really create efficiencies in your warehouse and not waste time traveling [00:41:00] between these different bins because you didn't know a certain item was located in one, one area that you had already driven past or walked
[00:41:08] Dan DeLong: past.
So that is one of those advanced complexities that comes with these advanced inventory needs is, is knowing where your inventory is physically located so that it makes it a lot easier to find said item and you're not [00:41:30] fumbling through through that sort of thing, one of the things that I've talked to companies about with, enterprise is is setting up inventory locations, even as a virtual location like a truck field service truck or, things like that where they can have that.
And this unlocks, another goes down that path of where is. Where is all [00:42:00] my stuff? And then there's a, a task or a transaction type inside of QuickBooks that will be a transfer of inventory.
[00:42:11] Stock Transfers and Future Enhancements
---
[00:42:11] Dan DeLong: So if you needed to move inventory from one physical location to another, then you would need to, is there is there a function inside of Katana of moving things from one, one location to another.[00:42:30]
[00:42:31] Shawn Coultice: There is absolutely. And so that's where we get into, so we have under our stock screen here. So this was just referring to that alpha brain product. And you can see I have that default storage bin B 22, which were, was where we were heading to go and look at that. And you can see. Across the top here under the storage bin, I can go and look at each individual physical location and I can see what do I currently have in stock at those locations and I cannot only see what's in stock, but I can [00:43:00] see what's in stock, what's expected, what's committed.
To those individual locations as well as do I want to set up a safety stock at that location? Like you said, you've got this truck that you're driving around with, and I want to make sure I don't run out of a certain maybe you're a plumber. I don't want to run out of these certain three quarter inch copper nineties.
And so I always want to have 10 in my truck because if I run out of those, I can't do any work. And so that's something [00:43:30] you'll always have. Yeah. And I remember this because my dad is a plumber and I've done lots of side jobs with him growing up through university and I have a funny story about working in a job and we forgot a certain valve and there was a big, and it was a big problem because we ran out of these valves and we couldn't fix that.
And there was a flood happening. If we had Katana and were managing our inventory appropriately, we probably wouldn't have had that situation. All right. [00:44:00] And my dad he had some interesting words for me for not having fulfilled the inventory. All right. What we're getting to is stock transfers.
So when we look at stock transfers, this is where you can go and create a stock transfer. And so this is where you're looking at what location are we currently in? So I'm in my main location and I want to transfer something to warehouse two, and then I can go and pick the item that I want to go and transfer.
So I can pick, okay, I've got [00:44:30] this alpha brain here. I've got 89 currently in stock and I want to go and transfer five over to this location. And I can go and process that, and that will move that inventory over to that new location. Shortly we will be releasing an in transit, so that would mean you create a receiving process on the other end.
So that you see that, okay, my inventory isn't currently available at this location. It's in transit, and now it's been received in, as well as being able to assign costs [00:45:00] to that transit process. So those are things that we're working on and we'll be releasing shortly. Today, though, very easy to go and transfer items between locations.
[00:45:10] Dan DeLong: Yeah, and that kind of brings up, I got to turn your thing off here. There we go. That kind of brings up and you alluded to it with the Katana embracing technology and A. I. And helping out with those efficiencies of where [00:45:30] QuickBooks Enterprise Does really well is use the analogy of when you're driving somewhere you have this windshield that you're looking for through that, that you're going forward, and then you have a rear view mirror to see where you've been and the side mirrors as well.
Some people use those, but in order to look back, you've got these little tiny portholes, of, [00:46:00] of. stuff of where you've been and that's where QuickBooks does really well. It, lets you know what's the financial impact of what happened and it helps you look back on what, what occurred where forward facing you have a lot more glass and a lot more visibility looking forward in, as you're driving.
And that's typically where you want to be, where your attention needs to be when you are moving in that direction. In that [00:46:30] direction, unless you're a small child on a road trip, you're crammed in the back, looking back where you bit, but the looking forward aspect is, really where something like Katana is going to come in a lot more handily because you have not just with with AI, those traffic light.
images of color coding and being able to see what, what you have in stock and what you're able to fulfill, [00:47:00] what you're able to make. You have a whole planning aspect of Katana where you're able to adjust, right? You can, adjust on the fly. Okay I can't make this one.
What if I move this one ahead of that one? Could I make that one faster or, in make, this. Finish good better so that I can fulfill that. And again with the [00:47:30] efficiencies, you want to talk a little bit about, about that component of Katana.
[00:47:36] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, for sure. Which, sorry, you lost me a little bit.
So I just want to, which component did you want to dive into? Just
[00:47:44] Dan DeLong: The, ability of Katana to be able to adjust on the fly. Based on stock levels for sales or manufacturing or,
[00:47:58] Shawn Coultice: now I'm [00:48:00] hearing what you're saying. So I think a big aspect that especially accountants and bookkeepers have been faced with, I would say, using the tools that are available in the market.
Or were available in the market is like you said, this rear view mirror, it's getting the books accurate by the end of the month. Okay. Now we've got the books accurate. What's going on within the business. Okay. That month looked great. Now let's make our decision moving forward at that period in time, but you're not [00:48:30] doing this in real time.
And your value proposition to the client is really like getting the books accurate rather than helping them make those. financial decisions and the ability to move into an advisory landscape with your clients. It really is imperative that you have this real time inventory insight so that you're now bridging the gap between the financials and the operational side of the business so that you do have this forward thinking mindset [00:49:00] through perpetual inventory.
And so what Katana enables is through our integration with QuickBooks Online is perpetual inventory management so that your inventory value that is housed in QuickBooks Online is accurate from a financial perspective, from a revenue perspective. The cost of goods sold is accurate as well. So we're taking to get into account all the raw materials and finish in operational costs that go into a product.
Pushing that to your inventory value in QuickBooks Online [00:49:30] and deducting your inventory value, increasing your cost of goods sold within QuickBooks Online. And so now we bridge that, that gap created that perpetual inventory environment. And it allows now the bookkeeper to move into this advisory role.
So now you have the insights the, data and the detail in that operational side of the business. And you can start to. Pull together cashflow analysis, move away, moving away from [00:50:00] things like just getting the books accurate to this value added position within the organization. And that will enhance your ability to increase your billable rate, increase your billable hours, and working with a client that you can expand your service offering to them.
[00:50:15] Dan DeLong: Great.
[00:50:16] Conclusion and Upcoming Topics
---
[00:50:16] Dan DeLong: And so we we try to keep these workshops about a half an hour. We've gone. Over significantly because we there's, so many weeds that we can go down the [00:50:30] rabbit holes, for this sort of thing. So I was trying to keep it within the scope of the multiple inventory locations today, Shawn, we'll be back with us to talk about.
And do some comparisons. So the next time we'll be discussing batch lot numbers, serial number tracking, and how those, compare between enterprise and something like Katana. So I appreciate the serious workflow discussion, [00:51:00] But it was a casual conversation.
So we so we'll be back next week. Actually tomorrow I'll finally be able to get a look at this into an enterprise suite. So next next workshop, we'll unpack what we discovered about that on the workshop. And we'll be having Shawn joining us with hopefully with Rachel, not just in the chat comments [00:51:30] in real in, in person in the workshop.
So we can discuss, not a lot of numbers, but yeah a lot numbers and serial number tracking inside of the advanced inventory workflows. We appreciate you joining us. Today I do want to put up one last time. If you want to learn more about Katana, there's a QR code there that'll take you to their website to be able to schedule some time, because if you [00:52:00] think this might be good for you, it's good to take a look at it.
No, no obligation or anything like that in order to do that to see if it really fits your needs and your workflows in that light manufacturing space. So we'll see you next time on the workshop and we hope you all have a great day.
[00:52:30] [00:53:00] [00:53:30]
