Podcast WSW - Enterprise vs Katana - Warehouse Management
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[00:00:00] [00:00:30]
[00:00:38] Introduction and Welcome
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[00:00:38] Dan DeLong: Welcome to another Workshop Wednesday brought to you by School of Bookkeeping. com. What is, I am, what's the Jim Rohn saying?
[00:00:50] Forced Upgrade and Initial Reactions
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[00:00:50] Dan DeLong: I am fascinated, by this update that came into this forced upgrade. So [00:01:00] this is, one of those things about cloud services, Shawn, that when there is an update. And it's forced on you, and you're not ready for it, like me.
It causes some fascination. What if you describe it as
[00:01:20] Rachel Dauchy: Dan problems, then?
[00:01:22] Dan DeLong: I'm sorry, what?
[00:01:24] Rachel Dauchy: Sorry, go ahead. I just was gonna say, if it's giving Dan problems, then it must really be an [00:01:30] issue.
[00:01:30] Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:32] Restream and New Studio Features
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[00:01:32] Dan DeLong: so we use restream as a way to separate simulcast and, do things and, we're glad you're joining us here for another workshop Wednesday brought to you by schoolbookgiving.
com forgot to say that, but it there's this new studio that just was I was putting off upgrading it because, it, I didn't have the time to really dive [00:02:00] into it, but now it's a forced thing after Halloween, everybody got the new update, whether you want it to or not, and it has this whole concept of scenes that you're supposed to be able to preset these things up, which this countdown video was a scene and.
I switched right over to Q and a, and we're not there. So I had to add us manually. So what's the point? [00:02:30] I liked it the way it was.
[00:02:31] User Feedback and Update Challenges
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[00:02:31] Dan DeLong: Shawn, do you get that feedback at Katana when it comes to those
[00:02:35] Shawn Coultice: Katana? When we do updates, we we have a beta program and before we roll it out, we we really make sure our customers are 100 percent ready.
And excited for all the updates
[00:02:47] Rachel Dauchy: going
[00:02:48] Shawn Coultice: forward. So
[00:02:49] Rachel Dauchy: they're excited for it.
[00:02:51] Shawn Coultice: Yeah. They're, always looking forward to our releases, but certainly things do move and change just to give a little bit of context to it we were [00:03:00] talking about this morning, our design teams, we have a whole sort of engineering department is dedicated to the design look and feel of Katana and we look at heat maps and where people travel their mouse and where their eyes go on, the actual screens themselves and Making sure that the right things are the right colors.
I don't know how they track their eyes. Maybe that's not true, but they track the mouse.
[00:03:24] Intro: But
[00:03:24] Shawn Coultice: But the interesting thing was we might change something that will be more efficient for [00:03:30] the overall user, but someone that's been using the system and that change is oh, whoa, that change happened. Now something is here and it was over there or now it's black and it was red.
And that can be confusing.
[00:03:42] Dan DeLong: Yeah. My, my 18 years at Intuit, that's something that bubbled up to the surface. So when it went into, it would change something inevitably. As soon as the change happens, we hear from the people who were happy the way things were. I'm like, wait a minute. Why [00:04:00] did you do that?
And typically in, in grand fashion they, they do strive on, customer driven innovation as they're. They're one of their values and they would take that feedback into account and oftentimes it would turn into a preference or a choice, right? So you could have it the old way or have it the new way.
And, but typically and what we're seeing with a lot of the changes that are happening in QuickBooks [00:04:30] online, some of that it. There's, a future that they're, striving for. Like when we talked about Rachel, the new invoice experience in QuickBooks online everybody's got to get on that before QuickBooks.
Adds more features and fixes. And we'll talk about that next week when when when we talk about what I learned in a quick into a connect with a custom columns, right?
[00:04:59] Rachel Dauchy: [00:05:00] Oh yeah. That's going to be cool.
[00:05:03] Warehouse Management Overview
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[00:05:03] Dan DeLong: but anyway, We're, we're coming in for landing here with with Shawn and, this series that we're doing with comparing enterprise with with a cloud-based in inventory solution like Katana.
And today we're gonna be talking about some a core advanced inventory feature set. Which is what would you classify this as in, in, your [00:05:30] definition, Shawn, of, is it just pick, pack, ship, or order fulfillment? What would you classify it as with, regards to, this process that we're going to unpack here today?
[00:05:42] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, I think like high level, we would call it like warehouse management. And cause there's not only the idea of picking and shipping but it's also receiving. And so the idea of bringing inventory in and relieving it or [00:06:00] moving it are all sort of part of that same umbrella. And we would utilize the same tool to accomplish those, different tasks.
[00:06:08] Dan DeLong: All right. So, Rachel, what is your Your take on on warehouse management from a, from an accountant's perspective, is that something that you, found that you get? Roll up your sleeves, get into the weeds with them.
[00:06:26] Rachel Dauchy: I always have. I've always worked in [00:06:30] accounting operations with consumer package goods.
Sorry, I haven't always done that, but every time I've ever worked in a company where. Selling consumer packaged goods. I've always gotten involved in the warehouse operations from an accounting perspective Because I was just explaining this to a potential client the other day where we're probably going to get started on IMS is that the financials end up unfolding?[00:07:00]
the way you need them when you're doing these operations correctly, right? And so when you're let's say you're using something like Katana and you have all your orders coming in from Shopify, when you're utilizing the functions in Shopify, receiving the order, sending it to QuickBooks making purchases, sending them to QuickBooks, And you're doing all the things you're also [00:07:30] Recording all of your transactions the way that you need them obviously when you get to month end, you may have to do some more things but and obviously you're wrapping up and reconciling everything the way that you need to but Operationally, you're doing a lot of the things that, need to be done while you're doing those operations in the warehouse, if you're doing them properly.
So it all becomes streamlined. So you're not duplicating all this work.
[00:07:59] Dan DeLong: [00:08:00] Yeah. And, definitely, With something where you discover Oh, we're doing all that on spreadsheets
[00:08:08] Intro: or
[00:08:09] Dan DeLong: something like that, where it's okay that's totally disjointed from, from managing that sort of thing, where it could be a task that you do in, in in a piece of software.
And then the accounting and the financial impact of that just. Happens automagically. [00:08:30]
[00:08:30] Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And a lot of people, like even doing a lot of the warehouse functions, they don't realize that they're actually updating the accounting at the time that they're doing it, but it's really important for those things to be done at timely and synced the right way from an accounting perspective.
[00:08:50] Barcode Implementation in QuickBooks
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[00:08:50] Dan DeLong: so there's a couple of features inside of QuickBooks enterprise that help with this warehouse management. component. So I just wanted to share my screen here [00:09:00] real quickly. Oh, now we're on the right side of the screen. Okay. Thank you studio for, making this out. So inside of the advanced inventory settings, which we've gone in here several times in our series with, Shawn, they have two tabs here at the top that really flow into this whole, Warehouse management workflow, and they are really just check boxes, but they those check [00:09:30] boxes start to unlock a whole lot of new features and functionality.
So first is a bar code, right? So you have to enable bar coding in the inside of QuickBooks. And all this does is it makes an extra field on the item, right? Which you are going to, associate a bar code. With that item, which is, I don't know, Shawn, in a, in in a, general sense, [00:10:00] it's a unique identifier that identifies that, that item.
Would you, agree with that assessment?
[00:10:08] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, for sure. A lot of businesses, I see it two ways. So one is the item already has a barcode on it, so it could be a a common good. The other is you want to apply a barcode to that item because you produce it. And so you want to.
Apply that barcode. 'cause it doesn't have an item when you a barcode on it. So you, when you receive it or when you [00:10:30] produce it, it obviously doesn't have a barcode on it, so you wanna apply it there.
[00:10:32] Dan DeLong: Now you actually have a barcode scanner there with you, which is really cool. That ,
[00:10:37] Shawn Coultice: I'm
[00:10:38] Intro: ready. Go
[00:10:39] Dan DeLong: quick drop that that we, can actually hear it beep.
And that's such, such a satisfying.
[00:10:46] Rachel Dauchy: Can I just tell you guys though, I laughed so hard at scaling new heights when Mario from Mendelsohn was talking about one of his clients that was like I want barcodes and, but they couldn't [00:11:00] explain why they, do you remember that Shawn? And he couldn't explain why they wanted barcodes.
He was just like, I want barcodes. And Mario was like, no, you don't want barcodes. Like You want to track the movement of your product from when you make it from when it's packaged, from when it's sold. There's a reason that you're using barcodes. And so I always think about that now because a lot of people they don't really understand why are we using those [00:11:30] things?
There's a reason it's for tracking. So that's one thing I wanted to throw in there. And
[00:11:37] Dan DeLong: at its core, right? A barcode. The, what it's solving for is the keyboard strokes that, that would require you to type in the name of the the unique identification of that item. So really and, the way I would explain it to people when I was in a point of sale or the retail space is that [00:12:00] a barcode is like your branding cattle, right?
You're just taking that poker and saying, this is what this item is. And and then when you can see that barcode and scan it, that is taking the place of the keyboard keystrokes to type that in. Whatever Shawn just scanned there, that represents, and when it beeps, it's just taking that barcode.
Those, varying degrees [00:12:30] of black and white, turning them into keystrokes in whatever field you happen to have your cursor set in. So it's a what's the, technical term? It's a keyboard emulator device, right? Exactly.
[00:12:42] Shawn Coultice: It's just an input, right? It literally is just a fast way for you to type something in.
[00:12:51] Rachel Dauchy: about say you're receiving things off the back of a truck or something like that, or you're downstairs. We used to receive pallets downstairs and then we would have to [00:13:00] go all the way down there and unload them. But then our office was all the way upstairs. So it just could, there was no way,
[00:13:07] Dan DeLong: so in, inside of QuickBooks, you have this open barcode wizard, which will then ask you what. What field or what field already exists in QuickBooks today that you would like to turn into a barcode, right? The item name number inside of QuickBooks is something that's already unique. So you could essentially take that and move it into the barcode [00:13:30] field.
QuickBooks will turn it, turn that field into a barcode. And then when you print the label, Of the of the barcode for the item, then that just turns that into entering in the item name number in whatever field that you are. And then typically there's a carriage return automatically put in by the barcode scanner to go to the next line, right?
So it's just a beep as you're scanning these things in and that's what it does, right? [00:14:00] Now you're not creating UPC codes by doing this because that's, a process to actually get a UPC or universal product code from the UPC. Organization.
[00:14:14] Rachel Dauchy: Yes. One is where you get those.
[00:14:16] Dan DeLong: But if you have a UPC on the item already, as Shawn mentioned, you could just go into that field inside of QuickBooks and scan it in. So you've got the item name number. That's unique. You've got the UPC code. That's unique. But a scan [00:14:30] is going to scan that and put it into the, field. So that's, that as far as barcodes are concerned.
So great discussion there on what they are. And then that feeds into the, this tab for called site operations, which allows you to enable a sales order fulfillment worksheet and purchase order management. Worksheet, which will then open new new screens to be able to [00:15:00] assign purchase orders to someone or sales orders to someone, and then they're gonna be using a device, right?
So that could be there in as far as QuickBooks is concerned, there is, there are some Zebra devices that have been around for. decades and unupdated since, or you could download an Android app. Sorry, iPhone users. There is no iPhone app for [00:15:30] warehouse management inside of QuickBooks. It's all those green people, those green text bubbles.
They got the they got the go ahead because Android devices are cheaper and it makes it a lot easier. But if you're using the device, Especially an Android device like a tablet or a mobile device. You cannot use the phone. Or you cannot use the camera, I should say, to actually scan that you still need some kind of [00:16:00] Bluetooth barcode reader to read that device and turn it into something.
Oh, yeah,
[00:16:06] Rachel Dauchy: I remember when we were talking about this in the POS
[00:16:09] Dan DeLong: yeah.
[00:16:11] Katana's Barcode and Warehouse Solutions
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[00:16:11] Dan DeLong: Now Katana is working, are they working on a, an, app that uses the camera or do you need to use a, device like that? A barcode scanner still with Katana Shawn,
[00:16:26] Shawn Coultice: you can use whatever you want so you can use the camera on the phone.
And [00:16:30] beautiful. Just yeah, it's just you can open up the application on any device that has. Connection to the Internet. So does not need to be a zebra. It can literally be anything that has an interfacing connection to the Internet. And it'll run like as long as it can run a browser, essentially, and then as far as the device that is scanning the barcode, like I said, it could be the camera or it could be any sort of device that can read the, the, print format of the barcode [00:17:00] itself, which is very common.
Most, I think the the font is something eight is the most common one. I can't remember you eight, I think, or D eight. And so that's super common. And most like I literally took this out of the box and it immediately worked with Katana, so it's
[00:17:20] Dan DeLong: great when it works. Yeah. And that was always the challenge, right?
So like when it comes to barcoding and barcode scanning, the warehouse management [00:17:30] app that you're actually sending. Sales orders or purchase orders to is not a barcode scanner like for entering in transactions, right? So there's two components to this whole barcode thing. One is.
Picking, packing, shipping, fulfillment, receiving, those types of things, and that's the warehouse management side of things, but then the barcode itself can be utilized to speed [00:18:00] up the entry of data assuming you have something to scan and a place to put it inside of either QuickBooks or something like Katana.
So what happens when you enable those those fulfillments? Worksheets is the screens change, right? So this is the sales order fulfillment worksheet when that is, is turned on. When you have, I got to remember which options here. So let's, so is the end
[00:18:29] Shawn Coultice: [00:18:30] user supposed to do this? Every transaction they're in the screen like this.
[00:18:35] Dan DeLong: No, this would be someone who is, telling the guys at the warehouse, this is what you have to work on today. Let's see here. I'm looking, I know there is something I've seen it. This is just a sample company. It's impartial. No. Where is. All items must
[00:18:59] Shawn Coultice: have done an [00:19:00] upgrade as well.
[00:19:00] Dan DeLong: Yeah. They must've done an upgrade just before I decided to,
[00:19:06] Shawn Coultice: we know that's not true.
Come on enterprises.
[00:19:11] Dan DeLong: What will happen? Imagine if you will, we don't, we want to be conscious of time here. Sales orders as they're created in here, show up in here. And then what you would do is assign them to. And that's that's, the step that's in between [00:19:30] this, process with regards to setting them up, you're going to be setting up warehouse pickers, that will, allow you to assign.
The sales orders or purchase orders to them, and then that will show up on their device so that when there is whether they go around the warehouse pick things and put their disposition of those items into their device, which then [00:20:00] communicates. through the internet back to this sales fulfillment worksheet so that the person who's inside of QuickBooks can then take it to the next level of, okay, it's ready for shipment.
We're going to print a shipping label. We're going to we're going to then invoice the customer and go on with that. So the interesting note here is that the warehouse pickers do not count as users in your Enterprise license, right? So if you have 10 [00:20:30] people inside of your enterprise and 20 people out in the warehouse you don't need to purchase a 30 user license of, QuickBooks because those warehouse pickers, their sole purpose is just to use that, device to be able to do to do the things that the, at the warehouse, and then that communicates back to QuickBooks, they do need to be users set up with QuickBooks.
Access rights inside of QuickBooks, but they don't take your, [00:21:00] user seats that you might purchase in, inside of QuickBooks. Does Katana work in that same manner where the the, people there, or you don't even have. A user limit or do
[00:21:12] Shawn Coultice: we don't? Yeah, so it's unlimited users on both the application as well as the warehouse and manufacturing app.
The idea there is we want as many people within the company that could add value to using a software to use it and no limitations [00:21:30] from that perspective. And so we've gone the route of unlimited users, unlimited integrations. In the system as well as unlimited SKUs. So there's really no sort of ceiling on that and there's no cost implication.
And
[00:21:43] Dan DeLong: the other the other task that people can do as far as warehouse users is not just picking, packing and shipping, sending out stuff that, needs to be invoiced or receiving it and telling them, okay, this is how many. We were ordered. [00:22:00] This is how many received. There are some that were damaged those types of things.
So the receiving and coming and going, they can also be assigned a pick, not a pick list, a cycle count so they can then take that same device. Go around and, count their what they actually have on hand to, to help with those those physical inventory counts as well. So those, three main features are, that in, inside of QuickBooks.[00:22:30]
So I'm going to stop sharing and then I'll share your screen to give you, where'd you go? Where did your,
[00:22:38] Shawn Coultice: I'm right here. I'm ready to go.
[00:22:42] Dan DeLong: Yeah, I think it, it stopped sharing. Again we'll, blame the update.
[00:22:47] Shawn Coultice: I didn't, I don't think I said stop sharing, but I'll, share again. I'm good. Okay, here we go.
[00:22:53] Dan DeLong: There it is. And I'll share it there. There we go. All right. So now we're, am I looking? No, I'm looking the wrong way. [00:23:00]
[00:23:00] Shawn Coultice: I can't see you guys.
Can you guys see me?
[00:23:03] Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
[00:23:04] Shawn Coultice: Okay, cool. All right. So maybe we'll start similar to how Dan did over on the settings area here. As exciting as settings are, but I think it's a little bit easier to set up. So you can go and turn on your barcodes, supplier, internal barcodes and then register barcodes.
And then we do have this warehouse application.
[00:23:27] Rachel Dauchy: And then Shawn, this is if they've [00:23:30] purchased this add on. Yes,
[00:23:32] Shawn Coultice: that's right. So is an additional add on. So you would turn on the pick and pack orders as well as receiving orders. And that would then enable you to utilize the barcode scanning and the app to go in and receive those orders.
And so first, I'll actually just walk through the item itself, just to show you what the, Similar to what Dan had done. So if we [00:24:00] look at, for example, this organic electrolytes, I consume this product at home, it keeps me hydrated and also has collagen in it. So it keeps my hair and nails healthy.
[00:24:11] Rachel Dauchy: I ha I knew you were taking collagen. I could tell .
[00:24:14] Shawn Coultice: Thank you. You can see here we've got a registered barcode and an internal barcode. And so if I just for example here, if I wanted to add in this registered barcode, I'm actually just scanning this number here and [00:24:30] that adds that in. So now anytime I go and scan something, that's why I can add any product.
Into my system that already has a barcode. I would just go, Oh
[00:24:38] Rachel Dauchy: my gosh, how awesome. So if they already it's just their UPC code that they've already have slapped on there. And it's just, you can just use that. Nobody has to generate anything new. That's that is the barcode you're using.
[00:24:52] Shawn Coultice: Yeah, exactly.
If it already has a barcode on it, there's no reason to, then it gets confusing. I've seen, have you ever seen that where, you have a [00:25:00] product that has two or three barcodes on it?
[00:25:02] Rachel Dauchy: Yes,
[00:25:03] Shawn Coultice: I actually worked at a manufacturing plant and we used to have to apply new barcodes when we received it in because we only were able to scan our internal barcode system.
And it's which one do you scan and all those kind of things. Yeah we, avoid that by just using the barcode that's already on the product. Okay. So now that we have the item we can see where that registered barcode is being generated. If you do want to have an [00:25:30] internal barcode, you can assign it.
One as well. And then we can go and look at sort of the sales order. So I put in this sales order here, sales order 34. Okay. And so we can see on sales order 34, I have some alpha brain and some organica electrolyte on there. And I've got a quantity of five for, the alpha brain and 10 for the electrolyte.
And so in Katana, what I would do is I would just go and say, I'm ready to go. And pack all. [00:26:00] So when I pack all, that means that it moves to a ready for packing status. So now if I'm over in my WMS tool, so this again can run on any device. So whether it's a mobile a mobile device of some sort, the PC itself, because you've got maybe a laptop that you're walking around with or some sort of tablet it'll, operate just fine.
And so I can go into the pick and pack and it's going to have all the orders that I can go and [00:26:30] pick here. Okay. So they're ready to be picked. You can see it is prioritized based on how my sales orders are prioritized. If I go back to the sales order screen here just quickly, I have this as my highest priority job.
So that is listed as the highest priority job for me to begin picking. So very easily I can go and click into this and I can hit start task. You'll also notice it does identify the bin location. So as I'm traveling through the warehouse, I don't have a bin location assigned to [00:27:00] Organica Electrolytes, but the AlphaBrain has a bin assigned to it.
And it will Actually organize your pick list based on alphabetical order. And so the idea here is you're going to logically organize your warehouse so that your employees aren't zigzagging through the entire warehouse and wasting a lot of time. They're going to automatically run an efficient path through the warehouse to grab the items.
Just like you would maybe if you're going through the grocery store, you're not going to go grab the [00:27:30] bread and the milk and the eggs or whatever the case may be. You're going to go on a logical path. So you're not walk, walking over your footsteps multiple times.
[00:27:39] Dan DeLong: Terrible terrible circumstance.
You, brought some PTSD of, because my lifestyle of we're always going to new grocery stores and they're never laid out the same way. You've got the outer rim, which you know, is pretty consistent, but it's, is it on the right side of the [00:28:00] store? Is it on the left side of the store?
Where's the bread? As opposed to.
[00:28:05] Rachel Dauchy: Oh, and then, of course, there is the correct way to go through a Costco, and anybody that doesn't go through the right way is totally wrong. And, so yeah, there is an efficient way. Way to do things like that. And I totally agree. This makes me want to go reorganize a warehouse.
[00:28:28] Shawn Coultice: And that is actually when we think [00:28:30] of, coming from QuickBooks Connect and this idea of moving to an advisory service offering as an accountant and expanding your service offering beyond traditional bookkeeping. Really? This is an example of where technology enables you to do that, because this is just one step, like you said, Rachel, at the beginning where the correct processes being in place, enable the financials to be perpetually accurate.
It also allows the accountant to move into, Hey, you're going to utilize this technology and I can help you become way more [00:29:00] efficient on the shop floor. And no one is better that in organizing something than an accountant, right? And, so this is a great opportunity. The, and we currently are seeing.
Accounting firms like build up that cast practice and start to get into warehouse optimization and you guys
[00:29:17] Rachel Dauchy: my way of advisory for sure, And I would even, I wouldn't mind getting involved in that because I've definitely been in many warehouses. And the ones that I've been in have [00:29:30] been too big, probably for me to organize, but for a smaller.
Client, maybe just maybe dealing with one warehouse or one space. And we're, we just really need to get everything started off and do it the right way. I could go in there and whip that warehouse into shape.
[00:29:47] Shawn Coultice: Exactly. So I've gone in and hit start task and you'll notice that it brings up the camera button, so I can use the camera.
To scan the barcode, but I can also just, so I've got this alpha brain. I tried it, Joe Rogan recommended [00:30:00] it. So I can go in and scan that and it knows right away. I didn't select anything else. It knows that's the alpha brain one, and I could keep scanning it and that'll make the number go up, or I can type in the number or I can hit the plus button.
So whatever is most efficient. And then it highlights in green. Once you've picked. The quantity on the order. And you can see also the quantity here. So it's a really nice little tool. Hit continue and then you're on to your next one. So I'm ready. I walk down the [00:30:30] aisle. I go and grab. Oh, there's my Organica.
Boom. Ready to go. So I can type in my 10 pieces here. That's the quantity I need. And I would hit continue. So now green means go, I've got everything I need to pick and I hit complete. And so that's going to now take that off of my to do list of my pick and pack. And that's going to update my order. Into a pack status.
Okay. So it moved from a ready for packing into a pack status, which would then [00:31:00] trigger whatever the next case may be maybe you're using a ship station. It can automatically then generate the ship station stuff to generate all of your.
You can also go and send out your invoice over to QBO, just depending on what your process is in this case. But if it's ready and it's completed, I can just hit deliver all, and that'll move that to a completed sales order.
[00:31:25] Dan DeLong: That's, fantastic. And it was like instantaneous, how [00:31:30] everything just synchronized together.
[00:31:33] Conclusion and Next Steps
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[00:31:33] Dan DeLong: so I appreciate you joining us. I know we have a, kind of an abridged workshop today because we all had something going on at the top of the hour or the half hour. So I appreciate you joining us, Shawn. And as always, it's great to see you, Rachel. We'll next time when we have Shawn we'll talk into the, just in generalities, how how Katana helps with with, manufacturer.
[00:32:00] Manufacturers and compare that to the core building process inside of QuickBooks. So hopefully you can continue to join us then. Until then, we'll see you next time on the workshop Wednesday. And I don't have the outro video to show, so we're just going to turn it off. Have a great day, everyone. [00:32:30] [00:33:00] [00:33:30]
