Pocast WSW - Feature Comparison - QB Enterprise with Katana - Building Things
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[00:00:00]
Introduction and Casual Conversations
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Dan DeLong: Welcome to another workshop Wednesday brought to you by a school of bookkeeping. com where it is all about casual conversations for serious workflow. And we don't take ourselves too seriously here, here at the workshop, but we all are wearing headsets.
Rachel Dauchy: [00:01:00] As a matter of fact, I take myself so non seriously that I just.
Configured it and set it up three minutes ago.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. It does it does sound like it's echoing, so I, again, we'll, we'll, we'll check it out after, but totally fine. I'm happy to
Rachel Dauchy: do whatever you say, bud.
Dan DeLong: For today.
Series Overview and Guest Introduction
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Dan DeLong: So we're coming in for a landing with our, with our series with, with Katana. So you're, you're noticing an extra extra guest.
When we have Shawn again we haven't seen you since last year.
Shawn Coultice: I've been good. It's it's very cold here in Canada and I'm wearing my, you said it's. A casual conversation. So I decided that my Katana warm hoodie on today for the conversation, but I'm ready to get into some serious manufacturing workflows, right?
I
Rachel Dauchy: thought, I thought it was your jumper,
Shawn Coultice: my jumper. It's, it's not a full, full [00:02:00] full suit. It does not have pants attached.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, so in Canada, it has to have pants attached to be called a jumper. I thought you called what we call a hoodie, a jumper.
Shawn Coultice: And no, we call it a sweater.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, that's right, that's right.
Dan DeLong: Oh, okay, yeah, we don't want, we don't want jumpers or rompers or whatever whatever those nasty, short shorts with,
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, I romp him.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Cloud-Based Solutions vs. Desktop Solutions
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Dan DeLong: Anyway so we're going to move on from that before we before we get ourselves in, in, in trouble, but we are we've been doing a series with, with Katana for, for those that might be in open to looking from doing a feature comparison between QuickBooks desktop enterprise with with advanced inventory workflows.
And how they might translate to something that is more cloud based [00:03:00] because that is the direction that that Intuit is certainly pushing, encouraging. I'm not sure the best way to describe, to describe it. Shawn, what would you call it, as far as cloud based SAS software as a service, in the industry itself?
What would, What, what would you, what would you call it? You know, like, from, from from a a technology or a solution provider basis.
Shawn Coultice: Yeah, I would definitely call it a transition period. And and what I believe technology companies are doing is they're aligning their technology or what they're developing to enable the adoption of the best.
[00:04:00] Future technology that will be developed. And so in an on premise environment, you're not going to be able to utilize things like A. I integrations, nearly as, as easily as a company that's fully built on a cloud tech stack. And so when you look at into it or you look at Shopify or Microsoft or Katana.
We are all focused on developing solutions that are built in the cloud that are easy to use and that integrate with each other so that a business can utilize the tech stack efficiently and enable their business to adopt new technology more readily.
Katana's Cloud-Native Origins
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Dan DeLong: Did did Katana, was, was Katana born in the cloud meaning that there never was a, a desktop solution for, for Katana?
Shawn Coultice: Yeah so we, we have never had a desktop product. You know, Katana was started seven years ago [00:05:00] and the founders of our company, one of the head technology individuals, he's our CTO, Preet, he was actually on the, Development team for Skype, which was out of Estonia, and Skype was also a cloud based product.
You might remember Skype as one of the first online calling tools. And so that team and that development team transitioned to or many of them over to Katana and started developing Katana as a cloud based solution after sort of it was sold and bought by Microsoft.
Dan DeLong: Yeah, so I like some of these, service providers that were born in, in the internet.
I mean, I think that that's, that's part of the struggle with with especially QuickBooks in that a lot of, a lot of people adopted QuickBooks on a desktop. And then here comes QuickBooks online into the, into the [00:06:00] marketplace. So. They're they're a little bit unique in that they have, you know, they sit on both sides of the platform.
But the, the trend of, you know, to what you said is that, you know, they are, you know, embracing the, the advantages of a cloud based of a cloud based solution. And, you know, you're not going to get those AI AI. Integrations other, other integrations that you, that you have, on a desktop platform, you're not going to get into an assist to, to be, you know, a little banner or sidebar or flying in to to be able to do those, those things.
And.
Advantages of Real-Time Inventory Management
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Dan DeLong: You know, the, the instant [00:07:00] access that you're going to be able to leverage from data that is in the cloud that's anonymized and homogenized and those types of things, being able to do that in a desktop software is going to be increasingly challenging, you know, when, when you're, you're in that environment.
The lever that they seem to be pulling is price. Which, that is the, that is the encouragement. That that they seem to be doing that. I mean, you look at the evolution of QuickBooks online and pricing as well as the desktop pricing and it is increasingly exponentially different for the, the increases for, for, for desktop.
Which that seems to be the, the way that they're making that conversation [00:08:00] now more prevalent, right? I mean, it's, well, let's, if you want desktop, you can have it. But you're going to pay for it.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. It seems very deliberate what they're doing. And also I have to add, I mean, there are so many other reasons to want these products cloud based because like for my firm, you know, I'm definitely interested in scaling.
And so there's a lot of different things that, you know, I am automating and looking to automate more and more and more. And as a matter of fact, As we're coming into this new year, we just had a meeting this morning about, what can we automate more because now we're really starting to feel the time crunch and, you know, being able to allocate our time in a better way and.
Like one example that I'm just dealing with right now is I've got I deal with mainly inventory people and I have somebody that really wants to be [00:09:00] using a desktop product right now. But he's constantly emailing me about, just, you know, tech issues. This is freezing. This is happening and this is happening and you sort of become.
And this is one of the reasons that I sort of shied away from the desktop solutions in the very beginning a few years ago is because. I didn't necessarily have the expertise or the skills to be a desktop software troubleshooter and because my, my expertise is with the accounting. Well, but since I've jumped over to the cloud based world, I've definitely become an automation specialist linking the different SAS products together, which now I believe needs to go hand in hand with accounting and you really have to become.
Accounting specialist specifically with cloud based products. But I don't mind doing that because along with it comes the faster pace and the automation. And so [00:10:00] that's something that I want to pass along to all of my clients. And I just cannot get bogged down with the time involved with troubleshooting these desktop products.
You know, even if they've become more, you know, easily. To link into, it's just still not something that I want to spend my time doing.
Dan DeLong: Right, and and that tends to, you know, be where, where things seem to, seem to live these days, is that, okay, you, you choose one or the other but maybe, maybe not, not both.
Rachel Dauchy: People that do for sure. But but I'm definitely, you know, but I mean, you're such an expert at it that you're going to move faster than somebody like me
Dan DeLong: for sure. And, and there are, you know, you know, I, I can think of years of my life that I have [00:11:00] wasted on an H two O two error in desktop that just doesn't exist in, in, in online, right?
Because you don't have those environmental problems of windows and security and I. T. You know, getting, getting involved when you have a cloud based solution. So we want to talk with with Shawn about kind of the core functionality of.
Katana's Product and Kit Management
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Dan DeLong: Of Katana, and I think it's, shining the thing that it does really, really well is make making things right.
You know, QuickBooks with, with it, with his desktop software and the functionality in the advanced inventory flows that we've been, we've been highlighting over the past, you know, few sessions that we've had with Shawn is really good at the rear view mirror, right? Being able to If, if, if if, if your business was a car [00:12:00] and and, and you're looking at, you know, your driving said car, and you've got a windshield that you're looking at that's going forward, the rear view mirror tells you where you've been, and that's really where QuickBooks lives.
For a lot of things in inventory management is is no different. So talk a little bit Shawn about, you know, the windshield of of inventory management and how Katana helps with that.
Shawn Coultice: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the windshield analogy is a great. Sort of an out I guess description of what's happening.
It's a great analogy of an analogy. But, but for example, I think when you look at demand, so now a business in the cloud environment in a SAS based world can sell through all these different sales channels. Like, we just launched our integration into HubSpot. We just launched our integration into TikTok.
We just [00:13:00] you know, we have businesses selling through Shopify. It's good for you in Canada.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Shawn Coultice: Right.
Rachel Dauchy: We don't know what's going to happen in the future with TikTok here.
Shawn Coultice: Right, right. So you have these different ways businesses are bringing orders in. And so that's creating demand within the system.
And so now that you have this demand, you have to fulfill that demand. And so when you look at a real time solution, it's pulling in your demand in real time. So as that order is entered into Shopify. It in real time is going into Katana, and if it's a more complex inventory requirement, meaning that they have a finished good that is made up of raw materials or maybe some sort of kidding operation, you then are creating demand on multiple other items.
And so by having a real time environment, you're able to ensure that you're not only keeping in stock your finished product in a timely manner, but also the raw [00:14:00] materials that feed into that so that you can keep your lead time short, you can ensure that the amount of investment you're making into your inventory is adequate to your demand so that you're not eating up your cash flow as well as maintaining those lead times to keep Your customer satisfaction level is high.
So that all is made possible through real time inventory management that Katana provides
Dan DeLong: and so the the general and you mentioned a couple terms and I want to make sure that You know, we're we're clear on the The real world term versus the QuickBooks term, or the, or the Katana term in case maybe.
So this, this adds, you know, when you're making something and taking raw materials or components and turning them into something else. There's a functionality inside of QuickBooks called [00:15:00] an assembly item. Oh.
And, and, and crap happens. Called an assembly item, you know. And in, in, in QuickBooks, you're, you're going to be specifying what it takes to make One of those finished goods, right? And there's you know, a term of a bill of materials That that you're going to be assigning those items so that you can tell you know in this case QuickBooks how much of each is going to take to make one of those one of those things and then the whole the sole purpose is being able to tell QuickBooks that you've done that on such and such a date and QuickBooks sole purpose of that is to take the quantity and the cost and move it from one one item, one inventory item, which is your [00:16:00] components, into the finished good, right?
And not to be confused with a Group item, which is very similar in, in that, but the main difference between a group item and assembly item is it will only move the inventory at the, on a transaction that is either selling it or receiving. So what what is the, the Katana glossary, for those types of things?
So assembly item where you have a bill of materials and you're building something or a group. Which is just a combination of items at the time of sale.
Shawn Coultice: Yeah, so they would both be called products in Katana. And so the, the more general product would be something that has a bill of material associated to it.
So meaning that you are manufacturing or creating that finished product. You [00:17:00] know, it becomes an inventory item. And as a part of that, you know, manufacturing order creates your finished good, and that then can be fulfilled on a sales order. Whereas when you look at a kidded item that is what you're talking, referring to as a group's product.
So by that, when you sell that kit, what happens is automatically the inventory is reduced. Relative to all of the components that make up that kit, which could be raw materials or products that you make, but it's a bundle of different, different goods that are being consumed automatically when that sales order is fulfilled.
And so that would be what we would refer to as a kit.
Dan DeLong: Got it. So so if we, we, we need to have like a, a, a QuickBooks to Katana glossary.
Rachel Dauchy: Well, and then in QuickBooks Online, [00:18:00] it's called a bundle.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah. Just to add more complexity, not even on the same platform can they call this the same thing.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And then those bundles never involve an assembly item. They're always a finished good kitted into. A bigger finished good.
Dan DeLong: Yeah, yeah, QuickBooks Online doesn't even have this concept of building things, right? That's why we've always kind of talked about it, Rachel, as a reseller option for inventory management where I buy stuff and I sell that same stuff.
I don't do anything to that stuff. Before I sell it. So
Manufacturing Orders and Planning
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Shawn Coultice: And just on a, I, Dan, I wanted to just highlight a point you made around desktops sole purpose in converting sort of a, the, the value of materials into the finished product. And I think it was really interesting how you worded that, because when we look at Katana's sort of reason [00:19:00] for existence, it's not just.
accounting for movement of inventory, it's providing value to the business owner. And what I'm trying to get, get out there is it helps them manage their inventory more efficiently. It helps them automate their purchasing processes and it helps them track jobs through production and schedule their shop floor.
And so What I'm what you kind of were when my mind went to in that respect was you know, the QuickBooks desktop is an excellent solution for sort of the accounting arm of the business, and it does a great job in that. But when we look at the value proposition of Katana plus QBO, it really is now starting to offer value to the overall business from an operational efficiency perspective.
And I think that's a big difference that, that you sometimes might overlook as an accountant when you're comparing QuickBooks desktop to QuickBooks online [00:20:00] and, and other applications that would integrate with QBO.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Cause that's, that's definitely been one of the, Short sights or shortcomings.
There we go. That's the word I was looking for of of QuickBooks desktop is that, you know, the people that, okay, well, I need to plan right for for these manufacturing runs or building things or accounting for waste which is, which is typically, you know, depending on what it is that that they're making.
They, you normally, you know, unless you're dealing with, you know, hard goods where it's screws and bolts and nuts you know, things like materials that don't get wasted it's, it's really great at, but, you know, accounting for, you know, time or labor or those types of things, which you can, you can assign [00:21:00] those things in your bill of materials, but it's all based off of close guesstimates, right?
But with, with something like Katana, you can actually. live in the product, you know, adjust things based off of a certain priority. Whereas QuickBooks, you're just saying, well, this is the things that I like to build. It'll tell me, what I have on hand and what I could build. But as far as integrating that with.
Work at work on hand like things to do today That's where things are a little bit Shortsighted in as far as QuickBooks is concerned because you you really can't plan Based off of that because you can only tell QuickBooks at one time. This is what I'm building today And this is what I could build and [00:22:00] it'll tell you based on that one particular item so talk a little bit Shawn about the The, the, the planning and you know, real live adjustments that you can make on that.
I don't know if you want to share, share your screen, you know, to actually show, because I think that's the, that is the really cool thing about, about Katana because you have a, you, you have a section called plan, right. Which allows you to be able to do those, those types of things. I'm going to share.
Rachel Dauchy: You know, I just want to wait a minute before he wants to see
Dan DeLong: me. No, let's let
Rachel Dauchy: me just say to you that normally, like if, you know, you're looking for something outside of the traditional accounting, I mean, even just five, six years ago, you were looking at spending a hundred thousand dollars, you know, on a, on a really expensive desktop.
You know, solution [00:23:00] for manufacturing and tracking inventory and doing something like that. This is drastically change that. So now you have, you know, sort of a mini E. R. P. type of functionality. You don't have to have all the bells and whistles of something, you know, like SAP or whatever. And, but you can now utilize these tools at a fraction of the price and now with more people opting to, maybe I'll just manufacture this here instead of maybe shipping it overseas.
Which now we may see a lot more of that coming here in the United States because of tariffs. So, it's what I like about it is now I get to have conversations with business owners of consider something like this. It's really cost effective and You can get the job done and you don't need what you used to have to purchase.
Yeah, absolutely. And I,
Shawn Coultice: I mean, I've been in the industry for about the last 15 years selling some of those big expensive on premise [00:24:00] solutions. And I look at the customers that we would service and implement. And when I look at what Katana can provide from a value proposition perspective the return on investment is is there so much quicker, like within the first couple of months, like the average customer is up and running on Katana in about six weeks.
You know, comparing that to you know, a fully RP implementation, you're looking at maybe 12 months. And so when you're looking at this, You know, multiple 100, 000 cash outlay to actually just get the system up and running. It's really difficult to justify that type of investment to kind of gain some operational efficiency or support your business and scaling, whereas Katana, you're adding on to your already in place tech stack often through those native integrations.
Katana's Integration and Automation
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Shawn Coultice: And so One thing I'll just highlight when we're looking at the system here, so I'm, you know, I'm logged in through a browser and we can see all these different sales orders that are listed out here. And if we go all the way over to the [00:25:00] right, I can see where those sales orders were coming from. I've got a bunch coming in here from Shopify.
I've actually some coming in directly from HubSpot. And so you look at a multiple all. business that's selling through multiple channels today, right? They've got their B to B operations that are likely being, you know, managed in some form of a CRM tool like HubSpot and that sales rep goes and closes that order.
That's going to automatically then populated to Katana. And right there I can say, Hey, do I have that inventory available? You know, within HubSpot, they add the ability to see those different products and what that inventory level is. So there's that real time sync of two SaaS based products, HubSpot Katana's updating in real time.
How much inventory do you have available? And can that sales rep go and close a big deal with their, their, their client or customer, or when can they get that by? And those are questions that would be difficult for a rep to answer on the road, but this is something that [00:26:00] Katana enables directly through that CRM system.
And then next to that, you can see your ingredients. What do I have in stock that I make up those finished goods and have the production orders been put in place? So this is a view of all of your demand of sales orders that are coming in through those sales channels. And right here, I can maybe prioritize those.
So maybe, maybe I know that these HubSpot orders are really important because those are my wholesale orders. There may be more dollar value related to them. So I can drag and drop that Burt's sports store order all the way to the top of the list. And so that's going to prioritize that across my entire solution.
And so if we dive into that order individually, I can see that I've got a hockey stick on this order. Of course there's a quantity of two, and we can see
Dan DeLong: You'd have
Shawn Coultice: to
Dan DeLong: turn in your Canadian
Shawn Coultice: card
Dan DeLong: if you didn't.
Shawn Coultice: That's right. That's right. And so right here, I could go and create a manufacturing order for that hockey stick.
And if I wanted to find [00:27:00] out some more details about it, I can do that right here. So maybe I want to go in and quickly look at. What this hockey stick is made out of. So maybe I've got a picture of the hockey stick so we can see, okay, here's a picture of, our, our Bauer carbon fiber hockey stick. And then maybe I've got my, my bill of materials that this hockey stick is made out of.
So I can see in production, it's made of carbon fiber, Kevlar, polyurethane, and I can see sort of the weight of each one. So those are all the materials I'm going to need in house, and then here's the production process that that job's going to go through, or that item needs to go through in order to be manufactured.
So, you know, from heat all the way through to quality inspection. So now that I have the demand, and I already have the bill of material and production operations set up within the system. If I go back to this order here, I have the ability to go and create my manufacturing order directly to this job, or I can consolidate that from all the demand within the [00:28:00] system and create my manufacturing order to stock.
So let's just create it to order here and show how we would generate that manufacturing order. I'm laughing to
Rachel Dauchy: myself because I thought it was made out of wood.
Shawn Coultice: Well, hockey sticks used to be made out of wood. Oh, they did. Okay, okay.
Rachel Dauchy: So I'm not totally out of my mind.
Shawn Coultice: But you know, I started using a carbon fiber hockey stick probably a good 20 years ago.
So, they've been around for a while.
Rachel Dauchy: I'm not far behind on my technology.
Shawn Coultice: Okay, so now I've just gone in and created a make to order manufacturing order, meaning that I am creating my manufacturing order directly related to that sales order. So it's a one to one relationship between the sales order and the manufacturing order.
Are
Rachel Dauchy: these designated at the item level if it's a made to order item or not? Or are you just creating a manufacturing order and designating it in that? You
Shawn Coultice: can do, you can do it [00:29:00] either way and most businesses need that flexibility. So in some cases they'll go and manufacture to order and others they'll go to the stock screen here.
Intro: Okay.
Shawn Coultice: And they'll say, okay, for my products. I want to go and see all the items that I'm short on. So right now I'm listing out all the different manufactured items and I can see, for example, this hockey stick. I've got 17 that I'm low on. So I can go and say, I want to go and create a manufacturing order for the 17 quantity.
And now it's a make to stock order. So it's consolidating the demand. And you can see where that demand is coming from. So if I look at the committed quantity, this is the cool part about sort of that real time nature of the system. We're creating our manufacturing order to stock based on all the demand that we have in the system.
So how many do I currently have in stock? What's expected based on open manufacturing orders already in the system? That's the two I literally just put in that make to order job. [00:30:00] And then we've got the quantity committed. So there's the 19 pieces that are have demand against them from the other orders that are in the system.
And then if I wanted to maintain a certain quantity of inventory, you can set up a safety stock level. So the overall calculation here is that I need to go out and manufacture another 17 to fulfill the demand that I currently have within my system.
Dan DeLong: And then it's you can, you can, so there's a time aspect of, of, of making all of this.
Can you build in those, those lead times so that you're not short one on getting the raw materials and two, making those, those actual finished goods. Can you do that in Katana? You can,
Shawn Coultice: yeah. So there's two ways that you can look at doing that. So the more simple way is that you just set up these sort of safety stock levels or sometimes it might be referred to as Kanban, [00:31:00] right?
So you've got a minimum quantity that you want to keep in stock at all time and that's your safety stock quantity that once it reaches that it triggers you to go and create a manufacturing order to replenish that inventory. So it would be sort of a can ban manufacturing system. The other would be sort of forecasting based on that lead time in production that you set up within the system, and that would be over on the planning side.
So in our planning or forecasting tool, you can look at individual products that you're forecasting out and based on your planned sales as well as demand within the system, it's going to identify what you need to go and manufacture based on that future demand. So to fulfill that future demand, and that's where you're going to jump over to the replenishment screen, and it's going to show you all the items that you need to go either to manufacture or buy based on your future planned demand within the system, looking at [00:32:00] lead time as well as when you need that inventory by,
Dan DeLong: you know, that's, that's definitely a windshield, a windshield thing as opposed to a rear view mirror, because that sort of thing just does not exist.
Thanks. useably inside, inside of QuickBooks. Now you could probably, you know, work within some kind of reporting function or, you know, something like that to be able to, you know, get, get some insights into that, but to to mass order or mass make these things, you know, to, you know, to pivot.
Evaluating Software and Future Developments
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Dan DeLong: If you needed to, you know, the real time being able to adjust the various priorities, I think is a, is a huge huge thing now Rachel, in your experience, and I hate to, you know, bring up something that's not Katana, but in your experience of other tools that are out there, does this, is this [00:33:00] a common?
Solution for for other ones that are out there. Or is this something that's unique to Katana?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, I mean, yeah, and that's why I'm excited that they have it because it's almost necessary. You have to have that. But what I was going to ask you is Dan, because you're such an expert with desktop. What do you think?
Do you think desktop might or enterprise might? Develop something like this or or do you think this is
Dan DeLong: it? They're adding inside of inside of QuickBooks is like what took you so long type of feature like the last major update was with regards to inventory management is dates, expiration dates on lot and serial numbers, right?
Like that was a couple of years ago, in the traceability. And when we talked to Shawn about the traceability of keeping track of your inventory based on serial [00:34:00] numbers or lot numbers, dates is a, is a pretty. necessary thing.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And like for planning, it seems. Yeah. Especially if you're
Dan DeLong: dealing with food or pharmaceuticals, right?
Like you do not want to be selling expired food or. I mean, that's, you can't
Rachel Dauchy: even, I mean, that would, that would, that would just immediately make you not be able to do that in, in that. But that's a really interesting point though, because. Did I just say my own point was really interesting? I'm just saying, I think it's really interesting because I'm
Dan DeLong: smart.
Rachel Dauchy: I think it's really interesting because when you're talking to somebody that's in desktop, they're going to ask. And I have had people ask. Maybe we'll add this. And like, I have to say, I don't think so, you know, but what do I know? So that's another thing is that you almost, as somebody kind of selling [00:35:00] them on different features, because I talk to business owners all the time now about, well, what do you think?
And what do you recommend? And I just always have to sort of get down to the nitty gritty of what are they doing? And it involves a lot of questions and a lot of, digging now. And, you know, from mistakes I've made in the past of oh, I didn't ask that now. I better ask that. So, you know, it brings forth a lot of conversation and, and I almost always now find myself saying, like, you know, I, I can't answer that question if it's going to go away, but I mean, the prices are being hyped up.
So, yeah. Why don't we just move you into a cloud based scenario now? And that way, you know, everything is set up correct from the beginning, you can scale. Those are really the conversations I'm having with people and it really does never involve let's, let's just stay in desktop and wait and see what happens.
Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And I, I, I think the the, the, the, the businesses that I really [00:36:00] feel for is the, the people who bought into QuickBooks online or adopted a QuickBooks online thinking that it does the same things that, that, that, that the desktop software does realizing, Oh no, it's a little short sighted.
I'm going to move to desktop and then only to find that into it is making it more difficult for them to stay in desktop. And, and that's my
Rachel Dauchy: favorite people. And I, sometimes I do get people asking me that frequently. Oh, I just got. And it turns out I can't do these things. And I'm like, funny, you should ask, I have the perfect thing for you.
So those, those people I love because usually they don't, you know, like, you know, like you just said, they are considering like, Oh shoot, I guess this means I have to go back to desktop, but you know, I love having these conversations with them about you know, the possibilities of what they can do [00:37:00] because there's endless now.
It's really cool.
Shawn Coultice: Yeah. And, and I totally, I totally think that it's when you look at evaluating any sort of move where you're investing in, in anything, but particularly software, I think an important aspect is looking at the speed at which technology is developing. What is the historical rate that that solution has been coming out with new releases?
I think that's a really important thing when you're evaluating software. And so, just to kind of give you guys an idea, if we go to our website in Katana and we look at product updates. Yeah, now
Rachel Dauchy: this is cool. I feel like it's constantly. Yeah,
Shawn Coultice: we're, we're constantly building, you know we, we just released our integration marketplace.
With that comes HubSpot and then a whole [00:38:00] other list of, of third party integrations that we've built into. And then we've got multi location operations to help Shopify stores and other multi location businesses. Manage and sell their inventory and fulfill based on where they have inventory available and where it's closest to the ship to address.
You know, we are utilizing A. I. Directly within the solution so that businesses can be more efficient when they are entering orders into the system and then analyze bottlenecks utilizing the A. I. That's built into Katana. But really, that's just setting the foundation. Of having a technology stack that will be able to adopt AI when it's really ready to make an impact on businesses.
So today the AI impact I would say is fairly minimal, but it will be in the next six to 12 months, much more significant and is the foundation of your technology stack going to be able to adopt that AI. [00:39:00] And if you're not on a cloud based solution that is thinking forward around that, you're likely going to struggle to adopt the newest technology.
That's going to make the biggest impact on your business. And so those are things that I think you need to evaluate when you're looking at a solution is. How are they releasing new things? And then when you look at what Dan was referring to in sort of the foundation of Katana on the manufacturing side of things, you know, we have that Burt sports store order that we put in the system that I prioritized as number one.
Now that's on my manufacturing screen. So you look at a business that's scaling and they've got maybe started 10 employees. Now they're looking at 20 to. 40 employees. You now to need to differentiate tasks between so many more people that excel and QuickBooks desktop just won't enable them to communicate effectively and plan out their overall operations.
And that's what Katana will allow them to do. So we have unlimited users as well in the [00:40:00] system. So that really helps ensure that everyone within the organization has their hands on the solution so that they all can work more efficiently together. And so the idea here is now that we've got this manufacturing order, it's prioritized.
It's at the top of the list. We can go and assign these out to operators so we can say, Hey, for this heat operation, I want Shawn to work on this one. I want Jason to run the second operation and that's then going to automatically assign those jobs out to the shop floor. And so they're going to see, look, that just happened in real time.
I've now prioritized Shawn to be working on this hockey stick job. So right in that hockey stick job, I can go and see, okay, what do I need to manufacture? Do I have the carbon fiber, the Kevlar, the polyurethane I need to go and start that job. And I'm going to go and hit start. And now it's tracking my time on that job.
So it's really connecting the demand that we put into the system. To the manufacturing order we had to create to now scheduling that out on the shop floor, [00:41:00] communicating that with the employee that's going to run the job, making sure they have the materials to go and run that job and know exactly any other specific informations relative to the other operations that needs to go through or notes specific to it.
And now we're tracking the exact cost of that job. So you think of the full gambit of the demand through to order fulfillment. We're really capturing a lot of that. Creating way more efficiency and communication throughout the business and then having this really accurate cost of goods sold of that product.
So a business owner can go and say, Hey, how profitable am I? What sales channel is making the me the most money? And where do I want to really invest further in my business? And so I think Katana is just really a step forward when we look at how technology can help a business be a lot more efficient.
Rachel Dauchy: Unlimited users is a really significant thing. Not everybody has that at all. So that, that we notice that too when we have to [00:42:00] assign more users. discovered that and that, I thought that was
Dan DeLong: really significant. You always want to look at the, the, the pricing
Rachel Dauchy: structure
Dan DeLong: of, of the, of, of these solutions.
Conclusion and Upcoming Topics
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Dan DeLong: And one last thing I wanted to touch on with you, Shawn, before we end, because we are running a little late already.
Because we have such great conversations with you. We just keep chatting away.
Rachel Dauchy: No, it's because every single time we chat with them, they come up with something new. There's a new feature.
Dan DeLong: When when you're, when you're, and we Rachel and I have had this discussion on our e commerce, fundamentals workshops that we've been doing is that when you're deciding What your source of truth is for your, for your inventory there are so many other workflows that are now impacted by, by that decision, right?
So everything that you're selling now [00:43:00] needs to be talking to your inventory management solution and everything that you're receiving also needs to talk to those, that, that inventory solution as well. So how does, how do those workflows get impacted or can they be augmented through, through Katana or do you now, okay, everything that you sell or every, every sales process that you do have now has to talk to, Katana or, or be a part of the Katana workflows because you have these end to end solutions or end to end workflows, which, you know, are, is, is Katana, Katana.
How do you pay for these these things that you're purchasing or is that now like where, where's the baton being passed in, in Katana or is it, well, we, we, we've got everything that we need to do here in, inside of Katana.[00:44:00]
Shawn Coultice: Yeah. So I think Katana is going to be your main source of truth for sure from an inventory perspective. So incoming and outgoing, all of those inventory transactions are going to in some way be communicated To and with Katana, be it through our native integrations from a demand perspective with something like Shopify and HubSpot from a purchasing perspective you know, we might be sending over the, the purchase order and the bill over to QuickBooks online.
And on the sales side, we're going to be communicating the cost of goods sold and revenue over to QuickBooks online as well. And so the baton passing happens on those sort of. Incoming and outgoing transactions. And so when you have your purchase order workflow in Katana, you know, we're buying that material based on the demand within the system and the inventory levels you want to maintain, you're then creating your PO, sending it off to your supplier, [00:45:00] and then you're going to go and create that bill.
over in QuickBooks Online. And that's going to allow you to then receive and pay out that to receive your bill from your supplier, pay that out to your supplier, supplier through QuickBooks Online. And very similar on the sales order side. So you're going to be sending over if it's a B2B environment, that invoice.
If it's a, if it's a B2C environment, high volume Shopify orders, and you're consolidating all this. Sort of sales across multiple channels, you might utilize something from a revenue recognition standpoint sorry like a cinder where you're, you're consolidating that and making more simple entries over into, into QuickBooks online, but that cost of goods sold in your inventory transaction will QuickBooks online automatically once you ship out those orders from Katana.
So when you look at it, That's a
Rachel Dauchy: big deal. That's very cool.
Shawn Coultice: Yeah. And so when you look [00:46:00] at where the baton has passed, you, we, we see Katana as that source of truth for your inventory, and that's, what's going to update all your sales channel as far as how much you have in stock to sell. And it's going to bring in that demand when you do sell that to sort of bring down your inventory levels.
And then when those transactions are happening over on QuickBooks Online, that's going to increase and decrease the value of inventory you have in stock. As well as on the sales side, it's going to increase your cost of goods sold while bringing down your, your your inventory value overall. So it's going to be making those journal entry leaks.
Entry transactions on that sales order when you ship it out.
Rachel Dauchy: You know what one thing that Dan and I, like sometimes we, we talk to these clients about the syncing and like, for example, this is this IMS, it's meant to sync everything. So you don't have to use a syncing tool, [00:47:00] but you can. So like, let's say you want Katana to bring over most of the thing, but you've got, you know, these, this, you know, they're also selling on this one platform.
And for some reason you just might want to sync those to Katana to QuickBooks. Using something like cinder again, like your example for some consolidated entry or something like that, but being able to still grab the cogs from Katana. So that's my, that's what I love. I love the customization of the different integrations that I can do.
And again, that makes me talking to my client like, Oh, you know, you could do like this, you could do like that. And it just enables me. To present as more of an expert in the matter and it's just I really like that flexibility I don't have to have everything coming through Katana, but I can if I want.
Dan DeLong: Yeah, that's a that's a really good point I'm gonna [00:48:00] put over top of Shawn. I'm sorry Stand up there The QR code If you want to learn more about Katana, you can snap, the QR code there and and, and take a look at that. And if you're watching it on YouTube, you can pause it so that we can continue our conversation with, with Shawn.
There we go. We'll get it out of his face. I meant to put it in the corner, but you know, time, time and opportunity didn't allow me to, to make that QR code. So we we, we made a, Shawn, Shawn, Shawn Shawn obstacle Shawn, Shawn stickle, so definitely give, give them, give them a you know, take a little deeper dive.
I mean, you can take a look [00:49:00] at the, the prior two QB Power Hour, workshop Wednesdays. I'm getting my webinars confused, of the different side by side comparisons we had with with QuickBooks. And, Shawn, we appreciate you joining us on this series that we are now wrapping up. And I feel sad that we won't be having.
More conversations with John. We can
Rachel Dauchy: just continue to talk about inventory in perpetuity. That's fine with me.
Shawn Coultice: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure to chat with you guys and have Katana be a part of your education format for accountants and bookkeepers to help keep them informed about technologies that might help their clients run their businesses more effectively.
And as things are always changing you know, and we're continuing to develop the solution. I look forward to [00:50:00] utilizing this platform to educate the audience and how Katana might be able to further help their businesses and their clients.
Dan DeLong: Awesome. Well, thanks again for everyone joining us today on the workshop Wednesday, and we'll see you next time where we're going to be talking with with Ted from Makers Hub about using and leveraging A.
I. In accounting. So we talked a little bit with Shawn about how A. I. Is being utilized in some of these tools. But how does how do accountants use A. I. As a tool? To, to help to help with the elevate their clients. So we'll have that conversation next week on the workshop and we hope everybody has a great day.
Thanks a lot.
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