My company is in the process of developing new websites for our locations. We intend these sites to generate revenue via banner ads and the like. Here’s the question: How do you - from an accounting standpoint - track the available inventory and the sales? We would need to know inventory so the sales department knows what is available, and also to know our “fill rate”, if you will, so we can adjust pricing as needed. We also need to be able to track the revenue for monthly income statements and budgeting.
My boss asked if QuickBooks is something that can handle that, but my kneejerk reaction is no. Does the industry have a standard accounting package they use?
For people who run their own revenue generating sites, how do you do it? What do you recommend? Are there any particular bugaboos to consider?
There’s a myriad of ways to go about this. You can actually tie in Quickbooks with a pre-packaged Web solution (like GoDaddy’s storefront) or you can build your own integration tools or you can hire it out. That’s if you want to run your entire business on Quickbooks.
You can also go the other way, budget-wise, and hire a company to do a complete integration of a new site with your existing inventory/ordering/receipt/packing system. It’s done every day, but it’s expensive.
It really depends on your budget, the size of your company and inventory, and how much customization you need. At some point you get to a level where it’s more expensive to work around an existing application (like make Quickbooks customizations) than it is to pay to have something built from the ground up.
And, there’s many many ideas that fall inbetween off-the-shelf and completely custom.
If you’re interested in being sold a complete solution, you can PM me. You’d probably be best off getting quotes for solutions from different local companies, though, as bosses tend to like to work face-to-face with whoever is doing work for them.
What has your web site developer said about integration, btw? Did you hire that job out or is it just small updates you’re doing internally?
Zipper, my apologies. I forgot I started this thread. Didn’t intend to post and then disappear.
Thank you for your insights. I’ve bookmarked your response. My boss has decided to go with QuickBooks.