Integration with accounting packages?

Dave

SPFG, Supreme Picture Framing God
Joined
Jun 11, 2004
Posts
13,355
Loc
Edwardsburg, MI
I know enough to be dangerous having lived in a Xeonix (Unix) world washing Windows and being on the "bleeding edge" when I operated an Apple based output "Service Bureau". Sometimes a little knowledge is better than too much!

Anyway...question...why don't any of the industry specific software packages integrate with QuickBooks or another accounting software program? Is our industry too small to warrant the licensing or other costs? Seems like the first to offer integration would have a leg up on their competitors.

Maybe their is someone out there who can remedy my ignorance.

Dave Makielski
 
Hi Dave

One could probably extract the data from any POS, using another program to go between them. (MS Access, etc)

However, would you want EVERY transaction in your quicken - or just daily totals? Quickbooks would certainly handle all the details, and is designed to "run the show" (for a generic business, not a specialty task like a frame shop)

We use Quicken, but intentionally do it manually so we're forced to double to check everything. We enter the daily cash, visa/mc, discover, and amex BATCH totals - as they'll come back to us on the bank statement. (for recon at the end of the month) We also keep a paper log of cash and checks removed from the drawer/deposited. (contents of each cash batch) All bills are paid through quicken, which tracks the deposits and checks.

Is this how you're doing it?

I've found that the software vendors are very flexible if enough people want a feature. If this is something enough people want, and it's practical, let your vendor know. Personally, i like the way i'm doing it now. It only takes 2-3 minutes per day and forces me to re-check the numbers.

How do others do this? Interesting topic!

Mike
 
There is a feature to integrate EZ Framer with QB, I just haven't done it. I too, like Mike enter the sale separately because I just don't want all that info in QB.

Of course, there is another part of our business that can't really be entered into framing pos, even with the "other sales" features. I just need more detail on those, so I have a way to track both sides of the business while using QB to "oversee" it all.

Betty
 
QB integration appears to be easier said than done. Just the toying that I did with it a few years back, transferring data was easy. But if you wanted the data to appear in a QB report, that was a different. An example was Sales Tax, you could transfer sales and tax data; only to find that the Tax data would not appear on a Sales Tax Liability report unless QB performed the calculation. One of these days, someone will get a user friendly interface working.

We've gone from manually entering each entry to recently only inputing the monthly total gross sales, gross discounts, gross non-taxable sales into a single QB invoice. Customer payments are still input individually into a single customer account named..... POS Customer.....

For me, a "nice to have" option would be a POS report that printed a QB bank deposit slip for cash and checks in the exact same format as QB.
 
I am with Mike, in that I use a "go between" to post a single daily summary to QB. By doing so I have some extra reports. I like the idea of only one transaction vs many for cleaner QB reports.

Daily, monthly, yearly comparisons of daily and monthly accum. sales figures vs last year in a day to day view (Monday vs Monday last year). I also show an "index" of sales. It is an old retail term of percent to last years sales for the same period.

Average $ per sales transaction.

Sales tax figures to complete my State of Michigan sales tax returns. We have to break down tax exempt sales by catagory.

sales charts going back to 1984 to show averages as noted above in a single chart.

etc.
 
Dave I sent you an email about this, but SpecialtySoft has an interface to QB. It didn't handle Deposits the way I want to. (I've posted on this in other threads, so unless someone is interested, I'll forgoe it here.) It also didn't transfer the "sub-total" numbers of the Credit Cards the way they come in on my bank statement. (Like Mike mentioned for ease of balancing at end of month.) I eventually figured out how to reconfigure the POS so they would be recorded in the "batch" fashion I needed, but never quite got the depoits to work.

But, I mentioned it to SSS and they have a new version with a new and improved interface. I have a copy for beta testing reasons, but have been too busy framing to try it out.

I want to setup a testbed QB db and run against that so I don't corrupt my live system if I'm not happy with it.

For now, I print reports each night and transfer the data manually similar to others that have posted. less than 10 minutes at close of day and that includes daily backup. It's pretty quick if you develop a routine.

If I can get the QB interface transfer to do what I do manually, I'll run it at the end of each day. I am more interested in reducing errors that I find at the end of the month occasionally than in actually saving time.
 
I'm just buying FrameReady from Molly in Spokane and transfering the license with update to V5.0 and a subscription. Haven't received yet. I'm also new to QuickBooks and feeling my way through its fairly easy interface.

The system I used to use when I had three locations, stocked 35,000 items and tracked close to 60,000 SKU's was a closed Unix based system called TRIAD. It's the same one Ace Hardware and some other national chains use. VERY sophisticated and expensive. Just ask Bill Cavanaugh from C.C.Lowell in Worcester, MA.

I'm elated at the low cost of support and software costs with QuickBooks and our industry specific software packages...and...new concept...I don't have to buy every piece of hardware from the software developer! TRIAD was well over a $ 50,000 system and ran close to $ 2000.00 per month, yes, PER MONTH for support.

I see real value to integrating the accounting software with framer's software. Having all data accessible has many advantages and memory is so cheap and processor speeds so fast compared to just a few years ago. As newer versions of each
software come out the ability to tailor reports and charts, graphs, etc., become easier and easier.

I worked for a while with a two system set-up and the amount of manual information I had to enter to get some reports I wanted would have required a full time systems person.

Now, my life was more complicated then and I had to crunch numbers...now I enjoy pounding nails in beautiful wood...but I still know I need good, accurate accounting information that means something to me without having to do macros in spreadsheet programs...yuk!

I would rather spend two or three minutes a day looking at reports tailored the way I want them and boiled down to the information I want and enjoy seeing than doing data entry.

If one spends 3 minutes a day doing the cross entries times, say 300 days a year...that's 900 minutes or 15 hours a year. I think in reality it takes longer and a well designed system will not make the errors that we weak mortals do in the entry process.

Say our time is worth $ 30.00 an hour. We could save $ 450.00 a year just in data entry time...not to mention all the other advantages. Would you be willing to pay another $500 - 1000 for your software package if it could seamlessly integrate. I would at the drop of a stick. Would that amount pay the developement/licensing cost?
shrug.gif


Just putting forth some thoughts...again, I may sound like I know what I'm talking about, but in reality my knowledge base is just from experience using other systems. I have no idea of the practicality of our situation.

I really am not an egg head number crunching kinda guy. In fact I hate the accounting processes, but do enjoy the information that foams to the top when it's available.

Dave Makielski
Makielski Art Shop
Edwardsburg, MI
574-532-6412 (cell)

"Pull together...get farther...faster".
 
FrameReady is written on the Filemaker Pro database program which is a very powerful program. I don't know a freckle's worth of useful information about FMP but I'll bet that there is an accounting program written on the FMP database that could be very easily integrated into FrameReady.

Dave,

You sound like you know enough about machine language and compiling programs to ask some intelligent questions. Why not call Bert DeRoo, the author of FrameReady at 1-888-281-3303 and pick his brain about it? There may be an accounting program already alive that could be integrated directly into FR with little or no tweaking.

Framerguy
 
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