I have a client with a retail store looking to start a website, and I am of course recommending cs-cart. She is growing fast and I expect that she will be doing wholesale as well (she manufactures her items).
We can handle integrating her retail and web business pretty much any way we want because she does not currently use a POS or track inventory in quickbooks.
She has a merchant account with her bank, but can get out of the contract.
What would you recommend to keep her inventory in cs-cart and total inventory in line? I don't want her to totally lose her mind when she is selling in her store, in bulk to wholesale (and I told her, encourage wholesale customers to order online using the wholesale customer group or at least manually enter the orders yourself in CS-Cart), and online.
I don't think that real-time inventory is that important but I want to recommend a process. I know it can get out of hand really fast.
Years ago I tried a couple of programs on my own CS-Cart store that were supposed to synch my inventory with quickbooks and failed miserably at both, just gave up.
Thanks!
Cscart is great for retail sales. Wholesale is also possible but as wholesale clients have different needs, this requires quite a bit of modification. For wholesale it is very important to have a reasonable indication of inventory because wholesale clients have their clients waiting and failure to deliver as indicated means stress on all sides. Quickbooks is quite limited. It's better to connect a full crm erp solution. I am looking into sage.
[quote name='lauraluc' timestamp='1391886189' post='177105']
I have a client with a retail store looking to start a website, and I am of course recommending cs-cart. She is growing fast and I expect that she will be doing wholesale as well (she manufactures her items).
We can handle integrating her retail and web business pretty much any way we want because she does not currently use a POS or track inventory in quickbooks.
She has a merchant account with her bank, but can get out of the contract.
What would you recommend to keep her inventory in cs-cart and total inventory in line? I don't want her to totally lose her mind when she is selling in her store, in bulk to wholesale (and I told her, encourage wholesale customers to order online using the wholesale customer group or at least manually enter the orders yourself in CS-Cart), and online.
I don't think that real-time inventory is that important but I want to recommend a process. I know it can get out of hand really fast.
Years ago I tried a couple of programs on my own CS-Cart store that were supposed to synch my inventory with quickbooks and failed miserably at both, just gave up.
Thanks!
[/quote]
We will be using webgility to sync inventory with Intuit QBPOS but we are not quite live yet so I can't speak to effectiveness of webgility. We will be using ONLY the sync inventory feature. CS-Cart Quantity will sync with QBPOS Available Qty. If using Quick Books POS there is a simpler option which we considered, which is to upgrade to multi-store version and add another seat, then treat the web site as simply a different store. POS multi-store lets you move inventory from one store to another. If real time syncing of the web store is required something like webgility will still be needed for the web store, but why would you need it when you have a “set it and forget it” separate web store? Just use QBPOS to adjust your stock level between the two stores whenever you need to manage the levels and then do a two-field CSV export (item number and available quantity) from your QBPOS web store and use it to update your CS-Cart Quantity field. This process eliminates webgility or any third party sync application is not fully automated but almost is, and that's enough for any small business situation I can think of.
Another alternative with QBPOS would be to roll your own (or outsource) a syncing app using the Intuit POS API. Several companies here that I know of could do that and it shouldn't be hard or expensive.
Yet another path with Intuit QBPOS or QB Financial would be to purchase an available third party ODBC driver (low cost). I forget the company name but they produce drivers for both Intuit products, and the drivers come in a web version which could allow you to connect directly to CS-Cart. Shouldn't be expensive to go that route with CS-Cart or one of their partners.
I use Sage line 50 pro to handle all inventory, invoices, ordering and such for our warehouse/shop. We completely have to enter every web order manually and as these only count for about 15% of our orders it isnt too bad at the moment. We are looking at various solutions now to handle an epos system that will also hopefully import direct from CS cart.
Sage 50 is great but just doesnt support CS at the moment. I am hoping that will be able to change with v4 and api s etc
John
Thanks to all of you for your thoughtful comments.
I don't think real-time syncing is necessary. I don't want to over-design this thing. I just want to recommend a process so she does not go crazy.
P-Pharma, you have a good point that it would be nice for wholesale customers to be able to see inventory. When I had my own store I used the wholesale customer group with special discounts and it worked great, but them seeing inventory probably would have caused them to buy sooner and not dilly-dally.
I may suggest to go ahead and use Quickbooks POS and manually enter web orders at the end of the day. If things really grow she can probably upgrade to QB POS Multi-Store and do what merchantman suggested.
Any other suggestions?
We use LightSpeed POS in our retail store [url=“One-Stop Cloud-Based Point of Sale (POS) System | Lightspeed”]One-Stop Cloud-Based Point of Sale (POS) System | Lightspeed then sync our inventory form the store to CS-Cart through the API.
Webgility seems to be about the only solution between QB and most carts like CS Cart.
It works pretty well to process orders from CS Cart into QB. We ship from QB Ship manager and also use Ship Rush for FedEx/USPS as it can do international orders. Webgility also does pretty easy syncing - but I would only do it from QB > CS Cart and not the other way around, as Webgility creates some inventory adjustments that can really screw things up.
It takes quite a bit of setup and linking products. We have our QB in a lot of sub categories and the store layout is different. It can be buggy too and their tech support, while eager, can drive you crazy with long sessions.
It's like any automated system, it takes maintenance to keep it going. I do wish we had a simpler system, rather than 3-4 programs, but I haven't seen it yet.
Jack
We are currently implementing Webgility and using the QB Inventory Module and have modified the administration panel to allow users to take orders at a 'brick and mortar' store. It has taken quite a bit of programming effort to get the administration panel in place. I've used Simtech, FDGWeb, alt team, and myself for programming resources. I just couldn't have done without the extra help in a reasonable amount of time. We still have some work to do on the admin side, however I like the idea of less databases to worry about, especially for reporting.
Webgility has been a pretty good choice so far. Their staff is very helpful and tries to resolve your issues. Their product is pretty nice so far. I'm sure there will be some bumps along the way but pretty interesting thus far.