Ask the Accountant…
Question: Do you have any suggestions for a good way to track orders?
Answer: Our industry is complicated, and each order involves many steps and details. I used to track orders manually—step by step for each order. Today there are several automated solutions, and recently, SAGE Online has added a Project Management feature to their system.
The SAGE Project Management feature allows you to create a project and track 15 fields. You can remove any of the steps included that are not pertinent to your orders, add a few steps of your own and rearrange the order to match your internal system.
All your projects show on the Project Screen, color coded to indicate their current process status. And you have the ability to drill down to see more details, tracking and notes.
For each step in your process, you can designate the status as:
- Incomplete (adding a due date that is easily visible)
- Complete (showing the next due date by hovering over the block)
- N/A (Not applicable to this order)
At one glance, each project is clearly visible showing what needs to be done next and the due date for each. As the step is completed, the status is changed to keep the process status up to date.
The SAGE Project Management feature is an effective system to keep all orders on track throughout the process and completed on time. It’s worth a look.
In full disclosure, SAGE kindly gives my name out to their clients to assist with the integration with QB and all things QB beyond that, but I do not work for SAGE.
Please email your questions to Harriet at Ask The Accountant.
QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise can be modified to better serve ad specialty distributors. Harriet Gatter is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, a former accounting professor and a former ad specialty distributor. She advises ad specialty distributors to use QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise, often in conjunction with other industry-specific software, to manage the complexities of the ad specialty business, with the results being time saved, errors eliminated and an overall accurate accounting of your business. Contact her at [email protected].
