At Mendelson Consulting, we believe in identifying the best solutions for our clients. Sometimes this allows us to work exclusively inside of QuickBooks, but in other cases, this requires us to look to one of the many QuickBooks 3rd-party add-ons that are available. The correct combination of QuickBooks and add-ons can rival the capabilities of the ERP, mid- market solutions, at a fraction of the cost. Each add-on carries it owns strengths. We are going to take a look under the hood at of one of the many inventory add-ons: ACCTivate Is a strong solution that greatly extends the capabilities of QuickBooks. We will be exploring the many capabilities of ACCTivate over the next couple of months.
The Database
Everyone who has worked in QuickBooks for any length of time has run into performance issues based upon the data file size. Generally in the QuickBooks Pro and Premier world you will start to see these issues around 100 – 150 MB; for QuickBooks Enterprise the size becomes a factor at around 1 – 1.2 GB. ACCTivate uses a Microsoft SQL database. Out of the box, it installs Microsoft SQL Server Express, which will handle up to 10 GB of data without problems. Once you reach the 10 GB limit, you simply upgrade to the full Microsoft SQL Server software, which removes this limitation. If you are at the point of needing an add-on to QuickBooks, the type of database is definitely a consideration.
Number of Users
QuickBooks is limited to 30 users per company data file. ACCTivate breaks this limitation. You can add as many users as needed (available in 3 user increments), without limitation. The user licenses are also concurrent users, meaning you can have ACCTivate installed on as many computers as you would like, but only the number of licenses you have can log in at the same time. Finally, a single user can be logged into the system with the same user ID on multiple computers. This is extremely beneficial, for instance, if you need to access ACCTivate to look up something from another workstation while still logged in your own desk.
Inventory Costing
For inventory costing, ACCTivate allows for average cost, FIFO, LIFO, standard cost, or actual cost (for lot or serialized items). ACCTivate has a landed cost module that allows you to allocate the costs for your freight / duty / brokerage / and more across the relevant inventory receipt. These costs can be allocated proportionately by quantity, value, weight, volume, or manually. ACCTivate also supports multiple warehouses and each warehouse can carry a different per item cost.
Item Pricing
ACCTivate takes customer pricing options to the next level. At the item level, you can have unlimited different price categories (retail, wholesale, dealer, and so on). Each price level can have a different currency assigned. This pricing option also supports quantity breaks, as well as effective and expiration dates. On top of the item level price options, ACCTivate supports customer-specific pricing, with the same quantity, effective and expiration dates available.
Grow as You Grow
ACCTivate is a modular system, allowing you to purchase the features you need, when you need them.
Next month we will be exploring more of the features, capabilities, and modules of ACCTivate!
