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Learn how our comprehensive business management solution for Mac or PC can help increase your business's efficiency while improving your bottom line. Last month, we covered topics ranging from the very basics of aACE and the fundamentals of accounting and transactions to the sleek aACE Pick App and aACE CRM App. Here's what we have in store for May:

May 5th – Cost of Goods Sold

Demystify your cost of goods sold with aACE's advanced tools for COGS reconciliation. Learn about estimated vs. actual cost, how aACE handles products with multiple vendors, when and how to run the COGS process, and more.

May 7th – Campaigns, Templates, and Rate Cards

Learn how to save time and prevent errors related to duplicate data entry with standardized orders, purchase orders, pricing, and more.

May 12th – Expenses and Credit Card Purchasing

For many companies, tracking expenses can be a nightmare – whether you're reimbursing employees or reconciling charges on the company card. Learn how aACE makes it easy to accurately record business expenses and use credit cards for purchasing and see our Expenses App in action.

May 14th – Production and the aACE Job Shop App

Your production process has a lot of moving parts, and your business depends on keeping them all running smoothly. Learn how aACE can help save time and reduce data entry errors with our robust production tools, including the aACE Job Shop app. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlight and demo video to get an advance look at the app.

May 19th – System Administration and Document Management

Take an advanced look at aACE system administration and document management. Learn how aACE makes it easy to manage system preferences, user access privileges, and system notices. Our powerful segregation-of-duties tools gives you full control over what your users can see and do, while aACE's document management system allows you to attach files directly to records in aACE, ensuring that you always have the information you need right at your fingertips. Check out our feature highlight and demo video for a sneak peek.

May 21st – Commissions

Discover how aACE's comprehensive commissions tools can help you incentivize your sales team and reward your affiliates for referring new business.

We look forward to seeing you in our May webinars! Reserve your seat now for a chance to see aACE in action and ask questions of our senior developers in real time.

When it comes to finance and accounting, many companies still rely on manual tasks for routine processes — for example, calculating an amount due in a spreadsheet or manually generating purchase orders in a word processing program.

Manual inputs — or doing things the way they’ve always been done — can create a false sense of security that team members follow procedures as expected and that what they're doing is accurate.

But the reality is, one accidental number flip or a single cell deletion can send your employees down a rabbit hole sleuthing into what went wrong. That leads to lost time and productivity, and sometimes lost revenue.

And unfortunately, many industry accounting teams have experienced budget and staff cuts, meaning they have fewer people to do required tasks.

So how can you standardize workflows and improve efficiencies with fewer resources while still decreasing chances for human error and completing repetitive (and often time-consuming) manual tasks?

Look no further than robotic processes automation (RBA) within your business management software (BMS) solution.

Did you know? 55% of respondents in a survey conducted by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) expect automated accounting systems to have a significant impact on businesses in the next three to 10 years.

Here are 7 finance-related tasks you can easily automate with a BMS:

Credit checks and payment approvals

Business management software integrates directly with your core operational applications and processes including sales, accounting, and inventory.

With an accounting component included in your BMS, you can track all of your sales from initial lead to order to payment and even shipping and receiving.

In manufacturing, for example, you can use your BMS to see current accounts receivable balances. If your customer has credit issues, you can automate tasks to prevent a new order from processing and even communicate directly with your sales team for instant follow-up and resolution.

Once resolved, a BMS can automatically complete the purchase order and facilitate the next steps in your order management processes.

You can also use your BMS to automate payment processing directly related to system events, including point-of-sale (POS) transactions.

Accurate contact information

Email addresses change. Phone numbers change. Customers move. It’s challenging to keep up with current, accurate contact information, especially if your customer relationship management (CRM) tool is separate from the rest of your business processes.

Bad contact data makes it increasingly difficult to process payments and deliveries, ultimately making your customers unhappy and potentially costing you money.

You can use a BMS to automate contact information tasks. For example, if your customer updates an email address in your sales portal, your BMS can be configured to update that same information across all of your core operational systems.

Event reminders

Task management is one of the most time-consuming components of day-to-day operations. Do you have orders to process? Sales leads to follow up on? Shipments to send? Invoices to process?

A quality BMS should include calendar and event scheduling. This enables you to see all of your upcoming transactional-related events. Your BMS should also include email and text reminder notifications for unusual or urgent matters requiring your attention.

Business management software should also come preconfigured with filtering options that enable you to see everything from the big picture of all your upcoming events to specific events directly related to a particular business contact or customer.

Pending payment inquiries

How many times in business have you experienced this scenario?

The phone rings. The vendor on the other end says the company delivered your last order, but has not received payment. When will payment arrive?

Next, you check your email. There’s a message from a customer saying payment was made weeks ago, but they haven’t received your product.

How do you know if that customer sent the payment or if your team facilitated payment to your vendor?

A BMS solution will give you accurate, immediate insight into when payments process, when to expect delivery, and any issues along the way.

The great thing about automating this process is your team can check statuses at any time, note where there are issues, and facilitate communication with your vendors and customers before they get frustrated with you.

Timely, automated payments with visibility means happier customers and suppliers, and ultimately reduced stress and headaches for your team.

Ensuring compliance

Ensuring your company meets all compliance and regulatory standards can be a daunting task — whether that’s responding to an external audit or an internal one.

How do you know if everyone on your team follows required standardized processes? Without task automating, that’s difficult, but with a BMS you can automate many compliance and regulatory tasks to ensure they’re following appropriate procedures and reduce the potential for human error.

You can also use your BMS to automate reports and analytics to more quickly prepare for your next audit.

Automated, accurate quoting and sales processes

Even in a mobile, digital-friendly company, many processes and work functions remain siloed across teams and in disparate software. That means if your company makes an important change, for example, updates product pricing, someone (or multiple team members) must take on the task of updating the new pricing model across all of your applications.

When that data is stored in a spreadsheet that lives on multiple hard drives or there are multiple copies of that file stored in the cloud, how can you do this efficiently and ensure everyone is working off the same numbers?

A BMS can simplify your pricing processes by using automated rate cards. One change on the rate card in one connected system means that information is automatically updated in another. This helps your team provide timely, accurate quotes. It eliminates pricing confusion and also the chance for mistakes.

And your sales team members will love that they can use those pricing modules to determine real-time commissions based on your company’s policies.

BMS for bookkeeping

Are you drowning in spreadsheets? Do you still have a calculator with ticker tape rolling off your desk and onto the floor?

Bookkeeping is critical to ensuring operational success, but manual data entry means you’re likely working harder rather than smarter.

A BMS can automate your bookkeeping tasks by pulling appropriate financial information from multiple sources across your business into a single, easy-to-understand dashboard. The dashboard gives you near real-time insight into your big financial picture and you can explore it down to a granular level.

Automating your bookkeeping tasks reduces not just the chance for error, but also reduces fraud risk, helping to keep your business safe and your employees accountable.

Are you ready to help your team focus on high priority financial tasks while automation takes care of the routine, repetitive ones? Join our upcoming webinar on March 17, 2020, to learn more about using BMS to automate recurring transactions. Register for the webinar or check out our schedule of upcoming webinars.

Inventory is a critical part of your business success and growth, but if not managed correctly, it can cost you time and money — especially if you’re using spreadsheets, paper manifests, or disparate software solutions across your company.

Did you know that 43% of small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) either don’t track inventory or use a manual method? Manual tracking is prone to human error and no tracking at all means you’re likely wasting time, money, and storage space that you can better manage and improve your overall inventory efficiencies.

Inventory management software (IMS) can help you take control of your inventory, eliminate repetitive manual tasks, automate routine processes, and integrate with other critical functions across your business for instant insight and more information to make better business decisions.

Here are 5 ways inventory management software can save you time and money:

Know Your PAR Levels

Do you know the minimum amount of stock your company should always have on hand to meet current and future customer needs?

Some companies refer to this as a Minimum Stock Level (MSL) or Replenishment Balance, while others know it better as PAR levels, which is short for Periodic Automatic Replacement level.

Whichever term you prefer, an inventory management system can help you always know the minimum product amount you should have on hand.

If your product is out of stock, you’re essentially holding the door open for your customer to walk out and into the arms of your competitors.

Instead of risking the chance of losing a sale because a product is out of stock, you can use inventory management software to track your current inventory and send you alerts when your product levels get near your MSL or PAR levels. You can even automate routine reorders so you never have to worry that you’ll be out of a product when your customers want it.

Real-Time Forecasting

Not only can inventory management software help you set and maintain PAR levels, it can also help you with more accurate product forecasting.

By integrating with customer relationship management software, accounting, and sales systems, inventory management software helps you get a more accurate picture into your past sales year-over-year, a historical picture of sales over time, as well as current sales and pending orders.

Couple this insight with current marketing trends and the current economic climate, and you can get a good picture of what your future product needs may look like.

Within your inventory management system you can also evaluate your current marketing initiatives with insight into your leads to conversion ratios to better forecast product sales models.

If your projections mean you need more product, you can quickly and instantly facilitate more orders right through your IMS platform.

Centralized Inventory Management

With your PAR levels set and your forecasting as fine-tuned as you can get it, an IMS can also help you centralize key functions for centralized inventory management.

Your IMS can give you instant insight not just into which products you have on hand, but also what supplies you have in stock, how much is needed in short-term and long-term, what’s been reordered, what needs to be ordered, and where everything is in the order, shipping, and receiving processes.

Centralized inventory management can also help you ensure you’re never stockpiling old products.

Products change over time, so you always want to make sure your oldest products in stock are the first products you ship out. Many companies refer to this as FIFO, meaning that the first products or supplies to come in are the first products or supplies you use or ship out.

Centralized inventory management also helps you when it comes time to do audits — not just that one big annual audit you may be required to do each year, but any time you want insight into your inventory levels.

An IMS with inventory tracking also means you always know which inventory you have where, no matter how large or small your operation is.

Save on Storage

Inventory management software can also help you save space (and ultimately money) on product and supply storage. Having the right amount of inventory on hand means you never have more than you need taking up valuable space in your warehouse.

Also, an IMS can help you better manage those supplies you don’t always want to keep in stock but want to ensure you have available for your customers. A good IMS should facilitate drop shipping so when you need it, you can send a product directly to your customer without having to store it onsite in your own facility.

Better Relationships With Suppliers and Customers

All of the insight you get with your IMS means you can better manage your time, resources, and bottom line, and can also improve your relationships with your suppliers, vendors, and customers.

An IMS can help you with supply chain management. You can always know what supplies you have on hand, the supply quality, and even any price changes those orders have over time.

If for example, you have a pending reorder that’s taking longer than expected to get to you, your IMS can help you make adjustments so, if needed, you can place orders with other vendors or make manufacturing adjustments based on the anticipated delays.

This insight means you can always be aware of what’s happening with your supply chain so you can keep the door open for effective communication with your vendors. The next time you’re in a pinch and need a rush reorder or if you have a product quality issue, you can quickly address it with your vendor.

And better relationships with your vendors means you’re more likely to have the products your customers want in stock when they want them — which leads to happier customers! You can even use your IMS to automate orders, invoicing, payments and shipping, all the while having complete insight into your business every step of the way.

Inefficient inventory processes cost you time, money, space and a lot of hassle, but an inventory management system can help you get a handle on all of your product needs — now and in the future.

 

Are you ready to see how inventory management software can help you be more efficient and save your money? Join us for an upcoming webinar to see aACE’s IMS in action.

Discover how aACE can help you streamline your company's operations in our April webinars. Last month, we covered topics ranging from production to shipping and accounting to system administration. This month, we're starting back at the beginning of our webinar cycle and taking you from the very basics of aACE to accounting fundamentals and CRM pro-tips. Here's what we have in store:

April 2nd – aACE Basics

If you’re brand-new to aACE, this is the webinar for you! Learn how aACE’s system-wide conventions make it easy for new users to interact with the solution. Check out our video before the presentation to get a sneak peek at aACE’s user-friendly design.

April 7th – Accounting Basics

Explore aACE’s GL Accounts module and learn how aACE makes it easy to print financial statements, navigate the general ledger, reconcile bank statements, and more. This webinar is very audience-driven, so come early and bring questions!

April 9th – Managing Transactions

aACE makes it easy to track each step of a transaction, giving you the peace of mind that comes from having one solution manage every aspect of a sale or purchase. We’ll explore how users manage transactions in aACE using the Purchase Orders module as our example.

April 14th – A/R and A/P

Take a deeper dive into aACE’s accounts receivable and accounts payable features. We’ll review the tracking, delivery, and follow-up tools in the Invoices and Purchases modules. We’ll also explore customer and vendor payments, deposits, and scheduling recurring transactions.

April 16th – Sales Leads and the aACE CRM App

Your sales team is moving fast to keep your customers and prospects engaged, and they need a solution that can keep up – even when they're on the go. See our CRM App in action and learn more about how sales leads move through aACE. Check out our sales leads and CRM App feature highlights for a sneak peek before the presentation.

April 21st – Tax Profiles and aACE+ Avalara AvaTax

Tax season isn’t anyone’s favorite time of year. Fortunately, aACE has you covered through our out-of-the-box tax management infrastructure as well as the aACE+ Avalara AvaTax integration. Learn how aACE takes the guesswork out of tax time.

April 23rd – Sales Orders

See aACE's sales order, drop shipping, and special order workflows in action and learn how aACE makes each of those workflows a breeze. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlight for a preview of some of these topics.

April 28th – aACE+ The BPR

Learn how The BPR can help you quickly, easily, and accurately document your company's unique workflows and customized features in this guest presentation from our friends at Optimum Output.

April 30th – Shipping and the aACE Pick App

Your customers depend on you to get them the right products at the right time. Learn how aACE streamlines the pick, pack, and ship process with our Pick App and shipping integrations, and take a sneak peek by checking out our feature highlight.

We look forward to seeing you in our webinars! Sign up now to reserve your spot.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software radically transforms the way companies of all sizes do business for improved efficiencies.

ERPs integrate once-siloed operational systems into a single, easy-to-use software platform.

From accounting to orders, from inventory to human resources, an ERP will give you insight into your business to help you reduce costs, make better business decisions, and keep your customers happy.

If you're in manufacturing, an ERP can help you handle all your day-to-day tasks, from development to product delivery. Here are five benefits of an ERP for manufacturing:

Process automation

Manual, repetitive tasks are bad for business. They tie up your staff and resources and create countless opportunities for errors.

An ERP can help you automate all of your core business processes — from inventory and supplies to product development to product delivery, and all the processes in between such as sales and marketing, accounting, finance and even human resources.

Having all of your financial information available and accessible in one portal — whether that’s incoming payments for orders or outgoing expenses for supplies or personnel — helps save time by eliminating manual entries of related data across multiple systems and gives you immediate insight into your financial picture in near real time.

Manual tasks also make it difficult to provide consistent service and processes across your organization.

Here’s an example: your sales team just closed a big sale. Now, they need to process an invoice for the purchase. With an ERP, your sales team can access the most accurate cost information with real-time estimates — the same information your accounting teams can access. And, an ERP can automatically generate needed items such as a purchase order number.

With the ability to append notes and comments to your orders, your team can also track communications related to the invoice, including any payment or finance issues, as well as track shipping and delivery.

Cost reductions

Automating processes and tasks with an ERP not only makes it easier to manage your day-to-day manufacturing operations, it can also help you save money and reduce costs.

Instead of having extra “just-in-case” supplies or inventory in your warehouse, you can have accurate information not just about what you’re storing, but also your current and future needs based on actual product orders and current sales.

Also, by moving all of your key applications such as accounting, sales, and operations to a single platform, you can save money by not having to purchase multiple, separate software and applications.

Further savings are realized when you eliminate IT management of all of those software components, and, extra bonus, it’s easier to maintain system and data security with a single, secure ERP — especially one that’s compliant with industry standards and regulations.

Supply chain management

Supply chains are among the most important components of your operations, but they're also one of the most difficult to manage.

An ERP can help you get a handle on your supply chain in a number of ways. First, there’s the benefit of inventory and product forecasting.

For example, if you’re tracking inventory in your ERP and you’re analyzing pending product orders, you can easily see if you have enough supply to meet your demands. If not, you can quickly and instantly facilitate a reorder to ensure you have the supplies you need, when you need them.

If you run into issues with a vendor, for instance if the vendor can’t deliver what you need on time, then you can use your ERP to facilitate an order with a different vendor.

In addition to inventory and product control, your ERP can help make sure you stay on budget.

Without an ERP, it can be easy to lose track of incremental product cost increases, especially if your team facilitates reorders without number crunching or review. Doing things the way you’ve always done them — without insight — can find you with far less budget than you intended.

An ERP, however, will give you accurate and timely cost estimates based on your most current purchase history so you don’t end up wondering how your budget estimates got so far off.

Another ERP supply chain benefit?

You can also monitor product quality control. Have repeated issues with a particular vendor? You can track that information in your ERP so you can make better decisions moving forward for future purchases and reorders.

Happy customers

Yes, your ERP can even help make your customers happier. This is an added benefit for manufacturers because it means happy customers are more likely to be returning customers, and that can be instantly reflected onto your bottom line.

With integration into your customer relationship management (CRM) software, your ERP can help you see the big picture of your customer’s journey with your company — from lead, to sale, to product delivery.

You can also manage customer communication, customer support, order management, billing, and delivery tracking all in one platform.

Better insight into how your company interacts with your customer means better quality control and better customer service.

So long business silos

You know how important accurate, up-to-date data is for your business. Without an ERP, your data is likely siloed between departments, people, and disparate software systems and applications.

For many manufacturing businesses, inventory and supplies are managed in one program. Orders and shipping in another. CRM in another. Billing and accounting in yet another.

To get insight, it often requires time-consuming audits and reports — processes that take your team members away from their day-to-day tasks and bog them down with number-crunching and data dissemination.

An ERP can pull the data you need, when you want it, quickly and automatically, without having to tie up your employees who can focus on other tasks.

This visibility means you can get accurate ROI information about your core operations and ultimately make more informed, better business decisions — whether that’s improvements or facilitate change for growth and new direction.

 

Are you considering an ERP for your manufacturing business? Check out our free white paper for more insight, including additional benefits an ERP will bring to your company.

Download “Choosing the Right ERP for your SMB,” to get started. Have questions? Contact an aACE advisor and we’ll be glad to answer or join us for a webinar and see our software in action for yourself.

aACE is a comprehensive business management solution that can help you streamline your workflows and take your business to the next level. Our webinars enable you to explore aACE in real-time and ask questions of our skilled engineers to learn more about what aACE can do for your company. Last month, we covered topics ranging from the fundamentals of aACE to advanced accounting and from entering sales orders to restocking inventory and beyond. Here's what we have in store for March:

Tuesday Track

March 3rd – Shipping and the aACE Pick App

Your customers depend on you to get them the right products at the right time. Learn how aACE streamlines the pick, pack, and ship process with our Pick App and shipping integrations, and take a sneak peek by checking out our feature highlight.

March 10th – Production and the aACE Job Shop App

Your production process has a lot of moving parts, and your business depends on keeping them all running smoothly. Learn how aACE can help save time and reduce data entry errors with our robust production tools, including the aACE Job Shop app. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlight and demo video to get an advance look at the app.

March 17th – Recurring Transactions

Take an in-depth look at how aACE automates recurring transactions, allowing you to set up automated payments for bills you know are coming regularly. Check out our feature highlight on the subject for a sneak peek before the presentation.

March 24th – Expenses and Credit Card Purchasing

For many companies, tracking expenses can be a nightmare – whether you're reimbursing employees or reconciling charges on the company card. Learn how aACE makes it easy to accurately record business expenses and use credit cards for purchasing.

March 31st – Inventory Replenishment

Ensure you always have the right number of products at the right time with aACE's smart inventory reorder management tools. And to get a sneak peek at this powerful feature, check out our feature highlight.

Thursday Track

March 12th – Cost of Goods Sold

Demystify your cost of goods sold with aACE's advanced tools for COGS reconciliation. Learn about estimated vs. actual cost, how aACE handles products with multiple vendors, when and how to run the COGS process, and more.

March 19th – Tax Profiles and aACE+ AvaTax Integration

Tax season isn’t anyone’s favorite time of year. Fortunately, aACE has you covered through our out-of-the-box tax management infrastructure as well as the aACE+ Avalara AvaTax integration. Learn how aACE takes the guesswork out of tax time.

March 26th – System Administration and Document Management

Take an advanced look at aACE system administration and document management. Learn how aACE makes it easy to manage system preferences, user access privileges, and system notices. Our powerful segregation-of-duties tools gives you full control over what your users can see and do, while aACE's document management system allows you to attach files directly to records in aACE, ensuring that you always have the information you need right at your fingertips. Check out our feature highlight and demo video for a sneak peek.

We look forward to seeing you in our March webinars! Register now to save your spot.

Tired of using spreadsheets for your accounting tasks? Sometimes they can have hundreds — if not thousands — of fields where one misstep or mistyped number can send you into a tailspin wondering where you went wrong and how you can reconcile it.

Or maybe you’re frustrated by having all of your accounting functions tied to an older proprietary system that silos data and requires you to manually input or import data you already use elsewhere so you can balance your books.

Accounting is serious business and it’s a core task you should handle with confidence and ease — without worrying about potential errors caused by repeated manual data entries across multiple systems within your company.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software for accounting can revolutionize the way you access, use and calculate data within your organization for more fiscal responsibility and greater accountability.

Here are a few ways you can use ERP software for accounting so you can focus more on growing your business and less on repeated manual data entries:

All your core data in a single dashboard

There are a lot of moving pieces and parts that go into fiscal accountability. From the costs of supplies and manpower to manufacturing fees and other services, a quality ERP should integrate into most, if not all, of your core operational systems and processes to ensure your team can always access accurate data when you need it.

An ERP can also decrease human error and standardize processes to ensure you have fewer mistakes — and therefore more financial accuracy — for your business.

With a single dashboard, your ERP software can give you instant visibility into all the numbers that keep your business thriving, and in so doing, can help reduce opportunities for fraud or misuse, including user access privileges so you can see who has access to your data and accounts and what they’re doing with them, in near real time.

Integrations for sales, operations and accounting

If your organization hasn’t adopted an ERP to help streamline your operations, you may be frustrated by siloed information that’s entered into one program, for example your sales system, yet never makes it to your accounting system.

Or maybe your accounting solution gets an update with accurate, current prices and information, but your sales solution doesn’t. It’s a flawed system that can mean when it’s time to balance your books, your numbers don’t match up and you have to dedicate valuable time and resources to uncovering discrepancies so you can make sure everything balances in the end.

A quality ERP solution should offer seamless integrations for your existing sales and operational systems into accounting so you can follow your business from sales lead to closed deal and final payment.

Let’s look at this quick example for a hypothetical company:

• A member of your sales team is ready to connect with a sales lead that your marketing team educated and nurtured to the point of a likely product sale.
• Your sales rep can use your ERP, which also integrates into your marketing CRM and CMS platforms, to access the lead’s contact information, find out which product the lead is most interested in, and then quickly and accurately determine cost estimates and review pricing structure. The information the sales rep uses at this stage is the same information available simultaneously for your operations and accounting teams.
• Your sales rep closes the deal! The rep processes the order with an invoice.
• Your new customer pays for the product.
• Your operations team gets instant notification of a new product order and can also see other pending orders.
• Your ERP can help manage product shipping and receiving, again sharing related and valuable information with your accounting team.
• Your team can also use your ERP to track orders, review sales notes, and follow your product through delivery and sales rep follow-up.
• When the process is complete, you can even automate sales commissions and link them directly to product delivery and payments.

Task automation

Looking again at our fictional company and the great job your sales team member did to close a deal, you can also automate a number of tasks directly related to sales and accounting.

Here are a few examples:

• Your sales rep is ready to create an invoice to obtain product payment. There are likely a number of parameters for accounting your sales rep should include in this process. Your ERP can automate and standardize these tasks; for example, it can address whether or not this deal requires a purchase order (PO) number, if the client has any credit limits or concerns, if the customer qualifies for any discounts, and handle any relevant tax information.
• If there are issues, your accounting team can instantly share that information with your sales team for customer follow up.
• Your sales team can even make cost estimates based off most recent purchasing activity to ensure the information your accounting team sees is accurate.

Here are some other accounting tasks an ERP can automate so you can save time and free up your staff to focus on more pressing issues:

• Generate invoices
• Progress billing
• Subscription information
• Services rendered
• Purchase orders
• Close orders when products are delivered and payment received
• Stopping product delivery if there is a payment issue
• Set up and run recurring transactions based either on a timeline or specified amount

Multiple locations, multiple departments, multiple budgets

If your organization has multiple departments, it’s likely you have to manage and account for a variety of budget types. With an ERP, you can immediately access, track, and change budget-related information, not just departmentally, but even across multiple locations or entities within your operations. You can also use your ERP to plan for, manage, and maintain budgets for multiple product lines or business units within our organization — all within one platform.

Payment integrations

Tired of repeatedly inputting the same payment information into multiple systems within your company? A good ERP solution should also include fully integrated payment processing. Look for a solution that is PCI compliant for credit cards, debit cards, and ACH payment processing.

Reports and analytics

Whether you’re conducting an internal audit or you’re required to meet mandated compliance and regulation audits, ERP makes preparing for audits a breeze. Your ERP should help your team access the data you need quickly and generate reports and other analytics that make it easy for you to communicate information in a digestible format for all your key stakeholders. Your ERP should come with great out-of-the box reports, but also offer customizations that your team can configure to meet all of your key needs.

Increased visibility

Your ERP should be a true quote-to-cash solution that increases visibility into your organization’s financial health — from the big picture down to a granular level — so you can save time, reduce errors, and have accurate insight into the financial components of your operations at all times.

Are you ready to see how aACE’s ERP solution for accounting can help you with intuitive reporting, budget forecasting, sales tax calculation, payment processing and a whole lot more? Join us for an upcoming webinar to see aACE in action.

“[I would recommend aACE to] any company that needs a seemingly impossible-to-achieve customized accounting system that will take them from inputting a transaction to the general ledger." - Wendy Donenfield, CPA and Controller, M & R International

The larger your business grows — and the more customers you gain — the harder it can be to manage and maintain your inventory.

Whether you’re a small shop with all of your inventory on site or you’re a large operation with industrial warehouses, keeping track of everything coming in and going out is challenging. That can be even further complicated if you’re still using pen and paper or traditional spreadsheets to manage your inventory.

Efficient inventory management is key to fulfilling customer orders quickly and keeping your operations running smoothly. Inventory management software (IMS) can help you see the big picture, no matter how many individual parts and pieces that includes.

Did you know that on average, about a quarter of SMBs don't use an inventory tracking system? Of those that do, 15% track it within their accounting software, while another 14% use pen and paper, and 21% are building their inventory lists in a spreadsheet program. Companies that use an IMS report that they experienced an increase in productivity and also gained space within their facilities.

What’s inventory management software?

Inventory management software can help you manage all the moving parts of your inventory system, including integrations with your existing accounting, sales, and operations systems.

Let’s take a look at 5 ways inventory management can help you meet customer demand, keep your employees happy, and improve your overall operational efficiencies:

Material Resource Planning (MRP)

Managing inventory can sometimes feel like that game of cups. You know the one where a person drops a ball under a cup and shuffles it around while you’re left wondering where the ball will end up?

Inventory management without inventory software can be much the same, except it’s more like thousands and thousands of balls and hundreds of thousands of cups. Add that to the number of employees you have, magnified by the volume of locations within your operations, and before you know it, it’s easy to lose track of your most valuable resources.

Inventory management software can help you with Material Resource Planning (MRP).

MRP helps you plan for all of the resources you need for your manufacturing operations, including inventory and related financial issues. MRP will give you insight into the big picture of how much inventory you have and how much you actually need, based on real-time orders and historical analytics. This can minimize excess inventory you have on hand so you can maximize your storage space.

Ensuring you have just the right amount of inventory at the right time — and knowing where that inventory is and how to access it — means you can more efficiently respond to customer orders. Timely, accurate customer order fulfillment means happier — and more likely to return — customers for your business.

MRP can also help you forecast how much inventory you’re going to need in the near future based on your existing product orders and quotes. You can even ensure you’re ordering and getting additional inventory on time, based on those projections.

Inventory management software with MRP can facilitate more efficient planning for your inventory processes and ultimately cut down on waste and unnecessary spending.

Order management

If you’re manufacturing a product, keeping a close watch on your supply levels can be as challenging as managing product inventory.

How do you know which products to keep in stock when?

How do you know how much of each supply is needed to manufacture your product to meet consumer demand?

And how complicated are your processes when you need to place a new order for supply re-orders, product returns, and restocking?

Inventory management software can help you track changes within your inventory and supply systems and automatically fulfill a re-order request, like generating or modifying a purchase order in real-time based on your current needs.

Automated inventory analyses and re-order processes can also help decrease human errors that sometimes leave you with too little — or too much — inventory.

You can even use inventory management software to manage re-orders and backorders, too.

Automated cost updates

If you’re ordering a lot of supplies from a number of vendors — especially if multiple people within your organization are responsible for that — it can be easy to miss small prices increases until they’ve added up to big expenses over time.

Inventory management software can give you instant insight into your cost rates, based on your most recent purchase records. You can even set alerts to notify you when your profit margins are dropping below your target levels. That means if your costs start increasing upward, you won’t get caught off guard.

Inventory tracking

Inventory management software can help you keep track of all of your inventory by monitoring serial or lot numbers. When new inventory comes in or goes out, your team members can use a barcode reader to scan serial or lot numbers, or manually select numbers from a list in your inventory management software solution. This can give you clear insight into a specific lot of products or specific serial numbers at any time.

This inventory tracking feature is particularly helpful for product recalls and product returns.

Drop shipments

Sometimes companies just don’t have space for all of the products they sell or it doesn’t make sense financially to keep a specific product in stock at all times. So instead of keeping a specific product or supply on hand, they’ll place an order with a vendor on an as-needed basis.

Managing those one-off orders — and tracking where they are and where they are going — is challenging, especially if you’re doing it manually. Inventory management software can make drop-shipping and special order requests a breeze.

Inventory management software can help you automate those orders and easily facilitate shipping. You can even track when the orders are received, and if they’re coming to your location, do a quality control check before it’s off to your customers.

Insight, forecasts and accountability

Inventory management software, coupled with an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, can help you streamline all the processes within your manufacturing and warehouse operations.

From inventory management to automated product selection and shipping, to order management, tracking, and scheduling, you can save time, money, and resources with software that facilitates and enhances your workflow automation.

Are you ready to see how inventory management software can improve your manufacturing and warehouse operations? Save your seat in an upcoming aACE webinar today. We have several planned that tackle everything from managing purchase orders to managing inventory and shipping. You won’t want to miss out.

"We were looking for a solution that gave us a solid core that we could customize rather easily to suit our unique business processes. As a custom fabricator, we also needed a solution that could give us several different options when it came to how we want to manage and track inventory, account for multi-level job-costing, and handle our unique design and estimation processes as well. Since implementation, we have found that aACE has not only helped us reinforce and automate many of our complex workflows, but it has also given us visibility into our data at both a high level and granular level like we have never had before." - Andrew Porter; ERP Manager, Gable