For many small and mid-size businesses, the QuickBooks order management tools can handle the job. It’s when your business starts to grow and you get more customers that you may begin to see some problems. Increased business leads to more record keeping and manual data entry. This leads to possible mistakes from entering and re-entering orders and other data. There may be duplication and confusion between the front office and back office. To handle the increased manual workload, there may be the need for payroll expansion. If you don’t stay on top of things, it could also lead to customer service issues, which could stop your business growth in a hurry.
What’s the answer? How do you continue to grow, yet still keep using your familiar QuickBooks software? This simple tip could be your solution: use an automated online order management system that integrates with your QuickBooks software.
An online order management system automates much of the manual data entry, reducing the chances for mistakes. Entries made into your QuickBooks are automatically entered online, and changes made online are synced to your QuickBooks without manual entry. The other benefit the system gives you is customer and sales portals.
The Case for Customer Portals
You might be worried that providing customer portals is complicated and expensive. That’s not the case when you use a cloud-based solution like the one Now Commerce provides. The IT part is taken care of for you, and you have all the growth potential and advantages of customer portals for a low monthly fee – far less than increasing your payroll with additional staff just to handle customer service issues.
Making your customer portal easy to access and easy to use, while still offering customization that allows your customer to tailor it to their needs, means the portal will be used. Customer portals give your customers the ability to search information on orders and order history, and create orders on their own. Moreover, since it is online, they can do this on their schedule since access is available anytime, anywhere. Studies show that 72% of people doing business prefer a self-service model. That’s a sizeable majority that you need to accommodate. You might think you are losing out on customer relations by not dealing directly with your customers for every question and issue they may have. However, the satisfaction, convenience, and confidence gained by your customers with a portal actually increases loyalty, and improves your customer service to them, while saving you time and money.
The Case for Sales Portals
The job of your sales reps is to sell your service or products to existing customers, and to reach out to potential customers. Why not give them tools that make their job easier? If customers can place orders themselves, a lot of time spent manually entering data is removed from your sales reps’ schedules. If sales reps do enter sales orders into the online order system, those orders are automatically created in QuickBooks without additional manual data entry. Rather than calling to the home office with customer questions and waiting for replies, information about the customers is available 24/7 to your reps, online. Reports about payments, receipts, and customer history are easy to create since information is centralized. Your sales reps can spend more time efficiently selling your company.
The Ultimate Tip Is to Contact Now Commerce
We are the only web-based order management system that fully integrates with QuickBooks to specifically meet the needs of wholesale, manufacturing, and distribution B2B businesses. Find out how you can grow your business without growing your headaches by integrating your QuickBooks with an automated online order system.