For many small and mid-sized wholesale businesses, QuickBooks' order management tools can effectively meet their needs. However, as your business grows and you gain more customers, you may start to encounter challenges. Increased business activity results in more record-keeping and manual data entry, which can lead to errors from repeatedly entering orders and other data. This may cause duplication and confusion between the front office and back office operations. To manage the increased manual workload, you might need to expand your payroll. If you do not stay organized, this could also result in customer service issues, which can hinder your business growth significantly.
An online order management system automates much of the manual data entry, reducing the chances of 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 B2B customer portals and sales rep portals.
You might be worried that providing B2B customer portals is complicated and expensive. That’s not the case when you use a cloud-based solution like Now Commerce. The IT part is taken care of for you, and you have all the growth potential and advantages of B2B customer portals for a low monthly fee – far less than increasing your payroll with additional staff just to handle customer service issues.
To ensure that your customer portal is both easily accessible and user-friendly, while still offering customization options for individual needs, it is essential to encourage usage. Customer portals enable users to search for information on their orders and order history, as well as to create orders independently. Since the portal is available online, customers can access it at their convenience—anytime and anywhere.
While you may worry that not interacting directly with customers for every question or issue could harm your customer relations, the reality is that the satisfaction, convenience, and confidence a portal provides enhance customer loyalty. This approach not only improves your service to customers but also saves you time and money in the process.
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, much time spent manually entering data is removed from your sales reps’ schedules. If sales reps enter their orders through the sales rep portal, those orders are automatically created in QuickBooks without additional manual data entry. Rather than calling 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.
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.