QB Power Hour - What's In Store For Commerce in QuickBooks Online?

Michelle and Dan are joined by Cat and Keith from Intuit to discuss the Commerce tab in qB Online. What's the history, what's live today, and what's on the horizon for the future.

QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Michelle Long, CPA and Dan DeLong who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.

Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog

Register for upcoming webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/

Transcript

Dan DeLong: 0:30

Today the QB Power Hour is gonna be what's in store for the commerce tab. And we are have a couple folks from Commerce to talk a little bit about what is what's going on. But let's go through some introductions, Michelle.

Michelle Long: 0:46

Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Michelle Long CPA with MBA in entrepreneurship, owner of Long for Success. Speaker for Intuit for a long time now, author of five different books you can check on out on Amazon and I'm really happy if you looked at Facebook group there is approaching 15,000 members now. So if you haven't joined that yet, there's the link. We'd love to have you join us. Those of you that are gonna scaling new heights, I hope you can join us. Heather and I are co-presenting a session on Sunday, right at noon, one of the first breakout sessions and the number one breakout session so far on chat, G P T and ai. So come on by and join us for that. I'm really excited about that. So Dan, go ahead.

Dan DeLong: 1:31

All right. I'm Dan DeLong, owner at Danwidth. Worked at Intuit for nearly 18 years. Co-hosting today as well as the co-hosting duties over at School of Bookkeeping. We do a workshop Wednesday, but not tomorrow because I'll be done a ship somewhere doing the tech editing for the Qbo for Dummies series as well. And Cat and Keith, I'll toss it over to you like you introduce yourselves.

Keith Crowther: 1:55

My name's Keith product manager here at Intuit. Been working on the commerce features over the last year or so. And doesn't look like it, but I'm in Mountain View today. In the office. Just don't have that exciting of a background or any exciting stories or locations like you, Dan. But but yeah, I'll pass it over to Cat.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 2:22

Massive view is pretty exciting. I was there last week, so look lovely to be on this. And Dan, we have a good story as to why we're here for everyone. My name is Cat. That's a good photo, that's a good haircut from a couple of years ago on there. I'm a product manager looking after commerce. So we'll be talking today as Keith said, what we've been working on for the last year and also what's coming cuz I know that there's quite a lot of excitement with inventory as well. So there you go. There you go. And for those of you, if I do look like I, the room is a bit dark. I'm based in Sydney, in Australia, and it's 2:00 AM for me. So I'm ready to go,

Dan DeLong: 3:06

everyone, that, that speaks to your commitment to, to what's going on here because to get up at 2:00 AM to be ready for. Zoom ready. You gotta be ready for that. It's pretty challenging. So a little bit about the details of the QB Power Hour. If you've just joined us it's every other Tuesday at 12 Eastern, whatever time of the world that happens to be wherever else in, in the world you are. The upcoming webinars aren't eligible for C P E but always check the website for the upcoming events. We also have other events for other folks that we work with available there on the website if you need PDFs of the slides or recordings or podcasts or any other resources we have. That's an area on our website, QB Power Hour.com/resources. And then a little bit about today, the housekeeping. If you have specific questions, because we do have Keith and Cat, as well as some other folks helping us out with Q&A for questions about anything that we're talking about here today on you on commerce please put those in the Q&A section because as a registered attendee your contact information is available to be able to follow up. So if we can't answer it live today, Sometimes they are a little bit challenging and maybe they do ask for some follow up. The Q&A would be better to do that rather than putting it in the chat comments, right? Cause that just flows by and then maybe gets missed. So if you do have a specific question about anything that, that Cat or Keith is gonna talk about today, please put that in the Q&A. And then of course we have the the webinar archive. If you wanna go back and look at prior prior comments before on prior webinars. Excuse me. Now Erin Walsh-Dyer and Michelle and I, we had a discussion last November, I think on a Power Hour about commerce. And we were a little. Befuddled, I guess was the best way to describe it because you end up having two different experiences in the commerce tab depending on your history of you or your client coming into qbo. And so we were having a little bit of a challenge trying to figure that out. Even live on the Power Hour. so I did want to put that in there. If you wanted to review the discussion. If you've got the slides and you wanna be able to access that. Erin was a great person and we love her. And it was It was great to have her on. So if you want to take a look at that discussion, that would be awesome. And it was interesting because that was where we did that in November, and then we went right to QB Connect right after that. And so I was a little confused as to what's the fu what's in store, what what's the future of commerce? And there was an event at QB Connect and it was cold and we were huddled by the the heaters that they put on the outside. And I just happened to be standing next to Cat. And she was talking about what she does for Intuit and. And I was I was just explaining the experience that we had just had with Erin and Michelle on the Power Hour. And I would say, I said I was a little under underwhelmed, right? About what the, what it does as of today. And she is, she challenged me as give me 20 minutes at the booth and I'll show you what's coming. And then we can go from there and here we are. Six months seven months later we're back on talking about commerce. So I appreciate Cat for coming on and doing this today. So our session agenda today is what is commerce and what's live as of today and Since Cat is literally a day in the future, she's gonna be telling us as much as she can about what is coming in the future. And we do want to be a little sensitive. Like we can't necessarily talk about dates and features and those types of things, but we can give a general idea as to what is coming in the future as much as we can say. Cat?

Cat Williams-Treloar: 7:51

Yeah, that's right. So Keith was at QuickBooks Connect as well. We had such a wonderful time and I'm so glad that we did. Michelle, we were just laughing cuz I think that it was so cold standing outside, we were all huddling under heaters and I don't normally say give me 20 minutes but you did. And we had a really good discussion and I think Dan was like, come on and chat to everyone. And we generally feel like we've co-created a lot of this product with accountants and so we think this is really important to talk about where we are and what we are doing as well. And also help answer questions on what is commerce and where is commerce going? When we talk about commerce, right Keith, cuz Keith and I are gonna talk through some of this. We're a team that's very focused on product-based businesses. So that's anyone who's selling a thing whether or not it's shoes or clothes or food or any product. And that's something that we're very focused on helping product-based businesses run and grow in qbo.

Dan DeLong: 9:06

Awesome. All right, so let's talk, start off with a few poll questions. So we wanna get an idea as to what what experience our audience has here today. Do you serve product based businesses? This could be a retailer, wholesaler, or manufacturers. Yes. No. Or maybe I'd like to in the future, or maybe it's not, maybe this question's not applicable.

Michelle Long: 9:30

I was just gonna add Cat, as you were talking I do recall when I did meet you because, cause now I remember we had Appy camp and I do remember I think it was that, but I can't remember talking with you and or Keith or others or whatever. You were talking about how you reach out to the accountants, you meeting your team and the Intuit team and everything. I know it's not you by yourself, but as a team of people, you all talking with us at Appy camp us the ProAdvisors and stuff, and I remember you all. Asking us questions. What do we want? What do you know? We meaning us accounting professionals and our clients. What do we want? What do we wanna see? What do we need? How do we want it to work? And all this stuff. Getting our feedback and our honest feedback. What do we like, what do we not like? What do we need it to do? And I remember you guys listening and taking all of these notes and taking the honest feedback. This sucks. We need more on the inventory side. We need it to do this, we want it to do that. And you guys are just like a sponge and just absorbing everything we would say, and even after HAppyy Camp, that's where I was mentioning to you that I continued with the calls with the team with the commerce team about every month or so okay, we're working on this now, what do you think? Okay, we've done this. What do you think now? What do you want it to do? Does this work? Okay, we did this. Is this what you expected to see? And that's one of the things that I have always loved about Intuit, is they really do listen and they really do try to build what we want and our clients want, and so I just love that iterative process. Listening to what we want and need, and then you all try to build it and develop it, and then getting the feedback again and just keep reiterating it to get it to be what we want and so I, I do love the fact that you incorporate the accountant accounting professionals and the pool advisors in the process of the development. Because it seems so many times all we see and hear in social media and everything is the complaints and all that stuff, but the reality is Intuit is really working hard to develop what we want and need. And I think it's really showing in the commerce and what you guys have done so far. So thank you guys for listening. And to those people that are listening, keep sending in that feedback and putting in the what you guys want and everything, but it's gotta constructive not just. This piece doesn't work. It sucks. Tell him what you want it to do. Okay. If it sucks why does it suck? What should it do? What do you want it to do? Give that feedback. So anyway, so

Cat Williams-Treloar: 12:23

you know what, Michelle, it might have been Joe at APY camp. I'm just thinking cuz he, I think he was there and I know, loved it. It like, it's true. I think that Keith can speak to it as well. We've had, we do have a commerce accounting council. We do meet, we are testing with accountants actually weekly for feedback. And it really matters. And I think it also comes down to how Intuit designs for delight and the way in which we go broad, we go narrow, we get feedback. It's super critical. I'm just looking at the poll here. Yeah. So what's awesome is that yes more than half of everyone is serving a product based business. Then this is the session for you. If you're not like, please hang on, because you might go, oh, I would like to and it might be a way to expand your business as well, because we know that it is sometimes really tough to work with a lot of the online commerce data. And we're working really hard to automate it and take the work out of it. Okay. This is super helpful for us. Do you wanna do the second poll, Dan? We've got, this is like the second question. We're warming everyone

Dan DeLong: 13:35

up. I am trying. Oh, because I'm sharing, I couldn't launch a second question. There we go. Okay, so now we're asking the next question. What's the biggest challenge? So those that are currently supporting product-based businesses, what do they, what do you find that their biggest challenge is? And it could be just anything like driving sales that's always a concern. Like, how do I get people to go to my website to buy these products? Or is it even just something from managing the inventory or maintaining finances in accounting, that sort of thing while we're waiting for the the answers to, to flow in. So Cat, how long have you been working with with commerce, or. Hui Commerce, what do we call it these

Cat Williams-Treloar: 14:26

days? We're still calling it commerce. So Keithe and I both came from the trade Geco acquisition. I my first relationship with Commerce was probably in 20 15, 20 16 doing some consultancy work for the business. And then we were acquired. It's coming up to, it's two and a half almost three, three years ago. That's right. Keith and Keith, you were there. You were there either around the same time as me or maybe even a bit earlier.

Keith Crowther: 14:56

Yeah, around 2017. I think so, yeah. Yeah. So been in the space since 2017.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 15:05

Yeah we love it. Isn't it funny that you can get a passion in an area we genuinely love it.

Dan DeLong: 15:15

Awesome. Okay, so let's go ahead and looks like the the results here are just right across the board, so there's not like one. Clear winner some of the poll questions that we have. So it, there's a lot to be concerned about. Is what the takeaway here is. So

Keith Crowther: 15:33

We have to do it all, I think is the answer. Yes. I think that's the, and the other

Michelle Long: 15:39

great thing is these clients, they not only need our help, but they recognize they need our help. So it's like an easy sell, I think with these types of clients they recognize that they need our help cause of all of these different things. So I think it's a great area for accounting professionals to get into.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 15:59

Indeed. And I think it's nice to see it because your clients do want growth. If they are growing, they probably are struggling with growing a team. I am happy to see that inventory and orders and shipping is there. So that's good. We'll cover that. And also finances, which is very important. And for the something else. You let us know.

Dan DeLong: 16:22

Yeah. Put that, that you can put in the chat or in the Q&A. Cat, do you want me to stop sharing so that you can

Cat Williams-Treloar: 16:29

Yeah, absolute. Share my screen

Dan DeLong: 16:36

a little bit of a, we need some hold music or something while we're moving things around.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 16:41

Can you see that okay? Yep. And I can still see all of you. This is kinda cool. So what we're gonna do is, it's actually a really big demo for everyone. We're going, we're gonna talk through what actually is there with commerce and what's live today. So if you go into QuickBooks online in the commerce tab, we'll show you what's available in all of the plans, and then we'll also talk about what's coming and as we go, like Keith will jump in and add anything. That I miss cause it's 2:00 AM for me. And Keith understands all of it. And if we've got questions as we go, we can also pause and talk about it too. Okay, so let's start. So what's live and commerce we're, I'm gonna show you we've been very focused on helping online retailers automate their commerce accounting. So that's bringing in their payouts into QuickBooks online. We've also got orders coming in. They're not posting at the moment. I know Michelle, that's what you talked about in the last session. But they will be in time when we look at what's coming. And we also talk, we talk about the types of trends and insights that we have there. What's coming which I'm really glad on the poll was super important is, What will happen on that same commerce tab is you won't just import payouts, you'll import inventory. That's why there's a question about what happens on commerce. It just gets bigger and brings in more things. You'll be able to bring in your costs and get them started. For cost of goods sold, which we know is so critical for profitability we're re-imagining how you view products and services, and we're introducing variants for the first time ever, which is super cool. And then I'll show you some really quick workflows to replenish stock, just quantity, perform and inventory account. And also make sure that obviously inventory accounting is accurate, because without that, it doesn't work. Okay, so let's start with what is live today. So if you jump into commerce, what you'll be able to do is seamlessly connect your online sales channel. So today we support. Amazon, eBay, and Shopify. And it's super quick and easy. It's a couple of steps and you'll be able to see your income and expenses all in the one spot. So I'm actually just gonna click through and show you what's there. And this is something that you can help your clients with. And we're also finding that a lot of your clients are able to just do it in a few clicks as well. So here on the left nav, you can see that we're under commerce and you'd see the page that talks about how to connect your sales channels, what you'll be able to do, and this is for this account is for Sophia. She sells sneakers. So you'll see that as we go through, she'll be able to connect to a channel. And here it's three simple steps. So to choose, configure, and connect. And Sophia will click on Shopify. That's what we're gonna demo for the day. She'll be able to click next. And connect her Shopify account, which where she'll be able to bring in her data. We check for consent. This is to make sure that Sophia your clients understand what they're bringing in and why. And then all you do is you add in the account. So here it's Sophia's sneakers Press Connect, it goes straight through to what's called authorization. And this would happen for Shopify, eBay, and Amazon Pop in your email. It connects to the channel. All done. And then we're ready to now set up. So I'm just gonna pass to Keith on this. This is something we've recently added in there where if you're bringing in payouts, Keith, do you wanna talk about the options here?

Keith Crowther: 20:49

Yeah. We allow customers to have two options. And what we heard from the accountant community is that we wanna have this step of review and ad before anything is posted to the books. So what this means is, let's say you're connecting, you bring in 12 months of your historical data. You can choose to review and add, and that means that every transaction you have to go through and add these transactions before they're posted or we allow you to add automatically. So if you're confident with the connector, you know where it's gonna be posting to, and you are ensuring that you're not duplicating any historical data that might have already been recorded. We've allowed customers to now choose this ad automatically and that will post all the transactions as soon as you've connected. You'll then have all these transactions posted to your books.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 21:44

And we're getting quite a good response from it as well. We're finding that this is what customers or clients are choosing. So let's add it in for Sophia today. It's added in. The next bit is just making sure that you are using the right accounts to get paid and pay fees and a lot of feedback to make sure we were doing that appropriately. And I'll show you the chart of accounts in a little bit. So we're holding tight for Sophia. We're getting ready. Shopify is now connected and the data is being imported. And I saw a comment that we've got captions on, so I hope that my Australian accent is okay. Let me know and I can slow down.

Dan DeLong: 22:25

So far it is translating perfectly

Cat Williams-Treloar: 22:30

good. So you now in the Como overview, we've connected you'll get guidance on how to keep setting up for Sophia. What you can also do now is check the chart of accounts. And we've had great input from accountants on this. So you can see, I don't know, Keith, if you just wanna talk through this.

Keith Crowther: 22:51

Yeah. So these are the various types of accounts that get created. So upon connecting, you'll see that there's splitting out of selling fees, discount, shipping, income, other adjustments, reserve balance. And so each of these channels and Amazon has a much bigger list of various types of fees that you can have. These are the accounts that we've created and mapped to. And then of course, if you have existing accounts that you prefer to use or already have set up you can hit that pencil icon and change to a different account that's already been created. But by default these are created for any of the connections. So if you connect Shopify, you'll have these accounts. If you connect Amazon or eBay, you'll have the same accounts, plus or minus a few that are specific

Dan DeLong: 23:37

to those channels. And these will be consistent like across the different sales channels. So that's one of the things that's nice about having it a standard connector to to these sta sales channels is once you've set up one, you know that feeling to, to go through and set a set up another one. And you were mentioning, or I saw in the chat what about Etsy or what about these other sales channels? Can you speak to I prob I'm probably stealing a little bit of the what's coming, thunder, but but what is the right now those three core ones are they they learn you're using those as what was the strategy of those three being the first, I know Amazon. I guess they run the spectrum of how that information gets into, flows into accounting data, right? Amazon is like once every two weeks, and then Shopify is pretty regularly and eBay is more of a marketplace type of thing. Is that kind of like the idea of why those three to begin with? Th

Keith Crowther: 24:51

those two were really based off of the size and the demand for them. So those were the top three that were previously requested and didn't exist. So we looked at what was currently existing in the ecosystem of first party built connections into QuickBooks and what was most demanded. And then those three all tell a story together. There's a lot of overlap with product-based businesses who sell on all three of those channels. Versus we could have gone and built WooCommerce and Wix. But if you sell on Shopify, you don't have then a Wix site. So it's also trying to look at what made sense together. Etsy is another one that's come up a lot. There, there's an older Etsy integration that was built a couple years ago it's also trying to understand what else existed already and then what we'd have to migrate over. A little bit of context in the accounts. So we set them up in this parent child relationship. So we have, for all of these accounts, there is a parent account. So if you're looking at Amazon sales, there is a higher level parent that's just called channel sales, and then the child is Amazon or Shopify. And so the idea is we try to be as agnostic to the channel as we can be. Meaning that for all of the channels, you'll have the same set of accounts. There might be two or three more types of fees. With Amazon, you might have advertising, fulfillment, warehousing that don't exist in Shopify, so there might be additional. That's the idea, is that it's agnostic to the channel, so that as we start to grow to other channels and we add Etsy or Walmart or whatever the next marketplace is that people decide to sell on this can scale. So you're basically just switching out the name and adding on a new channel and bringing in the data the exact same way, following the same patterns.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 26:56

Thanks. Okay, so that's the first bit. We've got a lot of content, so I'm gonna, we're gonna speed up a little bit. So that's how you get connected. That's how you work out your chart of accounts. Other things that are live today are sales, co sales orders coming in. At this point in time, they're not posting as we go into the future. They will be if you want them in a daily, daily transaction and buy every order. But let me just show you what it looks like. So here, under commerce, there's an orders tab where you'll see sales orders. What you'll be able to see here is the orders that have come in across channels. So for Shopify and Amazon in this instance, but also eBay, the sales total. Over time you'll see the status of the order payment and fulfillment as well. So I'm just gonna. Click through here and show you if I was to filter by these, they've got different options of looking at channels and order status and payment and fulfillment. I'm just gonna look at a return here for Sophie and just apply that and you'll be able to see here you can see everything in real time as it comes in. I'm just gonna open this sales order for Amazon here. Over time you'll be able to see customer details on the sales order. That bit is not live today, but what you can see today is the actual individual products coming in and the sales order. And over time, you'll also be able to link to other transactions across QuickBooks online, which we think is really important. The next bit is matching payouts with bank deposits. Keith touched on it at the beginning that you can automate this. If you go through the onboarding or you turn it on, you can actually just say auto and it's done for you. But if you do wanna go through and individually make sure that everything's recorded, what happens is the payouts come in here under the payouts, under commerce. You can see all of the payouts here as they come in. And you mentioned it, Dan. The payouts come at, you can choose different frequencies and they come at different frequencies across the channels. If you click on them, you can actually see that payouts give you a breakdown of sales, refunds and expenses and all of those linked through to the appropriate transactions. So this one here just links through to an expense where you can see that all of those are broken out for the selling fees, fulfillment, sales, tax, and adjustments. What we've done is we've made sure that all of that is visible in journal. So you can see it across all the accounts there. So it's completely transparent and visible when it comes to matching transactions from payouts. So if you've order added them, they'll go through. But if your client or you would like to match them, you can see here is an example of an Amazon deposit. So you'd just be able to open that up. It's just every other transaction for matching. You can have a look at the deposit here, which is coming from Amazon, this particular amount of just over$4,000 and it's come in. What you can also do is then once you've confirmed it and it's done, so again, you've got a challenge. You speak a little bit

Dan DeLong: 30:18

There's a couple questions coming in, Ken, about like the cost of this, right? Can you speak to the different levels of QuickBooks online and what's included? Yeah, with regards to commerce and sales channel connection.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 30:32

Beautiful. So today, commerce accounting is available on all SKUs. So all plans, the difference is the amount of channels you connect for what you're seeing. You can connect one channel on Simple start, and it's included within that plan up to three for essentials. And it's unlimited on, plus and advanced. When I show you what's coming, inventory is available on Plus and Advanced. That's where it sits today. So that's also what's super cool about it. It's included in the plans. And Cat,

Michelle Long: 31:13

could you talk about what is the difference between Amazon in the sense of when you connect TAB versus under the banking tab? Because you can connect it in both

Keith Crowther: 31:23

places. I don't cover that one. Okay. There, there's two ways. There's Amazon business and then there's Amazon seller. So when you see Amazon business in the banking tab under app transactions that's if you're purchasing off Amazon. So you buy your supplies and pen and paper. This, what we're talking around is when you're a seller on Amazon which is also visible in that app transaction tab next to Amazon business, but will also exist inside the commerce tab. So that's small businesses that are selling you the pen and paper on Amazon.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 32:03

Okay, reports. Thank

Michelle Long: 32:05

you.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 32:07

So we know where you can get it and you know the difference. Once, once you've got it connected, you'll also see that all of that data beautifully goes through to the p and l or the profit and loss. So you can see here the breakout of each of the channels and also on the balance sheet as well. I think this is why we have we've designed and built this. We wanna make sure that the commerce accounting is accurate for online retailers. Okay. And then finally, what's also live is some really great insights. I know I saw, Michelle, you had feedback. I watched the recording on net revenue. So we'll talk about, we we'll take that. Keith it was around the accuracy of the definition of cogs isn't included. So here on the overview page, you've got the revenue coming in for the channels your clients, and you will be able to filter that by different time periods. So I've just clicked on that for quarters. The orders here, you can see the differences between the channels so you can see how the business is performing. And then also top selling products that have come through which we actually find is super valuable for your clients and also for you to just get a pulse on the business. So that's what's live. I'm now gonna show you what's coming and I'm looking at the time, so I'm gonna hop, skip, and jump through this. I really have got quite a lot. So this is coming soon. What, if you think of what you've just done, we've just connected the sales channel and. You don't have to do anything else other than press one extra button and I'll show you, you'll be able to bring in your inventory and also products and variants. So if you remember, I showed you the overview, all you would do in this instance for Sophia's sneakers is continue to connect the channel. And there is one option here of if you would like to sync inventory across those sales channels. So this shows how QBO or QuickBooks online would be the place that you could start managing your inventory and syncing across those sales channels in real time. And all you'd need to do when you're setting it up is say yes to sync. And that's it. That's basically the addition for getting started across the channels. And Dan, your question of what happens on the commerce tab, it just expands. Now I know, Michelle, you had a question when I watched the webinar from September about what else is missing? Obviously not just inventory and quantity, but also costs. So when you connect your sales channel what is coming soon is you'll be able to either import your costs if you have them set up, say, in Shopify because Shopify does manage costs, or you can add them in. So here everywhere we've got guidance and education on what is a cost or as we go through different things, what is a product, what is a variant so that we're helping to educate everyone on it and why it's so critical. There are, there's an experience where if you haven't imported them and you actually need to manually add them in, you'll be able to do it in a bulk way. So you'll see here we've got products. So here's my urban suede, high top sneaker. And I can add Sophia's cost here. And for the first time ever, we'll also have variants which is super cool. And if there is a different in cost between a variant, you can do it here because we know how important tracking cogs is. Jobs done. Okay onto the next one. I'm looking at that clock. This is really cool as well. We'll have a reimagined view of products and services. So this is where you'll have all of your stock levels. And basically your entire catalog. So this is what we're testing at the moment and what we're looking at. So you can see here you've got Sophia's sneakers with the products and services. Again, you've got all of the sneakers that she's selling here, so you can see the image of them, the product name. You'll be able to get visibility on quantity on hand, which we know is very important. The sales channels that the data is connected to the type of product you can track inventory, non-inventory, if it's still a product, a service the category that the product is sitting in, which we know is really critical for reporting the skew, the price, the cost. I'm just gonna show you one thing that we're, that will be coming soon is what we're calling inventory stages. So it's not just having quantity on hand, but it's also what's committed and available and also available on purchase order as well. Which, which is super cool to get that full view of inventory. And then I'll just show you in here when you have a look at your products, you'll also be able to see all of the variants as well. And we've got some we're still experimenting. We've got some nice ways in which you can click in and have a look at the products overall, get a bird's eye view on what variants are available, how you're going with inventory, so across quantity, on hand, committed, available, and on purchase order. And then also the same as within the variance. You can again, see all the details there

Dan DeLong: 38:07

as well. Now, Cat, what you're showing here is the intention is that this is actually residing inside of QuickBooks Online, right? Not, or is it still in, in the commerce tab or somewhere else? So this will, that's, I think it's the question. Yeah. That's why I think it's a, that's why I think it's a challenge. Is that, or it's why it's important that a lot of people understand this, that, hey, this could be the new products and service tab inside of QuickBooks, and maybe you didn't even realize why it changed.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 38:40

A hundred percent. So this will, this is what's coming soon with the new products and services tab and QuickBooks online. Because if you want to manage your inventory, you need to also manage your products. And this is quite exciting for us. It's truly being reimagined and it's a, it's really

Michelle Long: 39:02

exciting. I was just wondering that too. So Cat, will we be able to do bundles in here? If we wanted to bundle buy these two shoes and get this free, or anything like that. Will we be able to do bundles in here or groups? Yes,

Cat Williams-Treloar: 39:18

it'll become awesome. Oh, yay. Yeah. It'll be basic to start, but yes. Bundles

Michelle Long: 39:26

in there and inventory adjustments or quantity adjustments will be available as well. Yeah,

Cat Williams-Treloar: 39:31

I'm about to show you that as well. Shall I show you a couple of adjustments? Yes, please. Yes. Oh, you're actually getting excited. This is, do you know, this is music to our ears. Okay. Let me show you a couple of workflows here. So this is, if you've got low stock and this happens a lot, right? It's the making sure that your client, in this instance Sophia, doesn't run out of stock and that she can reorder and also create a purchase order so that we've got everything buttoned up and all the transactions are linked. So same page, you're on products and services. Also, Sophia needs to do is click on, see here, there are four items that are outta stock. Simple filter. It filters everything for us. And we will have a way to do bulk reordering. So you just click on them and it will take you through. To purchase order with those items that we've already added where you can confirm the quantity that you want. And that's it. Super easy way to see where Sophia might be out of stock and reordering if there's an adjustment. So let's do I love these. Let's just do a super quick adjustment. Say if there's been a damaged good. And we need to just make sure that it, that everything's accurate. So again, we're back on products and services. What we're gonna do is just click on these four green running shoes here. And in this bulk, bulk bar, we're just gonna adjust the quantity, Michelle. So if I just adjust that quantity, Again, it'll bring up a stock adjustment. So super quick we'll be able to adjust the quantity here so you can see what was on hand, the new quantity and the change, like really easy. And you can also give a reason for it. In this instance, it was damaged and with inventory shrinkage a tip for everyone listening, when we're testing this with product-based businesses, they're sometimes really excited that they've got different accounts to put this in. So it is, it's super cool for traceability and also just making business decisions. That's the we

Dan DeLong: 41:53

what the what is the adjustment reason? Like where does that go? Is it like in the memo or what is the reason for the reason?

Cat Williams-Treloar: 42:03

Keithe, do you wanna go through their accounts?

Keith Crowther: 42:08

Yeah so there's two things. There's one, which is that reason that you saw on the left side, and then that will have mapping to an account. So you'll actually see in your adjustment reason damaged. And then the inventory adjustment account is inventory shrinkage. So if you're looking at your chart of accounts, you'll see the inventory shrinkage. Those reasons on the damaged could just be used for reporting. So you might have everything going to inventory shrinkage, and then you might wanna split out damaged versus theft and it doesn't matter to you account level, but for other business reporting, you want to see what it went to. That's really the reasoning. It's more just a mapping of what account it goes to. And Keith,

Michelle Long: 42:51

is there a way to do a value adjustment as opposed to a quantity adjustment where you value.

Keith Crowther: 43:00

Yes, so you can change the initial value. But here is just the quantity adjustment, which will then use the f i o costing valuation inside qbo to do that change. But you can certainly change the initial quantity and that's what Cat showed at the start of what your initial value of that inventory is.

Michelle Long: 43:24

Okay. Thank you.

Cat Williams-Treloar: 43:26

Okay, I'll keep going. This is now a, in Australia we call this a stock take. We're calling it an inventory count. So just imagine, rather than an adjustment of two or three items your client is basically doing a count of their entire stock. And sometimes this might happen at the end of financial year, sometimes this might happen every quarter. When we've spoken to businesses, some businesses are doing this every week just to make sure that they've got everything in. And so this is also something that hasn't existed before. It's, we're calling it infantry count, where you would add in an inventory account. I'm not gonna do it for all of Sophia's products. I'm just gonna show you an example of just these Green Hill runners. But you could do your entire product and variant list, add it to an inventory count. And start counting. And so you think of this as a really big adjustment where you could confirm the product, the variant, the skew, the quantity on hand, and the new quantity with the change to be recorded. What's great about this is often inventory count takes multiple days. So you can save it and come back to it after overnight. And if you're still selling on your sales channels, you'll be notified if those products quantities have actually changed so you can adjust it. Once that's saved and finalized, you've always got a history of stock adjustments as well, so that you've got a record of those changes. The final bit is making sure that the inventory accounting is accurate. So you saw what's already live with payouts coming through with everything being batched in and added to the books there. This just adds one more thing, which is income coming in from invoices and orders. So back on the orders page, we will have coming soon, individual sales orders coming in, linking through the invoices going through into the books with transactions and giving, providing that visibility across all of the reports as well, including cost of goods sold. That's it. I shouldn't say that's it. There is a large team working on this who are very passionate about providing a great experience for your clients and also accountants and bookkeepers to take the work out of it and make it easier to track

Dan DeLong: 46:06

infantry. We don't wanna necessarily we, we can't say a specific day, right? This will be available tomorrow, which is not the case. But when what when should we, when should accountants and bookkeepers and small business owners start to see some of these things that are coming,

Cat Williams-Treloar: 46:27

yeah. Over the coming months. We've also got a colleague on this call code Shane. So we are testing it and we are moving forward with it. When you do start to see this on your client's accounts, cuz it does take time for it to move through. We also have a commerce education program which Shane who's on here is, has been creating and working with accountants and clients on. So there's a large amount of education that will be self serviceable through knowledge articles. We'll also be doing a lot of pro-advisor training as well so that. Everybody knows it's coming and feels confident as it's being switched on for clients.

Keith Crowther: 47:14

I just wanted to,

Michelle Long: 47:16

can I just add to that, Dan at qb training events com Dan Lu just did the e-commerce webinar, I don't know, a week or so ago cause I was helping with the q&a and stuff. So those are available. So if you wanna look to see when the next one coming up, QB training events.com. So check that out if you guys wanna register for that. Sorry Cat, but thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, so the

Cat Williams-Treloar: 47:43

The Dan Lu session, so Shane, who's on here and Keithe Keep, was also on there for questions. The next pro-advisor session, so that Dan Lu session a couple of weeks ago was very focused on commerce accounting and what's live. Today. We'll be doing another one o on the inventory and order management once, once we're beginning to roll out in, in soon. Yeah so if you're there, please join. Cause that will also kickstart a lot of the training and visibility on it. But I really hope this has given everyone a bit of a sneak peek into what's coming. If you have I can see there's been so many questions and answers here.

Keith Crowther: 48:30

Is there, I think the

Dan DeLong: 48:31

biggest stuff I think one of the, one of the things we wanted to talk about and unpack is one of the things I noticed when I was. When I was working at Intuit is that the size of a QuickBooks online company file just continues to grow. And I think there's a mindset or a, an idea that, hey, you don't want to have all these extra transactions in your QuickBooks especially when it comes dealing with your the minutiae of your ins and outs of your inventory when you have all these different sales channels coming in because that size is going to continue to grow. Have you can you speak to that a little bit about that kind of, okay. I just want sales summaries or the, I just wanna I wanna know the accounting side of things in my QuickBooks and let's let's live in the online sales channel for inventory management.

Keith Crowther: 49:30

Yeah, I mean that, that's why we launched what we launched first. So the commerce accounting feature was exactly that. What's live today doesn't bring in inventory, doesn't bring in your customers or products for that purpose. And we saw a lot of feed feedback around this. And when we talked to accountants, they said, just gimme the summary. So what we do today is exactly that. Creating summary, sales receipt, refund expense transactions, but not getting into the detail of every single inventory item. And there is a need and a want for a product like that. Potentially it's a really high volume seller who is gonna do this outside and do this in Amazon and uses a third party fulfillment anyways. But then as we launch and we learn, there's kind of two sides. I think there's a bookkeeper and an accountant view of. What they want in QuickBooks. And then there's a business owner who they want to know what products they sold and what's selling the best. And COGS gets really important. And that's where we go into what we're launching as the next iteration is bringing in that detail. Cuz without it you then you lose functionality as much as you might have a cleaner, simpler QuickBooks file. The second thing I'll add is a lot of what this is also technology changes so that QBO can perform and run faster. So a lot of what we're doing when we rebuild these features is moving across to better technology so that it can support reports and they can run and your pages don't load slowly. So all of this is also to support that the longevity of QBO can continue to run and support a growing business that has high volume. And can

Michelle Long: 51:18

you also address you were talking about where does the detail lie versus summary transactions and stuff. Can you address sales taxes and where does that detail lie in the third party app, like Shopify versus in QBO and that sales tax center. Cause that's always a question that the pro advisors have.

Keith Crowther: 51:41

Yeah. No, it's a really good question. And right now it, it only exists, your sales tax by jurisdiction would be inside Shopify. You would have to pull reports from there. The only thing that we're recording is a total lump sum amount of what was collected. But this is what we're working on alongside the Shopify team and the sales tax team. For this, the QBO sales tax engine. There's a difference in how those two calculate sales tax. And so that in the past has created a difference with the calculation when you calculate in QBO versus Shopify or Amazon. So for the purposes of now, it's refer to the sales channel for your sales tax. We do bring that in, but we just put it to a sales tax liability account, not telling you the jurisdiction and each county and state.

Dan DeLong: 52:36

Thank you. The other question I had was regarding Shopify point of sale. So you touched the, touched on bringing in Shopify with the changes of QuickBooks point of sale going away and the transition to the partnership of Shopify point of sale. How does that play into this, or does it not yet? It

Keith Crowther: 53:03

does support both Shopify as, as an online seller as well as point of sale. The one thing I would mention is what is live today is really built around payouts. So if you're taking in cash transactions in a store, those are gonna have to be manually accounted for from the bank feed when you deposit the money. This is really looking at transactions that come through Shopify payments. So credit card, debit card anything that comes through that cash or anything someone wrote you a check those are, have having to be manually accounted for. And that's something that will be a follow up. So you'll see that in the future that will start recording the cash and the manual transactions. But today it's just the ones that come through Shopify payments.

Dan DeLong: 53:55

The good news is it's not a moot point. You, it's on the, it's on the radar. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Great. Any other questions that, that we saw in the chat or the Q&A that we wanna maybe speak to?

Michelle Long: 54:17

I was just kinda looking through this. I just think it's really exciting the fact that the cost is now gonna be in there as Cat mentioned it was on a previous webinar and some of the previous discussions that we had with the commerce team and giving them feedback where as Cat mentioned, you saw that one graph and it said net profit. And that's where I had brought up the point it's not really net profit because you don't have the cost. Cogs is not in there. So how can you call it net profit? Because there's no cost of the merchandise in there and stuff. And so getting the cogs in there I think is huge and I think that's very important. And so I'm really excited to be seeing that piece brought in because that that's a big part of it. Having the cogs in there is huge. So I'm real excited to be getting

Dan DeLong: 55:12

that in there. Is there any is there any cuz accountants and bookkeepers, they live in this world of Yeah. But right. There any Yeah. Buts with commerce right now? Other than okay. Yeah. But I work with Squarespace or something like that. Obviously this would not be a solution holistically where does it fit, like right now when there are people that are in other sales channels that aren't currently supported yet, right? Like where do they fit? Do they try this for the one sales channel and have another solution for another sales channel? Where do they live today in this ever-changing world of of commerce?

Keith Crowther: 56:10

I think it's tough with those. This does follow a very similar pattern to a lot of third party connectors that are out there. So if you're using any look at the top third party apps that do something similar, they follow a very similar pattern. So it's not to say that you couldn't, if you have a. A Wix store and maybe you have Amazon, and so Wix is not supported. There are third party apps that you can use that support Wix, and you would have this still for the main. And then the goal is for us to eventually grow and keep adding new sales channels. So I think that's part of it. The other one I would call out that we tend to see a lot of is the people just add this from the bank. They just go in and add their bank deposits as sales of product income. And so I find there's a lot of maybe accountants or bookkeepers that haven't previously worked with a lot of these sales channels and they don't know. It gets complex with Amazon of what the actual breakdown is. So our big competitor, I think still is spreadsheets for inventory and cogs and doing journal entries and just take a bank deposit and do a journal entry. I think that's the simplest way that we've seen and what our big competitor is.

Michelle Long: 57:38

And that's what Sandy just said in the chat area. She says, I do cogs with the JE change in monthly count cogs on a perpetual seems way over complicated for the little guys. And I tend to agree with her on some of them that are smaller. I think she's right. If they're smaller, they don't necessarily have to account for inventory on a perpetual basis until they get to a certain size and volume. That may be true. Because if they're not dedicated to accounting for inventory properly and properly accounting for each item purchased and sold, they're just gonna make a mess of things because they have to be dedicated to accounting for it properly, or they're gonna mess it all up. So I agree with her on that point.

Dan DeLong: 58:29

Thank you. Thank you both for joining us today. We really appreciate you have having us you coming on today. Yeah. And we look forward to having you come on like maybe in a few months to, to show all the things that were coming that are now live or whatever that looks like in a few months as this journey continues with with what is in store for for commerce Cat. Any final thoughts that you have?

Cat Williams-Treloar: 58:58

Look, this has been fun. Thank you so much for including us. And I'm just looking at all the Q&A and the comments. Thank you to everyone who's joined and listening, and if you catch this at a later date, thank you as well. We're here, we're listening. We want feedback. And it would be awesome if we could come back again in a few months time.

Dan DeLong: 59:22

All right. And just as a an update next QB Power Hour is actually the 4th of July, so we're not going to have a a Power Hour on the 4th of July. So you gain your independence from attending the Power Hour through next time. We'll you'll catch us on on the flip side of that. So middle of July will be our next community Power Hour, and we all hope you all have a great safe holiday and we'll see you next time. Thanks

Michelle Long: 59:52

everybody. Thanks for joining us.