Getting started tracking inventory in WorkingPoint couldn’t be easier. Whether you have started using your items already or you are just getting started with WorkingPoint, I’ll show you how you can quickly and easily start tracking your inventory in WorkingPoint.

To see how easy it is to import your items, check out this video. Just four easy steps and your items and inventory are imported into your account.

If you have already input all of your items into your account, importing will only duplicate your data, so check this short video out on how to start tracking inventory for existing items.

If you have any questions about importing items or adding inventory, check out our thorough feature documentation by clicking the Help link in your account. Still stumped? Email me at support@workingpoint.com.

Kelli Wall
Content & Support Manager

For people who run an inventory-based business, that is–you make or buy an item and store it until a customer purchases it–managing inventory is a big part of your operations. As a small businesses owner, you probably can’t afford to tie up all your cash in inventory so you may operate on a just-in-time inventory basis – you order products to fill immediate orders with some backstock and reorder frequently. To manage your inventory efficiently, you need to know what you have on hand so you don’t oversell or overpromise your goods to your customers and you need to know what you don’t have or are running low on so you can make or order more. Keeping track of inventory costs and quantities manually or in spreadsheets, not to mention keeping it all up-to-date, is a total pain. I feel your pain. I’ve been there.

I’m Kelli Wall, and I am the Content & Support Manager here at WorkingPoint. I have spent years working with small business owners– getting to know their pain points and helping them streamline their operations so they can work smarter not harder and really focus on what they love most about their business—and I am a small business owner myself. At WorkingPoint, I get to do the same thing. As Support Manager, I hear your cries and get to relay them to our team so we can make WorkingPoint better for you. I also manage the Help Content you see in WorkingPoint and here on our blog, keeping you informed about what is new, exciting and how WorkingPoint can help solve your pain points.

That is why I am super excited about how we manage your inventory for you in WorkingPoint. You don’t have to check the shelves and try to remember what you already sold but haven’t shipped yet before accepting an order. And you don’t have to comb the shelves every other day wondering what you need to reorder from your vendors. We’ll tell you what you have on hand when you write up your quote or invoice and we’ll keep track of your quantities for you so you can just check your Items List when you are looking to reorder.

As you invoice for your items, we’ll also help you keep track of your inventory from a sales perspective. Add Top Sellers – Quantity and Top Sellers – Revenue widgets [available in the next week] to your home page and you can see at-a-glance, what items are outperforming all the rest.

We’ll even calculate the average cost of your items and record the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) so you don’t have to worry about that either! Keeping an accurate record of the value of your inventory and recording the value of what you sold is super important to your bottom line and the IRS and State come tax time. (More on that later.)

By tracking your inventory in WorkingPoint, you will have the real-time information you need to make the best buying decisions for your business. Next time, I’ll share how easy it is to get started tracking your inventory.

Kelli Wall
Content & Support Manager

There’s a lot of software out there. Some of it is powerful, and some of it is easy to use. It’s pretty rare to find one that’s both, but that’s what we’re trying to create with WorkingPoint.

I’m Sara Brown, and I lead the WorkingPoint User Experience team. Our goal is to make WorkingPoint a place where you can get in, do what you need to do, and get out without ever having to stop and think about the fact that you are using a piece of software.

I know this is a pretty ambitious goal, but we’re going to keep striving for it, and one of the best ways I’ve found to help us get there is to observe our users in action. That’s how we find those places where users have to stop what they’re doing, think about what they are trying to accomplish, and figure out how to get it done. Once we’ve identified those spots, we can come up with ways to “smooth out” the experience by providing the options that users are expecting.

So, I need your help.

We’re looking for WorkingPoint users to participate in our user experience research program. All you need to do is use WorkingPoint as you would normally. A member of our user experience team will observe your screen using a screen-sharing tool and ask you questions over the phone (there are no wrong answers…I promise!). A session typically takes about 30 minutes, and to thank you for your time, we’ll send you a $15 Amazon.com gift certificate.

If you’d like to participate, complete this short survey and we’ll be in touch to schedule a session.

Sara Brown
Senior User Experience Architect

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For more information on Facebook or to sign up, visit http://www.facebook.com/.

The WorkingPoint Team

On June 16, we celebrated another milestone, by changing the name of our product from NetBooks to WorkingPoint. Why did we do that? The simple answer is to avoid confusion. You’ve probably noticed that all of the major players in the hardware business – like Dell and HP — are selling mini-laptops they call “netbooks”, and they’re going to spend a lot of money in the coming years to get you to buy their brand. So, rather than spend time and money explaining that we’re “NetBooks – the software”, we’ve made the transition to WorkingPoint.

It’s funny how things work. It was difficult to get started, but once we began the process of finding a new name, we realized that WorkingPoint is a much better description for what we do. We’re so much more than an online bookkeeping service, anything with “books” in the name is too limiting. WorkingPoint is the one place that has everything you need to start, manage and grow your small business. We are a single point of access for your business systems, content and community. As our community of users grows, we’ll also become a destination – the point where you can find answers to your business questions.

WorkingPoint already helps you manage your financials, invoices and bills, inventory, cash, and contacts. We’ll also be bringing you online banking, e-commerce, mobile access, CRM, time-tracking, shipping integration and many more cool features. WorkingPoint is also creating a hub of communication between business owners, so you can share your experience, ideas, contacts and strategies. We will not stop adding features until you have absolutely everything your business needs to grow and thrive.

We’re excited about the future of small business, and we’re passionate about helping you succeed. You’re working every day to make a better life for yourself, your employees and your community. WorkingPoint has the tools to help you work smarter not harder, and more productively not just more.

If you haven’t given WorkingPoint a try, what are you waiting for? Sign up for a free account today at https://signup.workingpoint.com/ and see how easy it is to get started. If you’re already a customer….thanks! Now, tell a friend.

We love to hear from you! Post a comment and let us know: What motivated you to start a business in the first place?

We think this will be a great ride, and I hope you’ll choose to join us.

Tate Holt, CEO

As business owners, we usually pay ourselves last and try to keep as much cash in the business as possible to cover bills and other expenses. So it is real easy to go for the company debit card or credit card first when out shopping for yourself. And as a sole proprietor, that is cool–you can spend as much of your “business” money as you want to on personal stuff–as long as you account for the purchase correctly.

Personal expenses are different from business expenses. Business expenses have a legitimate business purpose and are “ordinary and necessary” for your business or trade, according to the IRS. Personal expenses have no direct relation to the business and cannot be deducted along with business expenses.

For example, let’s say you used your company debit card to treat your visiting nephew out to a ballgame and dawgs on Saturday afternoon. (Obvious personal expense for the non-sports related businessperson) When you get back to the office on Monday, use the Record Expense form (from the home page click Record Expense, then click Paid from Bank Account) to record the purchase. Complete the form and for the bookkeeping account, select Owner’s Equity:Draw from the list to record the purchase as a personal expense.

The Owner’s Equity:Draw account keeps track of all of the money you take out of the business for personal use. This is the same account you should use when you pay yourself each week or month. By using the draw account, you ensure that the personal expense will not be included in with your business expenses. This is important because “generally, you cannot deduct personal, living, or family expenses.”

It is also important in tracking your equity. WorkingPoint uses your equity accounts on your balance sheet to show your financial position. What you put into the business (your investment) and what you take out (your draw) contribute to the total equity you have in built in your business. So, in the reverse, when you spend your “own” money on business expenses, record the expense and select the bookkeeping account “Owner’s Equity:Investment,” so you can track the money you put into the company.

Next time you are out of cash and you reach for your business cards to pay for that dinner or manicure, go for it. Just be sure to record the expense correctly and take the draw for personal expenses.

For more information on the IRS rules for business expenses, see http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=109807,00.html. For step by step instructions on how to record an expense, visit our online Help Center.

The WorkingPoint Team

At WorkingPoint, we know you have more important things to do than enter your contacts by hand one-at-a-time. With our new Import Contacts feature, you can quickly import your contacts from your email clients and address books, such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. We also work with Apple address books.

Just export your contacts to Outlook CSV or vCard format, upload it, and within minutes…voila!, your contacts are in WorkingPoint! After import, you will get a summary report showing you how many contacts were imported, and which contacts were not imported because of invalid data or duplicates. You can even filter your Contacts List to show the contacts you imported within the last day if you want to check them out.

Importing your contacts is the first step in managing your customer relationships in WorkingPoint. As you work in WorkingPoint, selling to your contacts or purchasing from them, WorkingPoint automatically tracks your relationship, adding them to your customer and vendor lists. We’ll show you the sales history for every customer so you’ll know who are your top customers.

With WorkingPoint, it’s a snap to manage all of your contacts — your loyal customers and trusted vendors, prospective customers or even someone you just met at a conference. By keeping critical information easily accessible, WorkingPoint helps you build stronger relationships with the people who count.

For more information on how to import your contacts, visit our online Help Center.

The WorkingPoint Team

If you purchase items to resell and you keep them in inventory until they are sold, you can now add inventory to an item so WorkingPoint can track your inventory before and after every sale. With WorkingPoint, there are no confusing item types: you can add inventory to every item you create. By adding inventory, WorkingPoint can keep track of the number of items in stock, the costs of the products you’ve sold, and the value of your inventory, which helps you make business and financial decisions.

Adding inventory is a breeze. Use a bill, expense, or bank/credit card purchase or payment form to record the purchase of an item and WorkingPoint will increase the quantity of the item. When you sell the item using an invoice, WorkingPoint decreases the quantity of the item and records the cost of goods sold. This way, you always know the current quantity and value of your inventory.

With inventory tracking, you can:

• Check the on-hand quantity of an inventory item. Use the Items list to see high-level details about your inventory, including the average cost and the quantity available to sell.
• Know the value of your inventory at all times and from any location. The item’s detail page displays everything you need to know about the item, including the sales price, the average cost, how many units you have available to sell and when you sold it, and when you purchased it. And if you’re on the road making a sales call, you can log on to WorkingPoint to view your inventory.
• Take periodic physical inventory and make adjustments. For various reasons, your actual inventory quantities can get out of sync with the quantities stored in WorkingPoint. This could happen through spoilage, breakage, theft, or data entry errors. If you take a physical inventory, you can adjust the quantities in WorkingPoint to match your actual quantities.

To learn more about inventory in WorkingPoint and how to begin tracking inventory on items you have already been using, visit our online Help Center.

You may have voted for this feature on our online suggestion box. Check the status of other features or submit your own idea here. We’re listening!
The WorkingPoint Team

I am a very big fan of WorkingPoint. My business partner, Katherine Weeks, and I started our jewelry business in Atlanta, GA on Valentine’s Day 2002. We actually never intended for it to be a jewelry business. Originally, we’d planned on starting a graphic design business, focusing on the design and development of websites. We built the Turq Jewelry website because we needed a prototype to show potential clients and we had always enjoyed designing and making jewelry in our spare time. To our surprise, it was a huge hit and the orders for our jewelry immediately started pouring in. We admit that we had very little experience in sales, our expertise was in design. However, we took the “learn by doing” approach as we made decisions about how to run our operation, and our business continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In addition to our online retail store, we now sell wholesale to over 100 boutiques across the country.

We started out using QuickBooks as our accounting software and it did the job. But our personal lives were changing as fast as the seasons. We both married and started having children. We have always been determined to run our business in a way that compliments our family life. With this in mind, Katherine and I both eventually moved back to our home states. Katherine now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I am in Richmond, Virginia. Running the business from two different states created some complications, since we were accustomed to using the networked desktop computers under one roof in our Atlanta office.

We researched several online accounting solutions but found them to be both too expensive and too limited in the range of features offered. We eventually came up with the idea of trying to imitate what we did in Atlanta. So we set up the computers in our Charlotte office and then I accessed them remotely. This took care of our needs, IF it was working. And, it was always a nuisance to someone. Either I was “hijacking” a computer and nobody else could use it, or the remote access wasn’t working, and then I was out of luck. We did our best to manage but it became very frustrating and we again started researching other solutions.

We were very excited to learn that WorkingPoint was launching a new product, one that answered every single one of our needs. After over 7 years with QuickBooks, we took a leap faith and decided to convert to WorkingPoint – and we’ve never looked back!

Immediately we were excited, the user interface was incredible, so simple and straightforward. But most importantly, I can work in Virginia, Katherine in North Carolina and our sales employee also works from any location. This was particularly important because our sales are not localized in any one city. We sell in many states. Now, we can meet with a boutique and immediately enter their order, without having to wait until we return to our physical office, so everything gets processed quicker.

Another huge perk for Katherine and me is that we can access our books anytime, anyplace. This suits our work habits perfectly. Running a small business takes a lot of our time, but time with our family is a priority for us. With WorkingPoint, we’re more efficient when we are working because we are able to process orders in a more timely fashion. In addition, WorkingPoint has become another form of communication for us. We see immediately when one of us enters a new order and then we take care of it. This is a big improvement over our old system, where we had to run reports to see what was going on daily. We also make notes to each other in the notes section, about inventory or payment type. This saves us a lot of time and it just makes sense. If I have a question about an order, I go to the customer in the contacts section and review the notes. For three of us doing business in multiple locations, WorkingPoint is ideal.

We are eagerly awaiting the enhancements WorkingPoint has in its forecast, such as banking downloads, batching deposits, and communicating with our online ordering and shipping. We are confident that we will be pleased with any new features that WorkingPoint adds, because they have proved with the beta version that they are the one for us. We know our business will be able to grow with WorkingPoint.

Lee Lesley

Co-Founder, Turq Jewelry

You may have noticed some changes to your account. That’s because we recently added a new feature to WorkingPoint. Now, you can use WorkingPoint to quickly enter and track your bills and record your bill payments.

You’ve probably been using WorkingPoint to invoice your customers and track what they owe you (your receivables). Now you can gain insight into what you owe (your payables) when you use the new Bills feature in WorkingPoint to manage your bills. By entering your bills in WorkingPoint, you can see exactly who you owe, for how much, and when you need to make your payment, so you can keep up good relationships with your vendors.

WorkingPoint helps you track your bill due dates so you can pay your bills on time and avoid late fees. From the Home page dashboard, you can use the “Who Do I Owe?” widget to monitor the next 10 bills due or filter the Bills List to show what is due in the Next 7 days, or Next 30, 60 or 90 days.

Prefer not to track bills and just pay as you go? You can continue to record your payments, expenses and purchases in one easy step by using the Record Expense button on the Home page or the Record Transaction: Payment or Purchase button from your bank account.

To learn more about managing your bills in WorkingPoint, visit our online
Help Center.

Don’t forget to check out our feedback forum to vote and check the status on features you want to see added. At WorkingPoint, we are adding new features all the time!
The WorkingPoint Team