Read this first: Module 1: Creating a Trial & Selecting your Plan
Read this next: Module 3: Creating and/or Importing your Inventory
In this article
- Part 1 of 6: Clearing Demo Data
- Part 2 of 6: Company Details
- Part 3 of 6: Configuration
- Part 4 of 6: Creating Custom Shipping Zones & Rates
- Part 5 of 6: Branding & Documents
- Part 6 of 6: Email Templates
Part 1 of 6: Clearing Demo Data
Here we'll cover:
- Deleting your demo data
The pre-populated demo data is meant to give you an idea of what your account will look like once you start using QuickBooks Commerce!
Feel free to explore and see how you might work with QuickBooks Commerce and once you're ready to start unlocking your own commerce superpowers, follow the steps below to clear the demo data.
To clear the Demo Data, click the “Clear Demo Data” button located at the top right-hand side of your screen.
Please wait a moment and then refresh the page in your browser.
If the demo data has not cleared immediately, please wait a few more minutes (and have a cup of tea) before refreshing the browser again - the cleanse will be queued and can sometimes take up to an hour to process.
Setup time can vary based on your product assortments and the number of integrations you have in your commerce ecosystem.
If you have any questions along the way, you can always type your question into the Knowledge Center’s “Search” bar or contact our Support team.
Part 2 of 6: Company Details
Here we'll cover:
with QuickBooks Commerce's Demo Data now cleared from the system, you’re ready to unlock your commerce superpowers!
Remember, no superhero’s journey is complete without first learning how to control their powers. So let’s get down to business and make sure your QuickBooks Commerce account is properly set up so that you can focus on growing your business.
Company Overview
First things first, let’s enter your company information - you’ll be able to do this within the Company Details section.
Fill out your company information in the fields provided.
It’s important that this information is accurate and up-to-date because it will appear on other documents like invoices and email templates.
Adding New Team Members
Now that we know more about who you are, it’s time to build and assemble your team of commerce superheroes (if it’s just you, then this step will be really easy). Click on the Team Members tab located within the Company Details section of Settings.
Only Primary Account Owners have permission to add and invite new team members.
Next, click “Add a new Team Member.”
Enter their email, first name, and last name, then click “Send Invitation.” A confirmation email will be sent to the email address provided (this is the email they’ll use to login to QuickBooks Commerce).
Depending on your plan type, you may need to add additional user licenses to your account before QuickBooks Commerce will allow you to add a new team member. To do this manually, click on the Plans & Billing section located within Settings, where you’ll be able to click the “+” button on your plan type to add one or more additional users.
After you send the invitation click on their user icon, fill out their full contact information, and set their account’s permissions accordingly.
Learn more about User Permissions and Advanced User Permissions
Adding Locations
Every commerce superhero needs a base of operations. While we know this is supposed to be kept a secret, we need to know where you hold inventory to help you unlock your commerce superpowers.
First, let’s finalize the details of your primary location by clicking on the “Primary Location” label in the Locations list.
Edit and fill out the required information and click “Save.”
If you don’t have any additional locations, you’re done and you can advance to the next section of your training by scrolling down to Configuration!
If you have additional locations, add them now by clicking the “New Location” button located at the top right-hand side of your screen.
A window will pop up where you can fill in the required information about this new location, including whether or not it is a location that holds stock.
Click “Create” and the new location will be added to your Locations list.
With your Company Details complete, the next step to unlocking your commerce superpowers is to configure your account’s default settings.
Part 3 of 6: Configuration
Here we'll cover:
- App Settings
- Currencies
- Price Lists
- Tax Types
- Payment Terms
- Payment Methods
- Stock Adjustment Reasons
Not all commerce superheroes are as well funded as Bruce Wayne, so we’ll need to understand your payment & billing information.
When you click on Settings > Configuration, you’ll be taken to this section’s Set up Defaults tab where you can actively manage things like tax information, payment terms and billing information.
Before you can select any information within Set up Defaults, we’ll need to create your default options via the other tabs in this section.
Working our way through the tabs from left to right, let’s start with App Settings.
App Settings
Here you can start to customize some of the functionality from within QuickBooks Commerce.
Currently from this section, you can enable an alert that will notify you if you’re trying to ship an order with insufficient stock.
You can also enable barcode functionality throughout the platform from here. This will let you easily scan purchase orders to make receiving shipments easier, pick lists associated with sales orders to streamline your picking & packing process, and more.
Currencies
Next stop is the currencies section. You’ll notice that your default currency has been set based on the country that you selected when you first created your trial account.
Setting up your base currency is important because QuickBooks Commerce has the ability to convert purchases and sales made in other currencies back into your base currency, making it easy to sync information with your accounting system.
If you did not select the right country when you created your trial account, your base currency will be incorrect and we will have to reset it for you - submit a support ticket here.
Click the “New Currency” button located at the top right-hand side of your screen to add additional currencies.
Select a desired currency from the dropdown menu and choose whether you’d like to manually control the exchange rate or have it update automatically by QuickBooks Commerce.
Click “Create,” the new currency will appear within the Currencies tab where you can easily manage them at a later date.
If you would like to bulk upload multiple currencies, we will walk you through how to do this when setting up your accounting integration.
Price Lists
The next tab in Configuration is Price Lists.
At this point, we’ll explain price lists at a high level, then walk you through their setup in a future section after we import your inventory into QuickBooks Commerce
By default, QuickBooks Commerce features 3 price lists - Buy, Wholesale and Retail - within two categories - Buy and Sell. You can add as many price lists as you need to optimize your sales strategy for different sales channels, wholesale buyers, discount tiers and more.
Once created, you can link unique price lists to particular Suppliers or Business Customers within the Relationship section. The same applies for various sales channels, whether you sell on Shopify, eBay, Amazon or others.
Tax Types
Keeping the tax collectors (and your bookkeepers) happy is the next step to building an amazing business.
QuickBooks Commerce lets you create and manage multiple tax types that can be assigned to both purchase orders and sales orders. Tax types can either be created manually or imported through your sales channel or accounting integration, which we’ll walk you through later.
If a sales tax and a purchase tax are the same percentages, it’s important to create distinct tax types to align with accounting best practices and ensure clean information sync with your accounting software.
To create a tax type manually, click the “New Tax Type” button located at the top right of your screen.
Fill out the required fields and indicate whether the tax is compounded or not.
Once created, tax types can be assigned to individual buyers and sellers as well as sales orders and purchase orders.
If you’re integrating your sales channels with QuickBooks Commerce, please ensure that the same tax types exist in QuickBooks Commerce.
In keeping with accounting best practices, once a tax type has been used in a sales or purchase order, its details cannot be modified.
Payment Terms
If you sell direct to consumers, you can scroll down to skip this section.
If you sell wholesale, you’ll want to create various payment terms for your wholesale buyers - this process is incredibly simple.
Click the “New Payment Terms” button located at the top right-hand side of your screen and follow the steps in the pop-up window.
If you select “Default Payment Term,” this payment term will be the default payment term for all of your wholesale customers unless indicated otherwise in the Relationships section.
Payment Methods
To collect payments, you’ll need to ensure that the Payment Methods created in QuickBooks Commerce align with the way you collect payments either manually or via your sales channels. You can then link each payment method with the corresponding ledger in your accounting software.
If you sell wholesale, setting a default payment method will assign the selected method to all new invoices by default unless otherwise indicated within a particular buyer relationship.
To create a new payment method, click the “New Payment Method” button located at the top right-hand side of your screen and follow the steps in the pop-up window.
Enter the payment method name, and you’re done!
Stock Adjustment Reasons
Creating Stock Adjustment Reasons will help you track and monitor your ongoing stock movements and reflect the changes appropriately in your accounting ledgers. After your stock adjustment reasons have been created, we’ll show you how to use them when we talk about Stock Control.
QuickBooks Commerce comes to set up with a number of stock adjustment reasons.
To create a new Stock Adjustment Reason, click the “New Stock Adjustment Reason” button located at the top right-hand side of your screen and follow the steps in the pop-up window.
If you have either a Xero or QuickBooks Online integration, you can track stock adjustments for reasons such as Shrinkage or Damaged Goods separately in your accounting platform by assigning a ledger account to that stock adjustment reason.
To modify stock levels, you can perform either a Stock Adjustment or a Stock Take. A Stock Adjustment will affect your Moving Average Costs (MAC). A Stock Take will not affect your MAC or COGS. Learn about which to use when, here.
Set up Defaults
Congratulations!
You’ve completed a huge chunk of the work required to unlocking your commerce superpowers. As a bonus, you’ll have saved yourself and your team a lot of time down the road.
Now that you have created options for each of your account’s settings you can select the defaults that you’d like to use throughout your QuickBooks Commerce account.
Remember, you can override the defaults by assigning options within a relationship or sales channel.
Part 4 of 6: Creating Custom Shipping Zones & Rates
If you only sell direct to consumers, you can skip ahead to Part 5: Branding & Documents.
If you sell wholesale and are going to be using QuickBooks Commerce to submit invoices for payment and/or use the B2B eCommerce Platform, please follow the steps below.
Here we’ll cover:
- Creating various shipping zones
- Creating weight-based shipping rates
If you sell wholesale or create manual sales orders, creating and managing shipping zones and rates will be important to optimize your operational costs.
To create a new shipping zone, click the “New Shipping Zone” button located at the top right-hand side of your screen and follow the steps in the pop-up window.
Create your shipping zone’s name.
Select a country from the drop-down list.
Specify regions/states/provinces by clicking on “Edit” and selecting the appropriate checkbox(es), then click “Apply.”
Once you have set up your shipping zone(s) you can set up price-based shipping rates.
Simply name the shipping rate, add a minimum order price, and maximum order price if needed as well as the rate price.
If you’re going to use the B2B eCommerce Platform, please create a shipping zone before accepting sales orders. If you do not, subsequent invoices will state “FREE shipping.”
Next, you may want to create weight-based shipping rates.
Add the minimum order weight and maximum order weight as well as the rate price. Once you are done, select “Save Changes”.
The rates that you charge for various shipping zones are not real-time rates, rather they are the rates that you would like to charge your customer.
We recommend reviewing your Shipping Zones in QuickBooks Commerce from time to time to see if they are still matching the rates of your shipping carrier to ensure you are properly billing your customer upfront for these costs.
Part 5 of 6: Branding & Documents
Here we’ll cover:
- Setting up your brand details
- Setting up your document defaults (i.e. sales order, pick list, etc.)
Every commerce superhero needs a crest and colors - the Branding & Documents section allows you to customize yours, ensuring all of your external facing documents properly reflect your brand.
Click on a brand button to edit a Brand’s Details.
Fill out the required fields and upload your logos.
To customize the information that appears on various documents, click the Document Settings tab.
Edit each individual document types by clicking the “Select Document” dropdown menu and edit the fields that appear below.
Click the “Save Changes” button after you modify each document’s settings.
Default email templates can be selected and mapped from within this section, but first, you’ll need to create each template, which we’ll explore next.
To create and modify your email templates, click on the Email Templates section.
Part 6 of 6: Email Templates
Here we’ll cover:
- Creating email templates
Within the Email Templates section, you can easily create and modify your email templates.
Click on a template from the list to modify the content and click the “Preview Email” button to see what the final email from your customer’s point of view.
By using “{{ }}” the email template will pull contact information from the Relationships section in QuickBooks Commerce to automatically populate text fields. This includes {{name}}, {{organisation_name}} and more.
To see a complete list of the fields that can be automatically populated from Relationships, please click here.
Amazing - the first stage of your setup is complete!
Now it’s time to create and/or import your products into QuickBooks Commerce.