Importing products into Quickbook

[jxm28788]

This is probably a stupid question, but how do you import actinic products into quickbook?

I have successfully imported my orders, and this has kind of imported products - but when I look in the 'item' list all I see are the actinic product references (ie. a 3 digit number). There is no price, no description and the numbers mean nothing to me...

Please tell me there is another way to do this (preferably one that takes the current stock levels as well). I can't face entering 500+ products, descriptions, prices and they having to match them up to the actinic products in some stupid mapping table....

[cdicken]

All Actinic Link for QuickBooks is designed to do is take Actinic order information and put it into QuickBooks. This is a limitation of the *.iif file import format, which is currently the only way to get information into Actinic. QuickBooks in the UK does not have the nice API connectivity that QuickBooks in the US does.

I'm afraid what this means for you is that you will need to re-enter your product information into QuickBooks. Yu won't need a mapping table of any kind becasue as long as the QB code is the same as the Actinic product reference, the product will show up correctly in the transferred order.

[oldhasbeen]

Cripes!

Hi All

Just thumbing through the threads re: Actinic Link for Quickbooks as I was about to take the plunge and upgrade from Cat to Business to take advantage of the downloading orders facility (and other bits, but this is the main feature I need).

Can you clarify the point on Actinic product references please? Is this the product code you give when setting up the product - i.e Bag of Widgets (V3002) - meaning the V3002 number, or the product reference that Actinic gives each new item you set up?

If it's the latter, then this make a mockery of the entire thing. We stock thousands of product items and not only would it send me to the nut house to have to do this, it then totally stuffs up my product codes that I need from Quickbooks when placing supplier orders and dealing with customer stock enquiries (they ask for information regarding the product code on the website not Actinic's self generated reference that you can't see on the website anyway).

Please oh please tell me it's the former and not the latter - at long last I thought I found a cure for the hours I waste manually bashing in orders every day!

BTW - why are we always the poor relatives over here when it comes to Quickbooks? They've just got 2005 - we have to wait a year!! If it comes down to it, I'll consider converting to Sage if this will make Actinic do the job better.

TIA - Helen

[I-CC]

It is the reference number in Actinic, but this is amendable.

Go into View | Business Settings | Options tab and disable the Auto Generate Product References option and then you can assign every product within Actinic your own (product specific as per supplier) reference number.

If you reference numbers in your Actinic site are not shown, then this is because you are using a theme or custom theme that decided not to show the information, but this information can be shown in the product pages and checkout pages if required

[oldhasbeen]

Hi Techno

Thanks for your reply. So essentially I would have to go into every Actinic product and manually change the Actinic reference to my product number - nut house here I come.

I use drop down menus A LOT (or some web pages would run on forever) - some are choices (ie colour) which are not price dependant, some are variations on the main product (ie a fabric swatch which you can buy in 3's or 4's). Actinic doesn't appear to give you the option to assign these a product code? The main product itself isn't a "product" - the drop down bits are the product.

How do these import into Quickbooks? Apologies for the ignorance - I'm just looking for some very straight forward answers before deciding whether it's feasible to spend a lot of money on something that might not work or is going to cause me an unacceptable amount of work to get it to work!

Regards - Helen

[I-CC]

QB here in the UK has the limitation of not being able to import products from actinic into it, which is not actiics fault but that of QB uk, so you have to manually create all of your products within QBs, so no auto import sorry.

Actinic only assigns a reference number to an actual product in its terms, so components/attributes and choices are not products under their own steam within Actinic, but by creating your choices as hidden products which will have its own reference number will then allow you to add dummy products which are made up of components connected to hidden products with your references connected to them, but if you have lots of these, then it will be a long road in building products per choice and then creation and connection of the hidden ones to the components.

[jxm28788]

just a thought... if the US version allows imports, would it be possible to import into a US version then copy the appropriate QB file(s) to the UK version directory...?

if anyone looks into this, or another solution, can you post the results here? I need to know how to get the products into QB (without being able to do this it is pretty useless), but I have waaaay to much to do already...

[Mike Hughes]

I believe Quickbooks Pro 2004 can now import from excel (it's a new feature). Here's what they say on the website:

Quickly import & export Microsoft® Excel data into QuickBooks - easily bring in customer lists, supplier lists, item lists etc.

see: http://www.quickbooks.co.uk/product_pro.php

I don't know the format of these, but as you can export the data from actinic and import it into quickbooks then at most all you should have to do is a bit of formatting.

Mike

[oldhasbeen]

So basically I'm stuffed then.

I don't need to import products from Actinic into Quickbooks - I already have Quickbooks running with a full stock inventory and customer database, and I already have Actinic up and running with the equivalent number of products (getting on for 10,000 of them).

When you first build your webstore and your business you wear many hats and have a steep learning curve and you cannot foresee that in a few years you might need to change to Actinic Business (unless you are already a fully conversant Actinic website designer and know that unless you set it up in a certain way to future proof the site, you might encounter problems later). The vast majority of us wouldn't know this as we learn as we go along.

So I, and doubtless many other small business owners, have been merrily ticking along and now find that when they need to upgrade (because fortunately the business is successful and warrants it) the sheer scale of work involved will be entirely detrimental.

Before anyone thinks it or says it, to employ a professional website designer to create, build and maintain a webstore from scratch is quite frequently beyond the means of a lot of small business when they first start up. Although I now use professional designers for template work and tweaks, it is still financially unfeasible for me to get them to fully manage the site given the number of new products a month that have to be added.

I thought by upgrading all my woes would be over - oh well, guess I've just saved myself a grand!

Back to the drawing board.........

Thanks guys - Helen

[I-CC]

Understand that import of products is not required, but for the financial aspects to tally up for the orders being imported does need the reference numbers if QB and Actinic to match

Afraid that if your products that you have created in Actinic do not match up with actual products as supplied by your suppliers and held within your product references within QB, then afraid that it will mean creation of hidden products using the real product reference numbers (as supplied by your suppliers and used in the QB system) and then assigning the Components Permutations for each Attribute to the hidden product to get connections between references.

The ability to assign reference numbers to options as detailed within Product choices would be an ideal solution, which would probably need to be added to the permutations input as opposed to anywhere else, as this would enable it to work on multiple factors, i.e. size and colour in situation such as those - Actinic - Is this a possible feature that could be added into v7.

[cdicken]

Actinic - Is this a possible feature that could be added into v7.

It is unlikely to make it into v7 but I am currently reviewing the wish list for the next major release so I will add this into the mix.