V8 - Data utilities

SOS Inventory's Data utilities (Company menu > Data tools) feature includes three different tools: one for updating historical costs, another to retrieve transactions and other data from QuickBooks, and the third to clear the item cache. The Data utilities page appears as shown in the screenshot below:

Updating historical costs 

If you find it necessary to make a lot of adjustment transactions for item values or have made changes that did not cleanly affect the system, you can update the historical costs of items. Choose a date in the Update historical costs starting on field, then select Begin update to recalculate every item used on transactions. This utility ensures the costs of items are correct from the date you selected, based on their current valuations.

Reconciling accounts after updating historical costs 

To reconcile item valuation differences between SOS Inventory and QuickBooks after updating historical costs:

1. Run the Reconcile journal entries report (Operations menu > Reports > Accounting > Reconcile journal entries).
    
2. Perform either Step 2a or Step 2b:
   1. Review the flagged transactions that SOS Inventory highlights. For each transaction, go to its record on the relevant list, then select Add to sync from the Actions menu. Perform a manual sync to QuickBooks (Sync > Sync now). On shipments, the transaction must be edited and saved instead of using Add to sync.
   2. Run an Inventory value report (Operations menu > Reports > Inventory > Inventory value)—and if you use work in progress, also run the Work in progress report (Operations menu > Reports > Production > Work in progress). Add those two report valuations together if applicable, then compare the total to the total valuation (of all asset accounts used by the item definitions in SOS) for your account in QuickBooks. Make an entry in QuickBooks to bring QuickBooks into alignment with SOS Inventory. 

Retrieving data from QuickBooks Online

On new SOS Inventory accounts, the initial sync imports from QuickBooks Online only the most recent 1000 of any transaction type. If you need to import more than 1000 of a transaction type into SOS Inventory, the data utility Retrieve from QuickBooks field allows you to obtain the rest. The types of data that can be retrieved are bills, credit memos, estimates, invoices, journal entries, payments, purchases, purchase orders, sales receipts, and vendor credits. Select the type of data you need from QuickBooks, then select Retrieve.

Whenever using this data utility to retrieve records from QuickBooks, SOS will prompt you to disable any AOP rules that you have created, along with any enabled "auto" functions in the Sales settings (Settings > Sales settings). Examples of the latter include Auto-ship invoices and Auto-ship sales receipts.

Clearing the item cache

SOS Inventory caches information on item quantities to increase the speed and performance of loading quantities on hand and quantities for sale on purchasing orders, sales orders, sales receipts, and work orders. Sometimes, however, the cache may get stuck and cannot update the quantities of one or more items as expected. SOS Inventory allows you to clear the cache of an individual item via the Clear cache action on the Items list. But if you want to clear the cache of all items in the Items list, the Clear item cache data utility is the tool you want to use.

Clearing the cache does not affect the stored quantity-on-hand numbers. Cached quantities are re-established from scratch when the Items list is refreshed. Re-establishing the cache may take quite a bit of time the first time the Items list is reloaded after the cache has been cleared, so please be patient.