What does an ERP integration send from a cabinet dealer portal into the ERP?

An ERP integration sends each accepted dealer order from the dealer portal into the cabinet manufacturer's ERP or accounting system as a transaction, such as a sales order or an invoice, so nobody types the order a second time. KitchenDEV's Dealer Portal & Order Automation exports dealer orders to NetSuite, Acumatica, Odoo, QuickBooks (including QuickBooks Desktop) and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, as a premium module built against each manufacturer's own system.

An ERP integration, for a cabinet manufacturer, is the connection that turns an order a dealer placed online into a transaction in the ERP without anyone retyping the order.

Why do cabinet manufacturers retype dealer orders into the ERP?#

Cabinet manufacturers retype dealer orders because the order arrives as a document, not as data the ERP can take. A dealer emails or faxes an order built from a PDF catalog or an Excel price sheet, and someone at the manufacturer checks the configuration and types each line into the ERP or QuickBooks. A buyer who had built a quoting tool in Excel at a previous cabinet company, because that company's ERP could not take quotes, described the result to KitchenDEV: "I had three if not four different places I had to enter all this information." The full path from email to portal is in how cabinet manufacturers stop re-keying dealer orders.

Dealer

Before

1. Email attachment
2. Someone re-keys it into the ERP

Errors, found late

After

1. Portal at their own price
2. Order reaches the ERP as data

Before

1. Dealer
2. Email attachment
3. Someone re-keys it into the ERP

Errors, found late

After

1. Dealer
2. Portal at their own price
3. Order reaches the ERP as data

How many hours does retyping dealer orders take?#

The hours spent retyping dealer orders come from three numbers only the manufacturer knows: orders per week, lines per order and the minutes it takes to type and check one line. Hours per week are orders per week times lines per order times minutes per line, divided by 60. A year is 52 of those weeks.

The calculator below uses your own numbers and starts empty. The time it shows is typing and checking only, before any time spent finding and fixing a wrong door style, finish or modification.

Hours spent retyping dealer orders

Enter your own order numbers. A year is counted as 52 weeks and a month as a twelfth of that.

Dealer orders per week

Lines per order

Cabinets, options and modifications.

Minutes to type and check one line

Enter all three numbers to see the hours.

Hours per week

–

Hours per month

–

Hours per year

–

Clear the fields

What goes from KitchenDEV's Dealer Portal into the ERP?#

KitchenDEV's Dealer Portal exports an accepted order to the ERP as the transaction the manufacturer uses. Orders go to Acumatica and Odoo as sales orders. Orders go to QuickBooks Desktop as an invoice built from summarized accounting lines, such as cabinets, delivery, indoor service, miscellaneous charges and discount, under QuickBooks item codes the manufacturer sets up. With the Business Central integration, the item code goes to Business Central with each exported order.

How much detail each export carries is a choice, made when the integration is scoped. On one QuickBooks scoping call, the manufacturer turned down a line per room or per style and chose one line for the whole kitchen, with delivery and discounts on lines of their own. Taxes were not sent at all, because QuickBooks calculates tax for each customer. Which ERPs KitchenDEV connects to, and what each export contains, is set out in which ERP systems work with a cabinet dealer portal.

What comes back from the ERP?#

• The invoice number. The order page in KitchenDEV's Dealer Portal shows an external invoice number from QuickBooks or Odoo when one exists, with the linked ERP order, such as an Odoo sales order, clickable.
• The invoice number in dealer emails. Email templates in KitchenDEV's Dealer Portal can include the invoice number from QuickBooks, Odoo or Acumatica.
• Stock levels. With the Odoo integration, kit and component availability (in stock, low, backorder) can be pulled hourly and shown to dealers during item search.
• Customers. With QuickBooks Desktop, the manufacturer can pull the QuickBooks customer list with each customer's internal ID.

What has to be decided before an ERP integration is built?#

What moves between KitchenDEV's Dealer Portal and the ERP, and in which direction, is scoped with the manufacturer before anything is built. The ERP stays the system of record for accounting, production and inventory. KitchenDEV's Dealer Portal keeps the catalog, the dealer pricing and the configuration rules, which an ERP does not handle, as covered in what order entry software should do. The questions to settle are the transaction type, how much detail each order carries, which item codes the ERP expects, and whether tax, delivery and discounts travel as lines of their own.

FAQ#