DEAR Inventory

How to setup DEAR integration?

Signing Up for DEAR

If you're new to DEAR, you can check out its features by using a no-obligation 14-day free trial. You will not be charged anything, nor will you be asked to provide a credit card during the trial period. However, to continue using DEAR after the trial period, you will need to subscribe to DEAR.

If you want to subscribe, navigate to My Account → My Subscription page and click Subscribe to get started. After clicking Subscribe, you can choose the options for your new account. Select as many users, APIs, DEAR Point-of-Sale connections (POS), DEAR B2B portal connections and external integrations as your business needs. Billing can be monthly or annual.

Next, you will be taken through to a secure payment page to complete your subscription. After payment, you will receive a confirmation email and, in the case of monthly billing, a recurring billing agreement to authorize DEAR to take monthly payments from your account. If the recurring billing agreement is not signed, the account will return to trial status after the paid month is completed.

You can view or modify your subscription at any time from the My Subscription page.

Financial Basics (do these first)

DEAR systems is an Inventory Management Solution – it is essential to have your financial settings set up correctly so your transactions can be properly classified. This should be the first thing you do when starting to use DEAR.

When signing up to DEAR Inventory, you are given the option to use DEAR Systems as a standalone Inventory Management System or connect either Xero or QuickBooks Online (QBO) as an existing account system. This will affect how some of the financial settings should be set up – instructions are given below.

You can change between DEAR standalone, DEAR with QBO and DEAR with Xero at any time using our Connect Wizard.

Chart of Accounts

The Chart of Accounts is the list of all accounts your organization has available to record your transactions and is important for classifying your transactions correctly and keeping your accounts accurate. DEAR provides a default Chart of Accounts, but you can import a chart from your accounting system or your own custom chart.

If you are using DEAR standalone, you can create accounts in DEAR by going to Settings → Reference Books → Financial → Chart of Accounts.

If you are using Xero/QBO, you must create accounts in Xero/QBO. They will then be imported into DEAR when you synchronise your accounts. You can view your Chart of Accounts by going to Settings → Reference Books → Financial → Chart of Accounts, but it will be read-only.

DEAR Systems requires the following accounts (with the account settings listed below) to be available to function correctly.

You can add more accounts to suit your business requirements – make sure to consult with your accountant or bookkeeper before adding or editing any accounts.

Already created by DEAR/your accounting system:

• Accounts Receivable
• Accounts Payable
• Sales Tax (GST, VAT...)
• Sales/Revenue
  

See the Useful Information articles for detailed steps in setting up your Chart of Accounts in DEAR standalone, Xero and QBO.

Useful Information:

• Setting up a Chart of Accounts in DEAR Standalone
• Xero Integration - Basic
• QuickBooks Online - Basic

NOTE:If you change accounting systems, the Connect Wizard will take you through Account Mapping to make sure every account in DEAR Chart of Accounts is linked correctly to the new accounting system's Chart of Accounts.

Account Mapping

Once you have populated your Chart of Accounts in DEAR or Xero/QBO, you must make sure the accounts are mapped correctly. This ensures that income and outgoings are correctly categorized.

You can find Account Mapping in Settings → Reference Books → Financial → Account Mapping.

Choose the accounts to map from the lists and Save your changes when you are finished

NOTE:If you do not have Gift Cards or Goods Received Not Invoiced/Goods Invoiced Not Received available, you will not be given these account options.

Bank Accounts

Once your Chart of Accounts is mapped correctly to DEAR, you can connect your real-world bank accounts in order to import and classify your bank transactions.

If you are using DEAR standalone, bank accounts are added by navigating to Settings → Reference Books → Financials → Chart of Accounts and using + Account. Learn more about adding and managing Bank Accounts in DEAR.

If you are using Xero/QBO, bank accounts are added through Xero/QBO.

NOTE: Make sure to include account codes when adding bank accounts in Xero.

Useful Information:

• Bank Accounts

Managing Opening Balances

Whether you are using DEAR standalone or currently using Xero or QuickBooks Online, you will need to enter the account balances from your previous accounting system and the date you started using DEAR Inventory. This is what we call conversion balances or opening balances, this will make sure your transactions are correct going forward.

Enter Opening Balances by navigating to Settings → Reference Books → Financials and click Opening Balances. You will be asked to select a Conversion Date (the date you stop using your previous system and start using DEAR), identify which accounts are Inventory or Fixed Asset Accounts, and enter your trial balances.

Useful Information:

• Guide to Managing Opening Balances

Tax Rules

Every buy and sell transaction uses tax rules for tax calculation. Depending on your store country, many standard tax rules may be already created in DEAR or Xero/QBO. You can also create tax rules if your business requires additional rules. You can specify tax rules at the supplier/customer level, purchase/sale level and individual product level, as well as specify whether a transaction cost is tax inclusive or tax exclusive.

If using DEAR standalone, tax rules are created in DEAR.

If you are using DEAR/QBO, tax rules are created in your accounting system and imported to DEAR during synchronisation.

When using DEAR for the first time, navigate to Settings → Reference Books → Financials → Tax Rules. Check that all the tax rules required for your business are listed and create any that are missing.

Useful Information:

• Tax Rules
• How to use Tax Rules? (With Xero/QuickBooks Online enabled)

Configure your Company Details

You can configure your company details at any point, but doing this first will make it easier to use DEAR going forward. You can find your company settings in Settings → Reference Books.

We recommend starting by adding Company Addresses, Company Contacts, Locations and Carriers. Addresses and contact details will be used on all output documents, invoices, quotes, purchase orders, and other documents within DEAR Inventory. Locations and Carrier information will be used to make inventory and shipping processes more efficient.

Once you have completed these essentials, feel free to move on to the next stage in the Getting Started Guide. You can fill in the rest of the Reference Books now, or at a later date if you prefer.

Useful Information:

• Reference Books

Company Addresses

These include shipping, billing and business addresses. You can select a default address for each of the address types. Your billing address will be included in your invoices.

Go to Settings → Reference Books → Your Company → Company Addresses.

When you first create an account, the system will create some 'dummy addresses' to make it easier to evaluate DEAR. You can override these addresses or delete them and add new ones.

Company Contacts

Contact types can be business, shipping, billing, sale and employee. You can select a default contact for each type.

• Billing contacts appear on quotes and invoices. At least one billing contact is required to send email invoices to customers.
• Sales contacts appear in the list of sales representatives when creating a sale.
  

Go to Settings → Reference Books → Your Company → Company Contacts to add Company Contacts.

Locations and Bins

Use Locations to organize your stock. Ensure inventory is picked or received from the right location (warehouse, shop, office, etc.) and maintain a complete view of stock levels across all your organization locations. You can also add bins to organize items further, within a location and/or warehouse.

You must also add Fixed Asset Locations to register and manage your fixed assets. You cannot create fixed assets without assigning a fixed asset location to them. Even if your stock and fixed assets are kept at the same physical location, you will need to create a separate entry for Location and Fixed Asset Location. See Locations for more information.

Locations can be found in Settings → Reference Books → Stock → Locations & Bins

Carriers

Carriers can be found in Settings → Reference Books → Other Items → Carriers. See Managing Carriers for more information.

Invite Users to DEAR

Before anyone in your organization can access DEAR, you need to invite them to become a DEAR user. Aside from the account owner/master user, other DEAR users with full access to the Users & Roles page can perform this operation.

You can invite users and manage users and roles from Settings → Users & Roles. Click Invite User on this page to invite people to use DEAR via their email address. After sending the invitation, you can choose to assign permissions and/or roles to the user or wait for the user to accept the invitation prior to assigning permissions and/or roles.

DEAR allows fine-grained control of permissions – you can grant users full access or read-only access to whole modules (Sales, Purchases, Financials, etc.) and sub-modules (Stock Reorder, Send Money, Products Overview, etc.).

Creating and Managing Roles

Roles (Sales, Finance, Manager, etc.) make setting permissions for your users more convenient. With roles, you can set up permissions just once, then assign your users to a role. For example, you might set up roles for your various line departments so that you can simply add designated users from within the department to the role. You can assign more than one role to a user.

You can add Roles by clicking + Add New Role on the Settings → Users & Roles page and giving the role full or read-only access permissions to DEAR Inventory modules. To grant either full or read-only access to all modules, click the respective buttons on the top right.

Once created, you can  add users to the role.

Useful Information:

• Managing Users and Roles

Loading Products

Your product and service information make up the core of your inventory. Add your products to start selling and receiving stock. You can add products individually, clone products from other entries, or import an inventory list in CSV format. The DEAR Inventory module supports batch numbers, serial numbers, products with multiple variants (product families), multiple price tiers and printing price lists, among other features.

Product Categories

Add your Product Categories in Settings → Reference Books → Stock → Product Categories. Product Category is a mandatory field when creating a product in DEAR, so adding categories first makes it easier to add products next. You can add as many categories as required and change your categories at any time.

Adding Products

You can add products one by one by either navigating to Inventory → New → Product/Service or going to Inventory → Products → +. Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory for creating a new product. Save your product when you are finished.

Make sure that products are added with the correct Costing Method and, if batch numbers/serial numbers are required, to select a Costing Method that supports them.

See Product and Service Management - Product/Service Detail Information for more information on each of the product fields.

NOTE: Adding Suppliers to a product is a prerequisite for using the Dropship, Low Stock Reorder, Smart Reordering and Backorder functionalities, but is optional otherwise.

Importing an Inventory List

When dealing with many inventory items, it can be difficult and time-consuming to create them individually. It would be easier to upload the inventory list via a CSV file template.

Import an Inventory List:

1. Navigate to Inventory → Products and click Import → Inventory List.
2. Download the DEAR Inventory List template and copy and paste your inventory data into the downloaded template before uploading the new file. The column headings and heading positions must remain unchanged for the import to work correctly. If you don’t have information for some columns, they can be left blank unless they are a mandatory field.
   

Set Stock on Hand

Once your Inventory List is correct, you have the ability to also upload Stock-on-Hand figures for your current stock.

NOTE: This operation should only be performed when initially setting up DEAR Inventory - it should not be used to update stock balances if you already have stock figures in the system. DEAR Inventory uses actual accounting costing methods, and uploading the stock-on-hand template multiple times will create new instances of the products rather than update existing quantities. To change stock figures after the initial setup, use Stock Adjustment or Stocktake.

Upload Stock on Hand figures:

1. Navigate to Inventory → Products.
2. Click Import → Stock on Hand.
3. Download the Stock on Hand CSV template.
4. Enter the stock on hand figures into the template. The column headings and heading positions must remain unchanged for the import to work correctly. If you don’t have information for some columns, they can be left blank.
5. Upload the saved Stock on Hand template.
   

Product Families

DEAR also supports products with multiple variants (product families). You can add up to three variants per product family (e.g. size, colour, material). See Product Families for more information about adding products with multiple variants. Create new Product Families by navigating to Inventory → New → Product Family or Inventory → Product Families and clicking +.

Useful Information:

• Product and Service Management
• Product Families

Loading Suppliers and Customers

DEAR transactions involve Suppliers and Customers. Suppliers and Customers can be added manually at the time of making a sale or purchase order. However, it makes it easier to use DEAR if you load your Suppliers and Customers before you start logging transactions.

Suppliers/Customers can be added manually one by one, loaded in bulk CSV format using a Supplier List/Customer List, or if you are using Xero/QBO, loaded automatically from your accounting system. If you are using Xero/QBO, suppliers created in DEAR will also be synced to your accounting system.

Add Suppliers by navigating to Purchase → New → Supplier or Purchases → Suppliers and clicking +. Add Customers by navigating to Sale → New → Customer or Sale → Customers and clicking +.  Enter your Supplier/Customer details (including addresses and contacts), and Save your changes. Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory.

Useful Information:

• Suppliers: See full information on adding Suppliers, Supplier Addresses, Supplier Contacts and Supplier Product Information.
• Customers: See full information on adding Customers, Customer Addresses and Customer Contacts.

Using DEAR Systems

You are ready to use DEAR systems! With all the above preparation taken care of, logging transactions in DEAR will be efficient and straightforward. This section looks at using the DEAR web portal to perform transactions and other inventory operations. We recommend you familiarize yourself with the basic operations through the web portal before connecting the following:

• DEAR B2B Portal
• DEAR POS app
• DEAR WMS (Warehouse Management Solution) app
• third-party integrations (E-commerce channels, payment channels, fulfillment services).

Find this set-up guide and much more here.