QuickBooks Rebuild to Stabilize Inventory & Reporting

About South Austin Metals

South Austin Metals is a dynamic steel distributor that serves construction firms, manufacturers and retail walk-in customers from several warehouses across Texas. Managing roughly multi-million on-hand inventory, the company moves thousands of SKUs through multiple sales channels every week—from counter sales and fabrication jobs to bulk orders that can exceed hundreds of thousands in material. QuickBooks had long been the financial backbone of the operation and integrations with tools such as QuickBooks Time, Smart Service, Salesforce and Bill.com helped keep day-to-day activity moving. As transaction volume climbed and the business diversified into new manufacturing lines, South Austin Metals turned to Fourlane for QuickBooks consulting, including guidance and hands-on support.

The Challenge

Rapid growth came at a cost. Years of heavy usage left the existing QuickBooks Enterprise 2021 file bloated to 1.3 gigabytes and riddled with errors. Negative inventory skewed cost of goods sold and undermined confidence in every report the leadership team tried to run. Corrupted list data, user profile glitches and an unstable server environment triggered frequent lockouts and crashes, sometimes derailing payroll runs and stalling critical purchasing decisions.

The South Austin Metals team also wrestled with:

• Limited visibility into inventory across several warehouses, which complicated reordering
• Broken reporting that made it difficult to track sales by customer segment, warehouse or SKU
• Frustrating delays when third-party apps such as QuickBooks Time and Smart Service failed to sync reliably
• An impending Intuit deadline to upgrade from QuickBooks 2021 to 2023 (later 2024) before May 1, risking lost support if they missed the window

Internally, staff turnover had left inconsistencies in chart-of-accounts structure, customer lists and vendor records. With multiple departments entering transactions, negative inventory recurred whenever items were invoiced before receipts were posted. The company needed more than a version upgrade; it required a full rebuild of the financial environment and a sustainable workflow that would keep data clean going forward.

The Solution

Fourlane approached the engagement in two deliberate phases. First the consulting team completed a deep file review, working from a portable copy provided by South Austin Metals. That analysis confirmed extensive data corruption and identified the root causes: negative inventory, overlapping user permissions and mismatched third-party integrations. Fourlane’s recommendation was clear—rather than attempt piecemeal repairs, South Austin Metals should start fresh with a new QuickBooks Enterprise 2024 file.

Phase two centered on building that new file through a summary conversion. Fourlane’s consultants collaborated with South Austin Metals to:

• Design a streamlined chart of accounts that eliminated redundant categories and clarified financial reporting
• Clean vendor, customer and item lists, reducing the number of customer types, vendor types and classes to a manageable set
• Establish inventory workflows that prevent negative quantities by aligning item receipts with invoicing dates and introducing month-end adjustment checkpoints
• Configure sites, bins and custom fields to track inventory movement across multiple warehouses and fabrication areas
• Implement assisted payroll in a separate company file, then migrate it to the new 2024 environment once the base build was stable
• Reconnect integrations with QuickBooks Time, Smart Service, Salesforce and Bill.com after vetting each connector for data integrity
• Move both production and payroll files to a cloud hosting provider, giving off-site staff secure remote access and 24/7 backups

Throughout implementation Fourlane provided one-on-one training, open Q&A sessions and a support plan so South Austin Metals could call on specialists as issues surfaced.

The Results

By the time the new QuickBooks Enterprise 2024 environment went live South Austin Metals had eliminated the negative inventory that once distorted its balance sheet. The rebuilt database loads without the hundreds of verify or rebuild errors that previously threatened stability, and nightly Intuit Data Protect backups now run automatically to safeguard financial data.

“For the first time, we see QuickBooks as a growth platform, not a bottleneck. With accurate assemblies, landed cost tracking, and real-time labor data, we finally have the foundation to scale our business over the next three years.”

Chris Sunseri, Owner, South Austin Metals

With sites and bins properly configured the operations team finally sees accurate on-hand counts by warehouse, allowing them to commit to large orders—such as a recent large steel purchase—confident that system quantities match reality. Cleaned customer and vendor lists, along with a refined chart of accounts, have simplified report generation; management can pull sales by warehouse or SKU without wrestling spreadsheets or exporting workarounds.

Connectivity headaches that once locked users out mid-day have subsided after Fourlane’s technicians optimized the server setup and moved the files to a purpose-built hosting environment. Third-party tools now sync predictably, enabling payroll, time tracking and field service updates to flow into QuickBooks without manual intervention. The finance team credits the new workflow design with preventing the re-emergence of negative inventory and keeping the inventory clearing account balanced—an issue that had previously left a lingering discrepancy.

Perhaps most important, the South Austin Metals leadership team now views QuickBooks not as a bottleneck but as a growth platform. Accurate assemblies landed cost processes and manufacturing labor tracking have positioned the company to pursue its goal of expanding in revenue within three years.

South Austin Metals set out to fix a corrupted file but emerged with a scalable financial system, cleaner data and the confidence that their software can keep pace with warehouse expansion and new manufacturing lines.

Ready to see how expert guidance can turn your QuickBooks challenges into opportunities for growth? Contact Fourlane to start your own transformation today.