SideQuest for industrial MRO distributors on QuickBooks Online
If you run an industrial MRO supply business on QuickBooks Online, your line is high-mix and low-volume. A plant maintenance buyer orders three bearings, two belts, a gasket, and a torque wrench in one PO. The next PO is six fasteners and a cutting wheel. SideQuest reads those POs out of your inbox, runs them against your full SKU master plus your OEM-to-house cross-reference table, and builds the draft Estimate. Your CSR reviews instead of looking up 11 cross-refs by hand.
What changes for you
High-mix POs stop requiring cross-ref lookups by hand
Plant maintenance buyers write whichever PN is on the failed part. That's the OEM number, not your house SKU. SideQuest reads the OEM PN and matches against your cross-reference table to land on the house SKU. Your CSR opens the draft with the right SKU already selected.
Bearings, fasteners, belts route to the right SKU on first pass
MRO catalogs run wide (50,000+ SKUs is normal) and slim on description text. The matcher leans on the PN field plus aliases. SKF, NSK, Timken bearings get matched against the OEM PN in the PO. If the customer writes a manufacturer PN you don't carry but you stock a cross-ref equivalent, the line lands on your equivalent SKU.
Reply drafts confirm before the next buyer rotation
Plant buyers turn over. The buyer who sent today's PO may not be the buyer who chases the confirmation tomorrow. SideQuest drafts the reply with full line detail, so the next buyer in the rotation can see what got ordered without calling. Phone time drops.
Why this fits industrial MRO
Catalog quirk: cross-reference tables between OEM PNs and house brands
MRO distributors carry OEM brands and house brands side by side. The cross-reference table (OEM PN to equivalent house SKU) lives in QuickBooks as item aliases or a custom field. The matcher reads both. A buyer who writes SKF-6204-2RS lands on your equivalent house bearing if that's what's on your shelf.
Customer mix: plant maintenance plus production engineers
Maintenance buyers reorder predictable consumables. Production engineers spec one-off project items with no order history. SideQuest's per-customer learned rules carry the consumable patterns for the maintenance side. The engineer's one-off PO gets matched against the full SKU master plus cross-refs, no learned-rules dependency.
High SKU count rewards a wide matcher
50,000-SKU catalogs are the norm. The matcher indexes every SKU by PN, description, and alias on load and matches against the full set on each PO. Match time stays under 30 seconds even on a 30-line PO against a 50,000-SKU master.
Start free for 30 days
The Solo tier covers up to 100 POs per month. Setup is install the connector, point it at your Gmail and your QuickBooks Online file, and let it parse your next inbound PO. No credit card to start.
Quick-start guide See pricingFAQ
Does SideQuest handle the cross-reference between OEM PNs and our house brand?
Yes if the cross-ref is loaded in QuickBooks. Item aliases or a custom field on the item record both work. The matcher reads aliases on catalog load and applies them on every match. If the cross-ref isn't loaded, descriptions take over and the match still lands when the description carries enough signal.
What about POs that come in from a buyer's procurement system (Coupa, Ariba, Jaggaer)?
SideQuest reads PDF attachments from procurement portals. Those PDFs are born-digital and parse cleanly. The header anchor (Customer, PO ref, Bill to, Ship to) reads from the standard procurement-portal layout. If your customer uses a portal you haven't seen before, send a sample and we'll add the layout to the parser corpus.
Can we set per-customer contract pricing so the variance check knows what to expect?
Yes. QuickBooks Online supports per-customer price levels, and SideQuest reads them on the variance check. A contract customer with a 15% discount gets variance-checked against their contract price, not the default. POs that list a different price get flagged.