If you only need PO automation, you don't need SOS Inventory
SOS Inventory is a capable inventory and manufacturing platform that happens to also handle purchase orders. If POs are your only pain point, you're buying a lot of features you'll never open.
What SOS Inventory is built for
SOS is a full inventory management system layered on top of QuickBooks Online. The product is centered on multi-warehouse stock, lot and serial tracking, bills of materials, work orders, and sales orders. Purchase orders are part of the platform, but they're one feature out of about thirty.
This is a fair design choice for a manufacturing company or a multi-warehouse distributor with light manufacturing. It's overkill for a distributor whose actual problem is "POs arrive in Gmail and someone has to type them into QuickBooks."
Where SOS falls short for inbound PO automation
Three specific gaps if PO intake is your priority:
Email-to-PO parsing isn't first-class. SOS expects POs to be entered through their interface, imported via CSV, or pushed in through their API. The workflow where a customer emails you a PDF and the system reads it and proposes an estimate doesn't exist out of the box. You can build it with their API plus a separate parsing service, but that's a custom integration project, not a feature.
The pricing reflects the full platform. SOS starts around $69/month for the basic tier and scales up to $300+/month for the features most distributors actually need (multi-user, multi-warehouse, advanced reports). If you're only using it for POs, that's $69-300/month for a feature that should be one line item.
Setup time is measured in days, not minutes. Because SOS replaces QuickBooks' native inventory layer, the initial mapping and migration is significant. The promised "30-minute setup" turns into a multi-day project for any distributor with more than 200 SKUs.
What you'd want instead if PO intake is the only problem
A tool that does exactly one thing: read PO emails from Gmail, parse the lines, match them against your existing QuickBooks catalog, build the draft order in QuickBooks (technically a draft Estimate), and let you review and submit it yourself. The slow part is the building. The submit is one click that stays with you. No replacement of your inventory layer. No new dashboards to maintain. QuickBooks stays the source of truth.
That's what we built SideQuest Automation to do. It connects to your existing Gmail and your existing QuickBooks Online. Setup is 30 minutes the first time, then nothing. The connector runs locally on your computer so your customer data and pricing never touch our servers.
Quick comparison
| Feature | SOS Inventory | SideQuest |
|---|---|---|
| Read POs from Gmail (PDF, scanned image, body text) | Not native | Built-in |
| SKU mapping against QuickBooks catalog | Yes, after setup | Yes, learned over time |
| Multi-warehouse inventory | Yes | No (use QuickBooks for this) |
| Bills of materials / manufacturing | Yes | No |
| Lot and serial tracking | Yes | No |
| Starting price | $69/month | Free for 20 POs/month, $39 unlimited |
| Setup time | Days | 30 minutes |
| Data location | SOS cloud | Your computer |
When SOS is still the right answer
If you have actual manufacturing, multi-warehouse logistics, lot tracking compliance, or BOM-driven kitting, SOS earns its price. The PO automation gap is real but the rest of the platform is doing work you couldn't easily replicate elsewhere. In that case, accept that PO intake will be a custom integration project and budget for it.
If your situation is simpler — POs come in by email, items live in your QuickBooks catalog, you just want the typing to stop — SideQuest is the cheaper, faster, more focused tool.