Food manufacturing software

Automate production, orders, and customer workflows with a solution for food manufacturers and processors who run their business on QuickBooks.

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Food manufacturing is complex.
Your software should be able to tackle it with ease.

The world of food and beverage manufacturing can be extremely complex, with intricate moving parts that affect every facet of the manufacturing process down the line. Recipes, batch and lot tracking, raw materials, allergen flags, and production scheduling, are just a slice of what food manufacturers deal with every day, and none of them fit into a generic CRM or manual spreadsheet.


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The challenge for food & beverage manufacturers

Food production moves faster than most types of manufacturing, due to the perishable nature of the product. There are several components to consider including manufacturing inputs, overhead, and governmental regulations.Yet many small and mid-sized manufacturers still rely on disconnected accounting tools and manual spreadsheets.

No matter the product you’re producing, the food manufacturing industry shares some common pain points.

Managing raw materials across multiple systems can lead to inconsistent data and stockouts.

Spreadsheets can slow down traceability and quality control, especially during audits or recalls.

Manually updating batch numbers and expiry dates increases the risk of error.

No real-time visibility makes forecasting and production planning guesswork.

Scaling operations becomes harder without automated workflows or centralized information.

Compliance demands (HACCP, FSMA, FDA) require accurate, audit-ready documentation.

Method gives food and beverage manufacturers the two things they need most to run operations smoothly: flexibility and customizability. Instead of forcing your workflows to fit rigid software rules, Method can adapt to your unique processes. Method allows you to optimize production processes, ensure traceability, and automate all those time-consuming tasks.

The Method CRM software solution for food manufacturers

Method is a CRM for food and beverage manufacturers who run their business QuickBooks. Through its customization services, Method is able to fit your unique food manufacturing workflow — no matter how complex. Food and beverage manufacturing requires tools built specifically for batch-based production and needs things like traceability and real-time inventory control. Method CRM equips teams with the customization power they need to streamline their entire operation.

Streamline operations

Unify production, inventory, and sales.

Connect your production schedules, ingredient inventory, batch details, and sales workflows in one centralized system. Stop switching between spreadsheets!

Automate workflows

Reduce manual entry and prevent errors.
Eliminate repetitive data entry with automation for batch updates, quality-control checkpoints, reorder alerts, expiry notifications, and customer follow-ups.

Grow confidently

Be prepared as production expands.

Scale your system as you add new SKUs, facilities, or product lines. Cloud-based flexibility keeps your team connected from wherever they are.


Core features that power your food manufacturing business

An efficient food operation needs every part of the manufacturing process firing on all cylinders.  Method gives your team the tools to track ingredients, batches, orders, and documentation in one place, ensuring your operation stays accurate, efficient, and always audit-ready.

⚡ Real-time QuickBooks sync

Financial + production data are always aligned.

• Instant ingredient & batch cost updates

• Sync orders, payments, and credits

• Accurate real-time profitability

📇 Customer & distributor management

All pricing, communication, and relationships in one place.

• Track quotes and deliveries

• Store contracts + price lists

• Seasonal & territory insights

🚀 Lead & opportunity tracking

Turn leads into loyal distributor partners.

• Pipeline stages & follow-ups

• Sampling & demo tracking

• Custom quote pricing tools

📋 Custom fields & lists

Shape Method around your exact workflow.

• Recipe management & ingredient codes

• Allergen & batch indicators

• Seasonal & regional SKUs

☎️ Customer portals

Give wholesale buyers a seamless self-serve portal.

• Approve quotes & place reorders

• Access invoices & price lists

• Update account details

🔀 Workflow automation

Cut repetitive tasks and prevent delays.

• Reorder & expiry alerts

• Quality control & batch notifications

• Automated quote & payment emails

🗒️ Order & inventory visibility

Know what’s in stock and what’s shipping next

.• SKU, batch, and ingredient tracking

• Wholesale order status

• ERP + QuickBooks connectivity

📊 Reports & dashboards

Monitor production and sales in real time.

• Spoilage & yield tracking

• Distributor performance

Method CRM gives your team a bird’s-eye view of every single data point of the business, enabling you to track pressure points and improve the cost of sale and profitability.

Customize Method CRM to fit your food manufacturing process

Lot traceability

Accurate lot and date tracking is essential for both regulatory compliance as well as food safety. Method helps you maintain complete traceability at every step by tracking supplier source details, batch IDs, production dates, expiration dates and shelf life, allergen indicators, and packaging variations.

Quality control workflows

Consistent quality requires clear workflows. Method lets you design quality control processes that match your exact production standards, such as pre- and post-production inspections, temperature or hold-time checks, corrective action plans, recall sequences, and batch quarantines.

Production order management

Keep production moving smoothly with real-time visibility into what’s being made now and what’s coming next. Access multi-step production workflows, raw material use and depletion, finished goods entry, operator notes and adjustments, and custom costing fields.

Distributor & pricing modules

Food and beverage pricing isn’t static; it shifts by distributor, region, and season. Method gives you the flexibility to keep pricing accurate without manual updates. Method supports volume-based price breaks, contract or negotiated pricing, distributor-specific price lists, region-based pricing, promotional or seasonal pricing.

Custom customer portals

Give distributors and wholesale customers a seamless way to place orders, approve quotes, and access documents with features like recurring orders, subscription shipments, reorder templates, distributor-only SKUs, and real-time order status tracking.

Food-specific dashboards

See the health of your operation at a glance with dashboards built specifically for food and beverage manufacturing. Access data like expiry alerts, forecast accuracy, seasonal sales curves, batch yield performance, spoilage rates, and order fulfillment speed.

Compliance & audit logs

Stay inspection-ready with detailed, digital records for every step in your production workflow: HACCP steps, FSMA compliance records, corrective actions, recall documentation, quality approvals, supplier source records, and more.

Why do food manufacturers choose Method CRM?

Cloud-based

With Method, everything lives inside the cloud.  Your team can check inventory levels on the production floor, approve orders from home, or adjust schedules on the fly. A frozen-food manufacturing company can pull up real-time stock counts while a buyer is on the phone instead of walking to the freezer. Say goodbye to the Excel spreadsheets buried in folders you never heard of; everything can be pulled up instantly at the click of a button.

Bird’s eye view of the entire operation

From start to finish, you can see every input and process. Method allows food manufacturers to see batch status, incoming supply, cost trends, distributor activity, and quality control results without digging.

Real ROI that shows up, fast

ROI is the data point that everyone wants to know about, and everyone wants to see that return as quickly as possible.  Food makers lose money every week through shrinkage, delays, and messy data. Method can trim the fat and waste, which improves margins and speeds of production cycles.

Method customization use cases in the food industry

Small-batch producers

Method CRM is an ideal solution for making small batch producers more efficient. A small whiskey distillery might go through 300 to 500 pounds of ingredients a week, but only 70 to 80 percent of that becomes finished product because of spoilage or shrinkage. Method helps teams track exact yield percentages, flag batches that are trending above their usual 5 to 8 percent waste rate, and adjust next week’s production before it costs them money.

Bakeries and confectionery operations

A bakery may run 40 to 60 recipes daily, each with slight variations based on demand. Method stores every recipe version, tracks allergen flags automatically, and logs quality control checks at each stage. If a team produces 1,200 pastries on a Saturday morning, they can see freshness windows, ingredient usage, and waste trends right away instead of waiting until end-of-day.

Frozen and packaged foods

Frozen food operations can be complex. These operations might carry 200 to 300 SKUs, with ingredients arriving on 7-, 14-, or 30-day cycles. Method tracks ingredient lead times, monitors batch progress in real time, and maintains expiration logs down to the exact day on every lot. If 12 percent of a packaging run is at risk of going out of date in the next 45 days, the system can surface it so the team can reallocate inventory.

Wholesale food suppliers

Wholesalers can juggle more than 100 customer accounts, each with its own pricing rules and reorder patterns. Method automates those price breaks, tracks which clients reorder every 14, 21, or 30 days, and gives them an ordering portal that cuts phone-in orders. When a customer places a 30-case reorder at 9 p.m., the team sees it instantly and can route it into the next delivery run.

FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE

Finally, a solution that works the way you do

You’re the expert of your business. Work with our team to build a solution that works exactly how you want it to.

And don’t worry, Method can connect to your favorite apps too:

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Select your base features

Choose the features that solve the problems you are trying to solve, like estimate creation or time tracking. Only pay for what you use!

Free customization consultation

Our team will meet with you to discuss tailoring those features to your specific workflows, because your way is the right way.

Let us get you set up

When we tailor Method to your exact needs, you reduce the learning curve and start seeing value right away.

And don’t worry, Method can connect to your favorite apps too:

+ more

The #1 CRM for QuickBooks

Loved by businesses just like yours

END-TO-END

The perfect CRM for food manufacturers

From estimates right down to payments, Method handles order management and tracks the customer lifecycle in one CRM platform.

Contact & lead management

Gather leads, email estimates, and convert them into customers.

Email marketing

Send email campaigns, and monitor metrics to drive more sales.

Estimates

Send quick estimates with one click to close deals faster.

E-signatures

Sign and approve documents online to cut out the back-and-forth.

Work Orders

Schedule and dispatch field teams for product installation or service jobs.

Invoicing

Instantly create and email invoices for quicker payments.

Customer portals

Let customers approve estimates, access order details, and pay invoices.

Payments

Create online payment portals for customers so you can get paid faster.

Contact & lead management

Gather leads, email estimates, and convert them into customers.

Email marketing

Send email campaigns or connect to Mailchimp directly.

Estimates

Send quick estimates with one click to close deals faster.

E-signatures

Sign and approve documents online to cut out the back-and-forth.

Work Orders

Instantly create and email invoices for quicker payments.

Invoicing

Instantly create and email invoices for quicker payments.

Customer portals

Let customers approve estimates, access order details, and pay invoices.

Payments

Create online payment portals for customers so you can get paid faster.

Don’t see what you’re looking for?
Talk to our team about building it for you!

Get Started

See what Method can do for your business

Additional resources

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Frequently asked questions

Method is one of the most flexible CRMs on the market, and through its customization service, it can be tailor-made to fit just about any workflow in the food manufacturing process.

Yes, and some small and medium-sized manufacturers might even say that scalability was only possible with the help of Method. As you grow, so does Method, and you can add new workflows, fields, or dashboards anytime.

In the food and beverage industry, supply chains move fast. Traditional enterprise resource planning systems often don’t go granular enough for real-time production needs, and spreadsheets make it hard to maintain consistency across suppliers, batches, and facilities. Method gives manufacturers a complete, customizable window into their supply chain. Ingredient lead times, batch usage, expiry risks, and distributor orders all update in real time through the system’s automated workflows.

Of course it does! In fact, you can create custom tables for things like batch numbers, expiry dates, allergens, quality management steps, corrective actions, and recall flows, all done within your CRM.

Food and beverage companies need more than generic enterprise resource planning tools — they need industry-specific functionality that supports fast-moving production cycles, traceability, and compliance. While traditional ERP software focuses on high-level financial management and large-scale supply chain tracking, food manufacturers also need real-time visibility into batches, allergens, recipes, expiry dates, and operator activity on the shop floor. Method CRM gives food manufacturers the flexibility of an ERP-style workflow without requiring a full ERP replacement.

Method acts as the customizable operations layer that fills the gaps traditional ERP software doesn’t address. It brings together batch tracking, production workflows, distributor pricing, customer portals, traceability, and real-time inventory — while QuickBooks continues to handle core financial management. For many food manufacturers, this hybrid setup delivers the exact functionality they need: a flexible, industry-specific solution that supports growth on the shop floor and across the supply chain without the overhead of a full enterprise resource planning deployment.