Creating Product Records in QuickBooks
QuickBooks can help you track all of your products or services.
Does your business sell one of a kind products or services? If so, it’s important to keep track of your in-stock items and any sold items. For your accounting purposes, using QuickBooks, you can keep track of all these things.
Many businesses sell numerous types of products and stock multiple units of each. It’s essential for these businesses to know what sells and what doesn’t sell, so they know when it’s time to reorder these items. For this reason, it’s necessary to have the ability to easily add this information to invoices and sales receipts.
When you use the recording and tracking tools in QuickBooks , you can meet all the requirements for creating records for these services. Here’s how:
Preparation
As you begin working with QuickBooks product records, you should first make sure that the site is set-up for this purpose. Start by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right, next click on Your Company | Account and settings . Then, click the Sales tab to get to the Products and services section, as shown below.
There is a section devoted to Products and services in QuickBooks Account and Settings .
To open your options, click on Products and services here. To turn any entry from On to Off , or vice versa, just click in the box at the front of the line to check or uncheck it. To see an explanation of each, you can click on the small circled question mark. When you’re done, click Save . To close this window, click the X in the upper right.
How to Create Records
To begin entering the data for your product and service into the records, in the upper right corner click on the gear icon and select Products and services . The table will be blank, since you have not entered any data yet. Soon, it will contain data for each record you’ve created.
You may notice 2 colored circles at the top of your screen. One is marked Low Stock and the other, Out of Stock . You’ll be able to click on either circle to see a list of what’s low or what’s out when there is a number next to either circle.
When you click New in the upper right corner, a vertical panel will slide out and ask you what kind of record you would like to create. Your choices are:
Inventory - Physical items you sell whose quantity you want to track.
Non-inventory - Products you buy or sell but whose quantities you don’t need to track.
Service - Services you sell, like legal representation or landscaping.
Bundle - A group of products and/or services that are sold together, like computer training and accompanying software.
Now we will show you how to create an inventory item. Start by Clicking on Inventory . Type the Name of the inventory in that field. If you would like, you may also add a photo. If the product has been assigned a SKU , enter that in its field. Here you may also divide your products into primary categories and sub-products and services (for example: Writing Instruments and Pens, Pencils, Markers , etc.) or if not, you can skip this option.
You can prevent product shortages by using QuickBooks.
In this section, you will enter the Initial quantity on hand . This is the amount you have on hand on the current date . Also, this is where you want to set your Reorder point . This would be the number of remaining items that would trigger the Low Stock alert so that you can restock your supplies.
The Inventory asset account should already be set at Inventory Asset .
You can enter a brief Description and then the product’s Sales price/rate (the price you’ll charge customers) and leave Income account set at Sales of Product Income . Next, select a Sales tax category . If you haven’t set up sales taxes in QuickBooks and believe you’re required to pay them on at least some sales, feel free to ask for assistance.
In the Purchasing information field, you should enter the description that will appear on purchase forms, then Cost (the price you paid to buy the product, if any). The Expense account should be Cost of Goods Sold . Select a Preferred Vendor if you’d like and Save the record.
Although, not all fields are required in your product and service records, it’s recommend that you complete each record as thoroughly as is possible.
At Summit CPA, we offer QuickBooks consultation. If you would like further information on how we can assist you with your bookkeeping needs, contact our office at 866-497-9761 to schedule an appointment.
