Tracking your items is easier when all of your QuickBooks inventory information is in the same place. QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise Solutions have a home for all of it.
One of the 10 best things about the desktop QuickBooks family is their “Centers:” Customer, Vendor, Employee and Payroll. These screens consolidate all related information and make it available without a lot of clicking around. These conventions are especially helpful if your business is large enough that you have one individual just working on Accounts Receivable, one on Accounts Payable, etc.
Even if you just have one accounting employee (which may be you), these pages can accelerate your workflow simply because access to the records, transaction and reports you need in a given area are all within arm’s reach.
Not too long ago, Intuit added an Inventory Center to its QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise Solutions versions. It functions similarly to the other Centers. Here’s a look at its parts.
Item List
The left vertical pane displays a list of your individual inventory items and assemblies, with their prices. You can filter this list to view a subset.
The QuickBooks Inventory Center. Its simplicity makes it easy to understand and use, but a QuickBooks training course may be in order if you don’t understand basic inventory-related terms.
Inventory Information
When you highlight an item or assembly, its record appears in a large window to the right of the list. Like customer, vendor and employee records, these records store details that you need to manage your inventory and include items in forms like invoices. A great deal of information is included here, including:
- Name, Description, Part Number and Preferred Vendor
- (Your) Cost, Average Cost (QuickBooks calculates) and Sales Price
- Reorder Point
- Quantity on Hand, on Sales Orders and Purchase Orders (QuickBooks calculates all)
- (Quantity) Reserved for Assemblies
- Quantity Available
The Inventory Information screen contains a few other tools. There are links to related reports in the upper right corner. Two small icons to the left of them let you edit the record and attach documents.
And when you click on Edit Notes, a small dialog box opens where you can enter related information, inserting a date/time stamp if you’d like. Click on New To Do, and another window opens. Here, you can add a task, meeting, appointment, etc. and assign it to a lead, customer, vendor or employee.
The Notes section of the Inventory Center contains a dialog box where you can define to-do’s.
Transaction List
At the bottom of the screen, there’s a grid that displays all transactions related to your items. Highlight an item and show all of them, or just choose an individual type, like invoices, credit memos and bills. You can also filter by date and status. The amount and open balance for each transaction also appears here.
Toolbar
At the very top of the screen, there’s a vertical toolbar that contains links for creating new transactions and inventory items, printing a record and exporting item data to Excel.
Inventory management is a complex element of your overall accounting. Before you learn how to use QuickBooks’ item-tracking tools, it would be a good idea to at least take advantage of a QuickBooks tutorial or watch some videos to get acquainted with the process.
