Stock Status and Other Reports

A common report for managing inventory is the Stock Status report. This report exists in all versions of QuickBooks desktop, but not in QBO.

Let’s take a quick look at the desktop report and then search for alternatives in QBO.

This is another wide report with a lot of information squeezed into a small space. If your screen is large enough, you won’t have trouble viewing the data displayed here.

The report lists all our inventory items. It shows us how many of each we have on hand. It also tells us, if we have filled this information into the item setup window, what we want our reorder point to be. We can also set a maximum, a number meant to keep us from over-stocking.

The above example is from a sample file and you can see this company is seriously overstocked on most items. The exception is the light pine cabinets.

If you read across the row for the cabinets, you see that the reorder point is six. We have set the maximum number we want in stock at nine.

Since we have six in stock, QuickBooks places a checkmark in the Order column. It suggests we order three, which would bring us to the maximum. If we already had existing purchase orders for this item, QuickBooks would take that into account.

If you look at the first line, cabinet pulls, you’ll see we are way overstocked. Nevertheless, there is a purchase order existing for five of these. The expected arrival date of those five, a field on the purchase order, is 12/23/19.

It’s worth mentioning that in the Premier edition of QuickBooks there is a sales order transaction allowing orders to be placed for customers. Those amounts would show on this report in QuickBooks Premier.

So why don’t we have a similar report in QuickBooks Online (QBO)?

Well, we don’t have fields to fill in for reorder points and maximum quantities. Without that information, a stock status report has little value.

It is possible to gather sales information from a report like Sales by Product/Service Summary. The report lists all products and services and it is some amount of work to glean out the needed information.

That effort would help by showing how many of each product we sell in a given time period. From that, we could decide our ideal stocking levels.

A lot of what is on the Stock Status reports in desktop versions would require a lot of manual work to gather from QBO standard reports.

There are other solutions though. Be aware that if you want robust inventory management, you will need an additional app added to your QBO subscription. There are a number available in the App Center. SOS Inventory is a good example.

Hector Garcia, CPA
Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor
12401 Orange Drive #136
Davie, FL 33330
954-414-1524
hector@garciacpa.com