Inventory/Services

What Is an Inventory Part?

Chief Mechanic · September 25, 2010 ·

An Inventory Part is one type of Item and is maintained on the Lists->Item List menu selection.

See our article on all of the Item types supported by QuickBooks for more information.

Generally speaking, Items are designed to pre-fill invoicing and purchasing forms. An Inventory Part represents an item that your firm keeps on hand for sale to customers. It can be stocked and sold on its own or included as part of an inventory assembly.

Here’s a screenshot of the QuickBooks Item List showing a range of inventory parts:

QuickBooks 2011 Item List Inventory Parts

QuickBooks tracks certain information that apply only to Inventory Parts. Fields tracked only for Inventory Parts include:

Quantity On Hand
Quantity On Purchase Order
Quantity On Sales Order
Reorder Point
Asset Account

Some fields are tracked both for Inventory Parts and other item types, such as Inventory Assemblies and Non-Inventory Parts. Some – but not all – of these fields also may be tracked for other item types if you select the checkbox This item is used in assemblies or is a reimbursable charge. These fields are:

Quantity On Pending Builds
COGS Account
Preferred Vendor

The above screenshot shows a mix of inventory parts and sub-items of inventory parts. This structure is often described as a “parent child relationship”, where a sub-item is a child of its parent. While both parent and child items are labeled as Inventory Parts, QuickBooks only tracks quantity information for sub-items (i. e., child items) when this structure is used. It does not aggregate information for parent items where sub-items exist for that parent item.

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Why Are Items On Sales Orders Marked Closed Before Invoicing On a Partially Fulfilled Sales Order?

Chief Mechanic · September 13, 2010 ·

In QuickBooks 2009 for releases prior to R6, there was a bug (which has since been fixed) where undelivered items on a sales order that had previously been partially fulfilled had been incorrectly marked closed and could not be unchecked to be invoiced. This bug is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

The bug only affects Sales Orders or Estimates that have partially invoiced line items where Unit of Measure has been enabled or where the Sales Order or Estimate contains a Group Item (with or without Unit of Measure enabled). For more information see our articles on the Unit of Measure preference and Group Items.

This bug has been corrected in the R6 release. Although the bug itself has been corrected, you may have previously entered Sales Orders or Estimates affected by the bug that will need to be fixed.

To correct the problems created by this bug, complete these steps:

Update QuickBooks to the R6 or later release
Run the Verify utility
Identify any incorrectly closed transactions
Repair those transactions
Rebuild
Re-run the Verify utility

Step 1 – Update QuickBooks to the R6 or Later Release

See our article for more information on updating your QuickBooks release.

Step 2 – Run the Verify Data Utility

To run the Verify Data utility, click the File->Utilities->Verify Data menu selection. See our article for more information on running the Verify Data utility. You’ll need to identify and correct any incorrectly closed transactions if the Verify Data utility displays this warning:

Some Sales Orders or Estimates may be incorrectly marked as closed or display incorrect invoiced quantities.

This procedure is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

Step 3 – Identify Any Incorrectly Closed Transactions

If the Verify Data utility indicates that transactions were incorrectly closed, proceed to identify the affected transactions. Open the QBWin.log file in a text editor and search for Invalid Received/Invoiced Flag. Make a list of the Doc# for each affected Sales Order or Estimate. This procedure is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

Step 4 – Repair the Affected Transactions

Using the list prepared in Step 3, find the first affected Sales Order or Estimate. To find a Sales Order, open the Create Sales Order window by clicking on the Customers->Create Sales Orders menu selection. Then, click the Find button and enter the first S. O. No. to be repaired.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Create Sales Order Find

The procedure to find an Estimate is similar to that for finding a Sales Order except it starts from by clicking on the Customers->Create Estimates menu selection.

On a new blank line after the last line on the Sales Order or Estimate, enter any text at least 3 characters in length in the Description field. Save your changes by clicking the Save & New button and repeat these steps for each affected Sales Order or Estimate on the list prepared in Step 3. When you’ve repaired the last Sales Order or Estimate, you can click the Save & Close button. This procedure is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

Step 5 – Run the Rebuild Data Utility

Run the Rebuild Data utility by clicking on the File->Utilities->Rebuild Data menu selection. See our article on running the Rebuild Data utility for more information.

Step 6 – Re-run the Verify Data Utility

To confirm that these steps have corrected the problem, re-run the Verify Data utility as described in Step 2 above. If the Verify Data procedure displays the warning discussed above, repeat Steps 3 through 6. If no warning appears, proceed to run inventory and sales reports to confirm that inventory data is now correct.

Prior to the availability of the R6 release, Intuit posted a description of this problem on its Wiki. See FAQ 14.

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When Setting Up POS for the First Time, How Do I Record the Cost of My Existing Inventory?

Chief Mechanic · September 12, 2010 ·

When setting up inventory in POS for the first time, POS will automatically enter an adjustment memo to update your inventory value when you enter a value in the Average Unit Cost or the On-Hand Quantity fields when adding a new item. Before doing so, a message will pop up asking you to Continue or Cancel Edits to the field that prompted the pop up message. Click Continue. During first time setup, you’ll be recording both an On-Hand Quantity and an Average Unit Cost, so you’ll see the pop up message at least 2 times. When you save the item, POS will automatically record an adjustment memo for your starting inventory valuation and quantity for that item. In this example, we’ll record 10 units of a new item at an Average Unit Cost of $12.00.

QuickBooks POS 8 New Item Average Unit Cost

Let’s carry our analysis one step further to see how to record new receipts of an item following our initial setup.

Once you’ve recorded your initial On-Hand Quantity, click the Receive Items button to record a New Receiving Voucher for 1 or more items. In the New Receiving Voucher window, you record the Qty (the quantity received) and the Voucher Cost (the cost for the latest delivery). Simply click in the field to change the default value. In the example below, we’ve recorded a receipt of 10 units at a cost of $5.00.

Because the new $5.00 cost is considerably lower than our original cost of $12.00, POS will pop up a message advising us that the latest voucher has a different cost than our existing inventory and give us a chance to review the pricing for that product. We’ll review product pricing at another time and click No, I’ll Review Prices Later.

To summarize, our initial inventory during first setup of POS consisted of 10 units that cost $12.00 each. Following setup, we vouchered a receipt of an additional 10 units at $5.00. Since QuickBooks and POS operate on the average cost method, our new Average Unit Cost for this inventory item is $8.50, or ( ( 10 units X $12.00) + (10 units X $5.00) ) / 20 units.

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How Do I Change an Onscreen Form Such As Create Invoices To Show More Line Items?

Chief Mechanic · September 12, 2010 ·

Making changes to the windows of QuickBooks is easy.

Let’s use the Create Invoices window as an example. By default, this window shows just 2 invoice lines. In this article, we’ll change the default look. An important point to keep in mind is that you should not close the Create Invoices window until you’ve completed all the steps in this article. Otherwise, you’ll lose your work and need to start over.

Here’s the Create Invoices window in its smallest form. Pay close attention to the right border. We’ve positioned our mouse pointer directly on the border, and it’s now turned into a left-right arrow. It only provides this functionality when your mouse is positioned directly on the border; if you move it off the border, your pointer shape and function will change.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Create Invoices Right Border

With your mouse pointer positioned directly on the border, make the Create Invoices window bigger by dragging this border to the right. To drag something in Windows, hold down your primary mouse button while moving it to the desired position. Since we started with the smallest form, we can’t drag it to the left. Next, drag the bottom border down and watch more invoice line items immediately appear. Re-size the window to fit your needs.

Let’s carry our customization 1 step further. Position your mouse directly on the fine line between any 2 columns, such as the one between U/M and Rate. Your mouse pointer will change to another type of left-right arrow.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Create Invoices Column

To change the width of a column, drag the pointer when it’s positioned directly on the line between 2 columns and is in the shape shown above. Again, it only provides this functionality when your mouse is positioned directly between 2 columns; if you move it away from this position, your pointer shape and function will change. One common need in re-sizing a window such as the Create Invoices window is to increase the width of the description field. With this knowledge, that’s now an easy task. Re-size any column to suit your needs.

Once you’ve completed customizing the look of your Create Invoices window, you need to save your work. To do that, do not close the Create Invoices window. Instead, go to the Edit->Preferences menu, and choose Desktop View from the submenu shown. Since QuickBooks can store different desktop settings for individual users, be sure you’re on the My Preferences tab.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Preferences Save Current Desktop

Click the radio button Save current desktop and click OK. Your changes to the Create Invoices window are now saved. To confirm that, close the Create Invoices window and re-open it. It should now open to your customized size and layout. Since you’ve just saved your desktop with the Create Invoices window open, that window will open the next time you start QuickBooks. If you want different windows to open by default, simply open them and save the desktop in that state.

This same technique can be applied to most, if not all, data entry screens in QuickBooks.

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What Is a Sales Tax Item and How Should I Use One?

Chief Mechanic · September 12, 2010 ·

A sales tax item is a special type of Item, the list of goods and services that you sell. It is used to specify the sales tax rate and the tax authority collecting it that will be charged on each invoice.

See our article on all of the Item types supported by QuickBooks for more information.

Sales tax items can be grouped into another special type of item, a sales tax group, to combine multiple sales tax items on a single invoice.

You should create 1 sales tax item for each tax authority for which you collect tax.

Sales tax items are maintained on the Lists->Items menu. There is a secondary method to maintain sales tax items by visiting the Edit->Preferences menu and choosing the Add sales tax item… button on the Company Preferences tab of the Sales Tax submenu.

Primary Method to Maintain Sales Tax Items

Secondary Method to Maintain Sales Tax Items

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Preferences Sales Tax Items

You can specify the default sales tax item for new customers in the Preferences window. To do so, use the pull down on the Your most common sales tax item selection.

When you add or edit a customer, you can use a sales tax item to specify that customer’s default tax rate. The sales tax item is on the Additional Info tab in the New and Edit Customer windows.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 New Customer Sales Tax Item

When an invoice is created in the Create Invoices window, the sales tax item can be entered for the overall invoice. This value defaults to the sales tax item for that customer, but it can be changed for this invoice only. For example, this capability could be used to apply a different tax rate on a single invoice for a shipment to a location different from the normal location of a taxable customer.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Create Invoices Sales Tax Item

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Inventory/Services

Accounting

Developer

Intuit