What is Quickbooks Inventory Management?

Quickbooks is a renowned name among businesses for its automated accounting software. Every company that works with physical products knows that Inventory management is crucial to stand out in business. Intuit Quickbooks offers a robust Inventory Management system that helps companies take control of their stock.

This guide provides how the QuickBooks Inventory Management system works by exploring its features, and functionalities, and how it empowers businesses to make informed decisions.

What is Quickbooks Inventory Management and why is it Needed?

The term Inventory refers to an approach to storing and selling goods. Generally, Inventory is also known as Stocks. Managing inventory will help the business to boost its performance.

Quickbooks provides inventory features that help businesses to stay updated with their stock. Quickbooks Inventory Management helps maintain the right amount of stock at the ideal cost. Inventory with quickbooks includes stock purchases, record quantity of inventory, and order fulfillment.

Steps to Activate the Quickbooks For Inventory

Before learning how inventories are added in Quickbooks, let’s discuss how to activate the inventory:

1. Open the Quickbooks Desktop and click on Edit from the menu.
2. Choose the Preferences option, go towards the left side, and click on the Items and Inventory option. 
3. Now press on the Company Preferences and mark the checkbox to enable the inventory option.
4. Click on the OK button and a dialogue box will open that suggests you close the inventory software for quickbooks so that all the changes can be done per your preference. Proceed by tapping the OK button.

Add Items in Inventory Management Quickbooks

Once you activate the inventory, the next step is adding items to quickbooks. Just follow the steps:

1. Open the Quickbooks home page and click on the service icon.
2. Now press on the select items and from the drop-down menu click on “items” and hit the button “new”.
3. Select the Type option and from the type select the inventory part. Many fields are shown empty you need to fill in the boxes.
4. First, enter the name or serial number. This helps search, track, and identify the items for future reference.
5. In the field Unit of Measure, fill only if you are a user of Quickbooks Premier or the above version, otherwise leave it.
6. Now fill the purchase and sales field.
7. Once you fill in the purchase and sales field Quickbooks automatically detects the Cost of goods sold accounts(COGS).
8. Now complete the field by adding inventory’s income account that helps track the income.
9. After filling in all the fields check the information again and then proceed by clicking on the OK button.

Types of Inventory Items to Track

There are 4 types of items present in the Quickbooks inventory management.

1. Inventories Items: This refers to the items that you purchase, sell, and want to keep a track record of.
2. Non-Inventories items: Refer to items that you sell and purchase but don’t want to track and keep the record.
3. Services: The service indicates that you provide to customers.
4. Budget: Collection or sum of all products and services sell together.

Steps to Activate the Quickbooks Inventory Tracking

Once the process of adding items to the inventory is completed, you need to track the items. To enable quickbooks inventory management you have two choices 

• Either you track the inventory with the quantity
• By importing the products and services with the help of an Excel file

By Quickbooks Inventory Tracking with Quantity:

1. Select the Gear icon go to the company and click on Account and Settings.
2. From the left-hand side menu select Sales.
3. Now click on the Create(pen) icon next to the Product and Services option.
4. Enable both options “Track quantity and price rate” and “Track inventory quantity on hand”.
5. Now from Product and Service choose the New tab that helps to create the new inventory item.
6. After completing the above process click the Save and Done button.

Different methods to change the Type of Service and Product

Here we provide you with a guide to changing the type of product. Follow the procedure:

Change Service Items to Non-Inventory Items:

1. Click on the Product and service from the settings.

2. choose the service item that you want to change.

3. From the drop-down box, click on the Batch actions and then on the “make non-inventory” option.

Note: In Quickbooks Inventory Management follow the same process for changing “Non-inventory items” to “Service items” just by marking the option “Non-inventory item” in place of a “Service item” and “Making Service” in the “batch action” option.

Adding Non-inventory items to inventory items:

1. Go to the Gear Icon in Quickbooks and click the Product and Services option.

2. Visit the “Action column” of the item you want to update and hit on the “Edit tab”.

3. Pick the option “Change type link and click “Inventory”.

4. Now fill in the fields with the required details.

5. Once done, click the “Save and Close” tab.  

Benefits of Using Quickbooks Inventory Management

Quickbooks with Inventory ensures that stock has the right quantity to fulfill customers’ demands. Let’s understand the benefits of  QuickBooks for inventory management. Here are some key advantages:

1. Accurate Stock Levels: Adding inventory manually can be time-consuming and likely cause more errors. QuickBooks automates the process by providing real-time data on stocks. This will help users to make informed decisions about reordering and prevent stockouts.
2. Time-Saving: Quickbooks inventory saves time as it shows the actual information of products irrespective of the website where they are stored. This feature helps the user to scan codes.
3. Improved Cash Flow: Optimizing inventory levels helps you to reduce the amount of unused stock that is tied up with the working capital. This improves the cash flow.
4. Enhances Sales Order Management: The company employee fulfills the priority demands of customers by completing sales orders. At many locations, the warehouse department customized the design of pick lists on its own. This feature makes Quickbooks Inventory Management software more reliable by providing insight into real-time situations.

Limitation of QuickBooks Inventory

Quickbooks inventory management has many benefits but at the same time, it has limited features if compared to other inventory software that are specifically used to manage inventory.

1. Limited Functionality:

The functions of quickbooks are limited in inventory management because it cannot track the manufacturing features. Without Quickbooks Enterprise Support, users don’t have enough power to access the inventory features such as managing the warehouse, refilling stock on their own, etc.

2. High occurrence of Human error:

If you add quickbooks with outside programs and other spreadsheets, the chances of human error increase because anyone can manually enter and transfer data from one program to another which causes the error.

3. Limited Analytics and Reporting:

Quickbooks with inventory have some missing factors that real inventory management should have. Inadequate data like shipped orders create problems while forecasting your sales.

4. Less Scalable:

Inventory in Quickbooks is not scalable because it starts creating problems when we add new variables in the warehouse. It throws an error continuously.

Conclusion

We reached the end and hope that this guide will be helpful to you in understanding Quickbooks Inventory Management and how to create, add, and track items in inventory with quickbooks. If you require further assistance you can contact our support team. Our experts will guide you more.

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