Also, if you are creating custom items, adding every new item as a new assembly can be problematical as you are filling up your item list with new items that you won’t reuse. There are some downsides to that.

However, went to plenty of forums and was not able to find anything helpful and everyone said that you cannot import inventory assembly directly into qbooks. So I have improvised and have been able to achieve the same. I would like to share it with everyone and especially who are in the same boat as me.
1. First- You will need to create one item of each type of inventory assembly items manually in qbooks. Just like how you create a new item.
2. Go to File—Utilities—Export—-iif files and check the box for items only.
3. Select a location where you want to export the item list (.iif file).
4. Open the exported iif file using excel. Because it is an iif file it will consider it as a csv or delimited text file. Just keep hitting next, next and finish on excel dilimited screen.
5. Once you click finish, you will see the excel datasheet which looks like an excel datasheet.
6. Locate the inventory assembly item which you are trying to duplicate or make a copy with the exact Bill of Materials (Raw Materials).
7. Start copying everything from start of (!invitem). Select the whole row and each of the next of the rows till you see the row which has (EndAssembly)- So you will select total of 1 row for the inventory assembly item name and description + all the rows for all bill of materials (if you have 4 Bill of Materials you will selected all 4 rows and they should be the 4 rows after the name for inventory assembly) with the row which has the headers for Bill of Materials+ Row which contains !InvItem + Row which contains EndAssembly so total of (1(!InvItem) + 1 (Inventory Assembly item description and Name) 1 (BOM header)+4 (BOM) + 1 (EndAssembly)= 8 Total Rows to be selected.
8. Copy them to a new excel datasheet. Now you can copy the same 8 rows for as many times as you want. So lets say if you want to add 10 similar items like the one you copied with same or similar Bill of Materials. Change the actual bill of materials or quantity of each one of them independently as you would do when you create a new item in Qbooks. Just make sure that the Bill of materials that you are using for these new items are already in quickbooks (items already created and you are using the same name- exact spelling). If quickbooks does not find the same BOM already defined in the system, it will create new items by the names which you have mentioned in the new file which you are working on).
9. So only think you are changing is the item description – Text, Bill of Materials (BOM) of Inventory parts for the new assembly items you are tyring to create and the qty and prices for BOM.
10. Once you have done so, you can save the excel file as others and save as Text (TXT) file.
11. Remane the TXT file to IIF file (Just change the extension of the file_ Nothing else)
12. Go qbooks- File—Utilities—Import and import the IIF file. Go to Item List and you will see your new Inventory Assembly Items in the list.

It is complicated the first time you do it, but believe me you will get a hang of it pretty soon. It works so good when you are trying to create plenty of inventory assembly items with similar descriptions, similar BOM or as a matter of fact any inventory assembly items.

I hope this is helpful to all the people who are wanting to import inventory assembly items from excel to quickbooks.

Enjoy!!!!!

Make sure that you didn’t damage the file when you edited it. A simple test is to export the file, delete all lines except one item, change the description to say “imported”, and then try the import. That is with just minor changes. Sometimes QB can get really cranky with this import feature.

I can map out the cost field fine, to get COGS you have to make it a two sided item, I believe.

Unfortunately, without having my hands on the files, there isn’t much more that I can tell you.