All Entries in the "Inventory" Category

Paying a Bill Before Receiving Inventory in QuickBooks

Buying inventory is simple in QuickBooks. Create a purchase order, receive the items, enter the bill, pay the bill. Simple! Sometimes things don’t occur in this nice sequence, and it isn’t always obvious what the best procedure would be. What if you have to pay the bill before you have received the items? In this article I’ll give you some suggestions as to how to handle this situation.

QuickBooks Inventory Quantity and Value Adjustments

If everything is working perfectly in your QuickBooks company you won’t need to worry about making inventory adjustments. You will receive inventory items, sell inventory items, possibly even build inventory items (assemblies), and everything will balance out. If that describes your company, great! For the rest of us, though, there are times when we will need to make inventory adjustments. The most common question I run into here is “do I make a quantity or a value adjustment?”

QuickBooks Manufacturing Forecasts: Component Demand

Having an adequate supply of component parts is critical to a manufacturer. If you run out of something, you can’t build your assembly. If you can’t build your assembly, you can’t fulfill customer orders. So let’s talk about how to avoid this if you are using QuickBooks.

Reconciling QuickBooks Inventory Balances

An important part of controlling your inventory is to make sure that your company financial statements match your inventory status. The inventory asset balance in your Balance Sheet should match the value in the Inventory Valuation Summary report. Unfortunately, these values don’t always match, and in this article I’ll talk about some reasons why this can happen, and ways to reconcile your inventory balances.

Shipping Costs and QuickBooks Inventory

What is the “cost” of an inventory item that you purchase? For many businesses we talk about the “landed cost” of the item, which can include not only the purchase cost of the item, but also the shipping cost of the item. In this article I’ll talk about a few ways to handle this in QuickBooks.

The landed cost of an item is usually considered to be the cost of the product plus any relevant logistics costs, such as transportation, warehousing, handling and so forth. The can also be called the  total landed cost or net landed cost.

Understanding QuickBooks Inventory Cost

If you are using QuickBooks to manage your inventory, you need to understand how QuickBooks deals with the cost of inventory items. I’ve been answering a lot of questions about this in the Intuit Community Forums lately, so here is a quick rundown of how things work.

QuickBooks Item List - Columns

The Item List in QuickBooks can be modified to show different columns, which can make it more useful for you. There are some odd features here that I’d like to explain, in this quick tip.

QuickBooks Inventory: Initial Balances

When someone is setting up a new company file in QuickBooks a common complaint I see is that they are getting an incorrect quantity on hand for inventory items, or an incorrect average cost for the items. Today I’ll explain why this usually happens, and give you a little tip on how to correct the problem.

Calculating QuickBooks Reorder Points

Last week in my posting on Understanding QuickBooks Reorder and Build Points I talked about how QuickBooks uses the Reorder Point in reports to tell you when to reorder purchased parts. Today I will discuss some ideas on how to select a reorder point for your items.

Understanding QuickBooks Reorder and Build Points

It’s never a good idea to run out of important inventory items that you resell or use in manufacturing. In simple inventory control systems we often set a minimum stocking level that is used to generate a warning when an item falls below a particular on-hand balance, so that you can order (or build) more of the item just before you run out. In this article I’ll examine how QuickBooks handles this process.