Track Your Inventory in QuickBooks: A Comprehensive Guide
Inventory management is crucial for any business to optimize operations, minimize costs, and ensure customer satisfaction. QuickBooks provides robust tools to help you manage and track your inventory efficiently. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up inventory tracking and management in QuickBooks, ensuring you have full control over your business assets.Introduction to Inventory Tracking in QuickBooks
Inventory is a critical component of any business, representing the goods you sell or are prepared to sell. QuickBooks allows you to track your inventory effortlessly. The following steps will guide you through the process of setting up and managing your inventory in QuickBooks.Step 1: Turn On Inventory Tracking
To begin tracking your inventory in QuickBooks, you need to enable the tracking settings. Follow these steps to activate inventory tracking:Log in to your QuickBooks account.
Go to Settings Company Accounts and Settings.
Select the Sales tab.
Scroll down to the Product and Service Setup section and click Edit.
Check both Track quantity and price/rate and Track inventory quantity on hand.
Click Save and Done to confirm your settings.
Step 2: Add Your Inventory Products
Adding your inventory items to QuickBooks is essential for accurate tracking. Here's how you can add both inventory and non-inventory products:Add Inventory Items:
Follow the steps to add inventory items. These products allow you to set and track product quantities.Add Non-Inventory and Service Items:
Follow the steps to add service items. These services you sell, such as landscaping or bookkeeping. Follow the steps to add non-inventory items. These are items you buy or sell, but cannot track as inventory, like nuts and bolts used in an installation.Create Bundles:
Bundles let you group multiple products or services together. For example, a gift basket of fruit, cheese, or wine. Adding products in a bundle saves you from having to select them one by one in invoices or receipts.Step 3: Keep Track of What Sells
To keep track of what sells, you'll need to record sales transactions. Here’s how you can do it:Create an invoice if the customer will pay later.
Add a cash memo if the customer pays on the spot.
QuickBooks will automatically decrease the 'Quantity on Hand' by the amount on the invoice or cash memo.
Step 4: Restock Your Inventory
QuickBooks helps you manage your inventory levels and alerts you when it's time to restock. Here’s how to restock your inventory:Track restocking through QuickBooks inventory reports.
Order inventory directly from suppliers in QuickBooks.
Track what you receive from suppliers and what's still on order.
When you receive items, the quantity on hand automatically increases by the number of items you receive.
Step 5: Use Reports to Check the Status of Your Inventory
QuickBooks offers various reports to help you monitor your inventory status. Use these reports to get insights into your best sellers, current inventory levels, and more:Best Sellers: Identify which products are selling the most.
Inventory on Hand: Check the current quantity of each item.
Cost of Goods Sold: Track costs associated with your inventory.