New Feature! Inventory Quantity Tracking
Consider this scenario: Your customer has placed a big order for those excellent “gadgets” you sell. You are excited but wondering “Do I have enough of those “gadgets” in stock to fulfill the order?”
Wouldn’t it be nice if Quickbooks Online can answer that important question for you anywhere, anytime? Well it does now. In two simple steps.
1. Enable the preference called “Quantity on Hand”.
- Company Menu –> Preferences –> Product and Services.
- Check “Quantity on Hand” preference and Save.
This will enable this feature in your company for all users.
2. Enter Sales and Purchase information and Initial Quantity on Hand
Follow the steps below:
- Customers Menu –> Products/Services list –> Select “gadget” and Edit
- Now you can add Purchase information for “gadget” ! It’s one of the many new features we added to enable quantity tracking
- Check the “I track Quantity On Hand” and
- Enter How many “gadgets” you have in stock
- Enter the “Date” you think that count was done
(e.g I found that I have 125.00 ‘gadgets’ on the shelf behind me today which is 11/15/2009).
That is it! Next time, you can turn on Quantity Tracking in less than a minute.
To track Quantity, remember 2 golden rules
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Every time you buy ‘gadget’ from your vendors, select “gadget” in the new “Itemize by Product/Service” table of Bills, Checks, Cash, Credit Card and Vendor Credit transactions.
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Every time you sell this “gadget”‘ to your customers, select “gadget” in the Product/Service column when creating Invoice, Sales receipt, Charge and Refund/Credit transactions.
How can I see how many “Gadgets” I have in stock at any given time?
- The current QOH is displayed in the Product/Service List page
- Customers Menu –> Product & Services List and look for “gadget”.
- Notice now we have a new “Quantity On Hand” column which will tell you exactly that!
2. The current QOH is also displayed when you click Edit on the “gadget” from the list
There are some detailed questions you may have that we won’t go into now.
- What happens when I try to sell more “gadgets” than I have in stock ?
- What if I want to update the QOH at any point in time ?
- What if I want to change the Purchase Account to a COGS account and make that change be retroactive ?
- What if i want my Initial QOH to be backdated and QBO can calculate and tell me what the current QOH is ?
Great questions! If you need/want additional info check out QuickBooks support. But we won’t go into those details now. Please leave feedback on the feature or this overview in the comments. Would love to hear from you!
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About me : I am a software engineer in QuickBooks Online working on enabling the Inventory workflow. I love to solve our customer pains and delight them. When not coding you will find me racing on the foothills of San Jose near my home !
Explore posts in the same categories: Features
November 22, 2009 at 11:39 am
I am an orthodontist and we use a lot of products during the course of our workweek (brackets, wires, etc). We have an extensive excel worksheet which itemizes every product we use, where we buy it from, how much it costs, how much we should have on hand of it every 3 months and how much we actually have of it. We subtract the last 2 from each other every 3 months to figure out how much we need to order. I was excited to see that you were thinking about inventory control but I don’t think you deal with it on this level and it would be great if you did. This way, once all of the data is first inputted, all that needs to be done is to do an inventory control every month and generate an order list. If you would like to speak with me about this please call me at 201-921-5855. Thanks
November 23, 2009 at 9:21 am
Thanks Natalie for your inputs. Yes you are right. We currently do not have RE-ORDER points in QBO. We also don’t have Purchase Order yet. So we can’t auto generate a PO when REORDER point falls below a certain point.
However we do trigger warnings when QOH goes to “0″ when you try to sell that item in an invoice.
But I will take this value-able input for our future work towards improving inventory tacking.
November 23, 2009 at 12:05 pm
YOUR SOFTWARE NEEDS THE CAPABILITY OF DOING PURCHASE ORDERS OTHER THAN THAT I THINK IT IS WONDERFUL
November 23, 2009 at 8:27 am
GREAT PROGRESS ON TACKING ITEMS QOH.
COULD YOU UPDATE ME ON THE POSSIBILITY OF HAVING A SIMPLE PURCHASE ORDER TRACKING SYSTEM.
WHAT WE NEED IS A PURCHASE ORDER FORM TO FILL AND SEND; AND A WAY TO TRACK IT UNTIL THE ITEMS ORDERED ARE RECIEVED.
WE HAVE A CRUDE WORK AROUND IN USE NOW, BUT IT TRASHES OUR BALANCE SHEET RESULTS.
YOUR THOUGHTS
DON
November 23, 2009 at 9:14 am
Thanks Don for your inputs. We are working on adding Purchase Order(PO) to QBO. We will LOVE to get your inputs and understand your tracking work-flow in details.
Q1. Do you usually receive ALL the items you ordered in a PO in one shipment ? OR
Q2. Do you get multiple shipments from your vendor to fulfill the PO? In the latter case, Do you want to track how many items you received and how many are back-ordered ?
Q3. Do you want to close the PO automatically when all items are received ? Or Do you want to close it yourself ?
November 23, 2009 at 9:04 am
If I purchase product using this new feature and put the dollars in an inventory asset account, how do these dollars get transferred into cost of goods upon a sale? Is this a manual journal entry or is it automatic like the QuickBooks desktop products?
November 23, 2009 at 9:43 am
Insightful question.
I would recommend that you DO NOT enter an inventory asset account into the purchase expense account box for the product. Put your COGS account as the expense account on the product sold.
This will, indeed, credit the COGS expense account at the time of the purchase – which is not what you want. But when inventory costing is added, then it will work automatically and correctly, as you expect.
Whereas if you put an inventory asset account into the purchase expense account for the product now, then when costing is added, incorrect journal entries will be created as follows:
The COGS amount will be credited from the inventory asset account, but then, instead of being debited to COGS, it’ll be debited to the inventory asset account that you placed in the purchase expense account area. Your inventory asset account balance will be ever-increasing.
November 23, 2009 at 11:25 am
The more inventory tracking system you can inpliment in your system, bet better. We are a small manufacturer. Sales Orders would help a lot as well.
November 23, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Purchase Order:
I will 2nd, 3rd, and 4th this request. A purchase order system is DEFINITELY a necessity of this software. Also, barcode implementation would be a great advancement if you are going to be tracking inventory.
Thanks!! I’ll stay tuned for the updates.
November 23, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Thanks for the new feature. It is useful indeed.
How should I handle SAME PRODUCT with different cost?
Should I create a new product?, because when I change the Rate on the Vendor Bill if it is different to the one already created on the product list (from a previous vendor bill) it doesn’t sum up on the total on hand.
Are you planning to add more sophistication (useful!) to QOH?
November 23, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Currently we do not have support for multiple prices for the same item. However as you mentioned you can CHANGE the RATE of the item in the BILL to reflect the rate you want. If the Totals doesn’t add up in a Bill, you simple have to click the RECALCULATE button to fix the total.
November 26, 2009 at 10:05 am
Thanks. I assume that this is same for COSTS right?. So far, if I have different costs from same vendor for same products I create and use a sub-item. Am I right?
November 23, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I will add my name to the growing list of people who want/need purchase orders on QBO. I have to go back and forth between my desktop version of QB and the online version just to create a purchase order form which is acceptable for our service business.
In addition, it would be EXTREMELY HELPFUL if your invoice forms could accommodate blank lines between entries, like your old software has. The invoices just look cluttered, unprofessional, and appear to be one big paragraph. They would look much more professional and would be easier on the eyes to our clients with the space-between-the-entries added.
December 2, 2009 at 7:29 am
I agree completely Maryann. We need that “insert line” feature added to QBO invoices. Our invoices are open for lengthy periods of time from start of customer job to finish and many things change. I need the blank line to edit/add new items to the final invoice.
November 23, 2009 at 9:55 pm
We heard you loud and clear ! We are working on the Purchase Order feature. So please stay tuned to our Blog.
November 24, 2009 at 3:10 am
A great step forward, but still won’t help us yet. We have consignment inventory at numerous locations that need to be tracked as well. Any chance that locations can be introduced as well?
December 4, 2009 at 6:51 pm
We do have LOCATION tracking in QBO. If you go to preferences and turn it on. However we do not have QOH tracking per location. Neither do we have consignment feature. This is the start of our journey to enable Order management and Inventory to QBO. So please continue to provide your feedback and stay tuned as we improve the product.
November 29, 2009 at 9:33 am
P/O Function would be great
Also integration of quickbooks online to a desktop version of quickbooks customer manager, or even an online version of customer manager< or a way to link non quickbook files to invoices, ie. scanned image of a work order linked to the invoice that gets billed, or a word doc (inspection report)
that can be linked to the invoice for the inspection
December 4, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Jeff,
I love the idea ! I may be working on something similar on my “whitepace” time [at Intuit, whitespace time is where your think out of the box and quickly do a code-jam to prove your ideas].
But I can’t promise you anything except that I will contact you in case I get some time to work on it.
-Kaushik
November 29, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Thanks for the new feature. Since inventory quantity is updated with purchases and/or sales…..why can’t the value of the inventory be updated as well, and have the inventory asset account updated?
November 30, 2009 at 8:47 am
Inventory costing (debit inventory asset at purchase time, credit inventory asset/debit cost-of-goods-sold at sale time) is being worked on, but not yet complete.
December 7, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Do you have an approximate date of when inventory costing is going to be ready?
We currently use Netsuite but we think that with the inventory costing feature we can migrate to Quickbooks Online.
December 8, 2009 at 8:50 am
We’re not allowed to comment on when work in progress will become available.
November 30, 2009 at 8:34 am
I will be redundant, and also throw my vote in for a PO system. Also re-order set points are a must. In our company, each truck is a “warehouse” so multiple warehouses would be great!
November 30, 2009 at 3:19 pm
I resell software. When I sell product “X” to a customer, currently I need to go to “Enter Bill” and enter the same information (product “X”) under Itemize by Product/Service. If the Product/Service had a vendor entry, it could create a “bill” (PO) from the sales transaction, since the products I sell are only available from one vendor.
I get a different discount from my vendor depending on whether the annual service is a new sale or a renewal. I handled this by adding a “R” to the renewal product code. It was easy to update all the recurring templates by changing the “S” (service) to “SR” (service renewal) first, and then create a new “S” Product/Service. Thanks!
If there were more than one vendor for product “X”, it would be more complicated. I don’t have any input for that situation…
December 4, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Since your question is a complex one, I will ask you to please contact our customer support.
November 30, 2009 at 3:23 pm
“There are some detailed questions you may have that we won’t go into now.” Are we going to have some documents on these items soon?
December 4, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Yes we are planning to add “How do I” Help topics around these detailed questions. In the meantime, if you have questions please feel fee to contact our customer support via your usual medium.
December 1, 2009 at 4:34 pm
We’re very happy to see the beginnings of the inventory feature for QBO!
Similar to ACPower’s comment, we have 6 locations and we need to manage QOH by class in order to make it worthwhile to us.
Thanks!
December 4, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Well managing “multi-location” inventory is a complex problem. We do understand your pain but are amazed at the innovative ways you are working around the shortcoming. We are working on completing the single location inventory. But its only the beginning of our new journey. Please stay tuned as we continuously improve QBO.
December 2, 2009 at 8:51 am
Finally QBO is going to have purchase orders! We have not been able to understand why QBO has not addressed this fairly simple feature which holds the same data as a bill, just needs to be directed to a different account until the actual bill arrives from a vendor. It would seem natural that QBO would creat the purchase order feature first, then an inventory system. But we are delighted that QBO will be adding the purchase order feature… hopefully soon!. Thank you QBO.
December 4, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Well we started our journey by trying to add Purchase Order first. But we soon realized that we need to enable product/services in purchase transactions first, like bills/checks/cc/cash txns and PO which is a purchase txns. So now that we have it, we are actively working on PO.
December 3, 2009 at 8:27 am
This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time. Currently we’re suffering through the trials and tribulations of using QB Online for our accounting; an Excel spreadsheet for our inventoy; and two different systems (Google Checkout & Amazon Pro Merchant account) for our e-commerce (online) sales.
While I’m glad to hear that QBO is finally going to track inventory, my team and I are still doing manual sales-order entries, because to my knowledge, QBO doesn’t let you directly import transaction-level data from e-commerce platforms…… or… does it? (If it doesn’t, I sure hope you guys get around to a good integration effort one of these days.)
Thanks
Sherman
December 4, 2009 at 6:27 pm
We will love to learn more about your workflow and how you want us to integrate with other e-commerce platforms ! Can I email you directly about this ?
December 3, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Is there a way to value the total inventory based on cost or a listing that identifies on-hand stock for each item plus original cost?
December 4, 2009 at 6:24 pm
We are currently working on Inventory Costing feature. So as such we do not have that ability yet. Currently you can export your Product/Service List to an Excel file and it will show the Quantity On Hand for each item.
December 4, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Please send me some information on the cost of tracking inventory.
December 8, 2009 at 8:52 am
When we talk about inventory ‘costing’ we’re talking about inventory-cost-accounting; a specific type of accounting for inventory transactions. We’re not talking about how much features in QBO might cost customers.
December 5, 2009 at 8:27 am
We just switched from Quickbooks to QBO and are still having to use the PC product to generate PO and are having to track all inventory in Excel. QOH is a useful addition for sure, however, adding PO to your QBO product with ability to receive partial shipments will go a long way to helping us stay on top of our supply chain. Do you have an ETA for PO feature?
December 8, 2009 at 8:50 am
We’re not allowed to comment on when work in progress might become available.
December 7, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Believe I have activated the Inventory Count feature correctly, yet it doesn’t seem to be automatically adjusting the count. Have entered several sales since
activating the feature. Suggestions?
Thanks.
December 8, 2009 at 8:47 am
Have you enabled QOH tracking for every individual product you wish to keep track of?
If so, are the sales dated later than the start date for the product being sold?
December 9, 2009 at 3:50 pm
What reports are available for tracking inventory? We would like to print out a current inventory report but either have not located or there isn’t one available. Also other ones like average cost of inventory.
December 16, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Currently we are working on the adding Inventory related reports. In the meantime you can use the Product Service List to see your current inventory. The list is accessible from the Customers –> Product Service List menu.
February 28, 2010 at 7:41 pm
I am considering QBO for my business, but the inventory system is going to be the deal maker or deal breaker.
Inventory on hand is a must, but another basic requirement for me is a part # field in addition to a description field. For example I sell and stock hundreds of belts. The product description is the same for many different products. For example there could be dozens if not hundreds of items with a description “drive belt”.
My current system allows three entries to help manage the products. They are 1.) “item category” a 3 digit field which I usually use to identify the brand or manufacturer. 2.) “part number” which I usually use to store the manufacturer’s part number. 3.) “Description” which I use the same way as in the examples of QBO to put a general description like “drive belt”.
I suppose I could get by without the “item category” by just prefixing the part # with the category in the same field. QBO of course already has a “description” field. But I just can’t do without a field for the part number.
Is there a chance there will be a part # field to accommodate such applications in the near future?
February 28, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Upon closer inspection, perhaps I could use the item “name” field as my combined mfg/part# field and this would meet my needs as long as the field allows enough characters.
February 28, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Another useful tool in inventory management would be a field that helped determine the physical location of the items on hand. For example a field labled “Bin #” or “Location”.
April 5, 2010 at 3:17 am
I love the new Quantity on Hand and inventory tracking feature but I’m doing a lot of retroactive entries to close out the books for 2009. I need to add starting inventory and track it through the end of 2009. Right now I get the following error message: “You cannot create an inventory start date for an inventory product earlier than the first day of the first month of Tax Year 2010.” Since the feature is now available, why can’t I use it for 2009? If it’s not possible, what is the best way for me to track inventory for 2009? I see people above use Excel. I guess I can do that. Do I credit my Inventory Account? Would I create Inventory sub-accounts for all products? What if I don’t have any associated COGS for start up inventory, e.g., I inherited inventory after I was given the company by an investor/owner? Do I debit Partner’s equity?
April 5, 2010 at 8:31 am
see the follow on post…
April 5, 2010 at 8:29 am
I recommend you keep it simple – use one inventory asset account, one cost of goods sold account, one sale-of-product revenue account, as well as one single money account such as checking.
If you have a lot of transactions, you can simplify your life by treating low-cost, low value items as incidental, and merely expensing them when purchased (In QBO, this just means using an item for which quantity-on-hand is NOT turned on – then they’ll automatically be expensed when purchased.)
For the rest,
When you purchase it, credit cash/checking and debit inventory asset by the purchase amount.
When you sell it, make two pairs of entries:
1. debit cash/checking by the amount you receive, and credit sales-of-product-revenue also by the amount you recieve.
2. credit inventory asset and debit cost-of-goods-sold by the amount the item actually cost you.
To be consistent with how QBO does things, determine the item cost by using a first in, first out approach, which simply means if you make multiple purchases transactions, then use the earliest ones first when transfering from inventory asset to cost-of-goods-sold.
Another approach would be to enter the transactions into QBO using 2010 dates, print out your financial statements, DELETE all those transactions, and then enter journal entries reflecting the aggregated financial impact on all accounts as if the transactions had occured in 2009.
Hope this helps. I haven’t filed my 2009 taxes yet, either.
April 6, 2010 at 6:57 am
Thank you – yes it does! And per your recoomendation, I will keep it simple and do exactly as you suggest.
June 17, 2010 at 3:53 pm
After all the input above, now the inventory goes live, I believed! Please let me know.
The webinar supposed to be today at 10PST but QBOE was down.
When the webinar will be resceduled?
Thanks.
June 18, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Inventory Tracking?????? WHAT ABOUT PROGRESSIVE INVOICING…….. ???? DON’T YOU GET IT???? what good is tracking our inventory if I can’t progressively invoice my clientele?
August 2, 2010 at 11:37 am
Inventory tracking based on location PLEASE!!