QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Chapter 16. Managing Inventory

As you record inventory purchases and sales in QuickBooks, the program keeps track of your inventory behind the scenes,just as the point-of-service systems at the grocery stores do when a cashier scans the items you buy. The seemingly automatic tracking in QuickBooks isn't truly automatic. This chapter begins by reviewing the setup tasks you need to do to make the program work its magic.

Good inventory management comprises more than updating the number of items that QuickBooks thinks you have on hand. To keep the right number of items in stock, you need to know how many you have on hand, how many you've sold, and how many are on order. Making decisions like how much to charge or which vendor to use means evaluating your purchases and the prices you pay for your inventory. In this chapter, you'll learn how to make the most of the inventory reports that QuickBooks provides.

Another important yet trying aspect of inventory is keeping your records in QuickBooks in synch with what's sitting on the shelves in your warehouse. Inventory can go missing due to theft and damage of all kinds, so you might not have as many products in stock as you think you do. QuickBooks can't help all that much with the dusty business of rifling through boxes and counting products. But after the counting is complete, QuickBooks can help you adjust its records to match the reality in your warehouse. Adjusting inventory works for more than inventory counts. You can use this process ...