QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual

Running Inventory Reports

Checking the vital signs of your inventory is the best way to keep it healthy. When products are hot, you have to keep them in stock or you’ll lose sales. And if products grow cold, you don’t want to get stuck holding the bag (or the lime-green luggage).

For all other temperatures, most companies keep tabs on inventory trends and compare them to what’s going on in sales. For example, when the value of your inventory is increasing faster than sales, sales could be poor because your prices are too high, competition is encroaching on your market, or the Salvador Dali Chia Pets simply didn’t catch on.

Good inventory management means keeping enough items in stock to meet your sales, but not so many that your inventory grows obsolete before you can sell it. QuickBooks’ inventory reports aren’t fancy, but they tell you most of what you need to know. You can run any of these reports by choosing Reports→Inventory and then picking the one you want.

Note

QuickBooks’ inventory reports show only the active inventory items in your Item List. So if you run inventory reports without reactivating all your inventory items (Hiding Items), the inventory values in the reports won’t be correct. By contrast, financial statements such as the Balance Sheet include your total inventory value for active and inactive inventory items alike.

How Much Is Inventory Worth?

QuickBooks includes two reports that tell you how much your inventory is worth: Inventory Valuation Summary and Inventory ...