QuickBooks 2013 For Dummies

When You Sell Stuff

In Chapter 4, I tell you how to list the items on the invoice. Maybe you noticed the similarities between the Items tab in the Enter Bills window and the Quantity/Item Code/Description/Price/Each/Amount box at the bottom of an invoice. QuickBooks uses both for keeping inventory.

When you sell stuff, QuickBooks automatically adjusts your inventory. In other words, if you buy 400 porcelain chickens and sell 350 of them, you have only 50 on hand. QuickBooks updates records for this change. No muss, no fuss. Gosh, isn’t this great? No more lying awake at night, wondering whether you have enough chickens or wombats or whatever. The same thing happens when you make cash sales. When you list the items on the sales receipt, QuickBooks assumes that they’re leaving your hands and subtracts them from your inventory.

One moral of this story is “Keep a good, descriptive Item list.” And the other moral is “Enter items carefully on the Items tab of checks and bills and in the Item/Description/Qty/Rate/Amount box of sales receipts and invoices.”