I have Quickbooks Pro and am trying to set up inventory for bulk items used on jobs. We have a roofing business and don't sell parts from inventory, but do need to track items in the shop that are bought in bulk and used on various jobs
Tracking inventory for internal management is fine.
Since you won't sell them, but you use them on jobs, you will need to physically manage inventory and use the Adjust Inventory functions to show goods in stock now are part of COS, and you still can assign the job name to the adjustment.
Create your inventory items for the items you stock, and receive them when you purchase the items, stock the items in the lowest unit of measure you use it in.
See this explanation of how to receive inventory items in QB
http://onsale-apparel.com/Rust...
For your job, you can create a sales receipt and "sell" the items to the customer/job for a zero sales price, that will remove them from inventory and send the average cost to the expense account you select on the item screen
You may not be retailing the stock, but you are selling the items as an included part of the job.
inventory items have three accounts,
expense=COGS
income=Sales or the name of your income account
asset=inventory asset
In preferences>Items & Inventory>Company tab check mark that inventory & purchase orders are active, when you create the first inventory item, QB will create the inventory asset and COGS accounts, and then go for it in a test file first.
The inventory help files and video tutorials are helpful. QuickBooks for Dummies, and Business Accounting for Dummies are great books. There is also a lot of information on my blog, and several "How 2" articles on the basics. QB is an accounting program and has a steep learning curve regardless of what the PR says.
Inventory if mis-entered or mismanaged can be the worst thing to try to correct that there is in QB.
