Inventory setup help for 10 months of catch-up data entry

Thanks for your reply.

Regarding Premier and assemblies, I did a chat with Intuit sales support (I'd be happy to forward you the chat text) and they REPEATEDLY stated that assemblies ONLY come with the manufacturing version. I asked in several different ways and they answered the same each time. Also, the "features" pages they directed me to on their site - for each of the General, Retail, & Manufacturing editions, the only edition that lists assemblies and bill of materials is Manufacturing. So that's what I was going off, and I can't afford to buy the wrong edition, open it and then find it doesn't have what I need. If someone from Intuit would like to weigh in, I'm all ears. 

Re the 'assembly in Pro' article, in the numbered steps, I did not see where the assembled items were added to inventory. I see where you took the components out and then at the end you mentioned making sure the balance in the clearing account was zero. But I did not see how there will be any assembled items in inventory when the steps were completed.

On another note...if I do an inventory adjustment to INCREASE the quantity on hand of an assembled item, will it lower the quantities on hand of the components just the same as if I had used the bill of materials and "built" the assembled item?

I ask this because I'm doing catch up of the entire year's transactions and I'll be adding in a bunch of sales first via imports of prior sale transactions and I know the assembled item quantities on hand will go into negative territory. So I will have to increase their quantities after the fact to be sure that my inventory matches the current physical inventory after the catch up is done. I can't do this by "building" the items because it will throw my component inventories off.

Thanks for your input.

Well I can tell you from experience that I used the service version for years and I used assemblies.

The only BOM in QB is the list you make when you create the assembly

Step 8-10 creates the simulated assembly item

On another note...if I do an inventory adjustment to INCREASE the quantity on hand of an assembled item, will it lower the quantities on hand of the components just the same as if I had used the bill of materials and "built" the assembled item?

No you have to lower and increase what you want changed

Thanks for that info.

We did try your step by step method for the Pro version, but when I used the value removed and applied it to the new item the average cost was double  e.g. I reduced the bulk by 20 lbs and when I entered that we now have 10  2lb bags it does not know that this is really 20 lbs of product.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

If you are stocking hte item in 1# units

what is stocked is 10 each of a an item, you named the item 2# bag. All QB cares about is that there is 10 2# bags on hand to sell.

that it is really 20# if you pour it all out has nothing to do with it.

You're right, and I understand what you stated fully.

Unfortunately what we're seeing is that at the end of the adjustment process, the cost of the 2# bag is ending up being double whtat it should be. In effect, a 2# bag, which is 2x 1# of product, is ending up with a cost equal to 4x 1# of product.

Then you have done somthing wrong in the adjustment, bring the adjustment up, bothof them and use the menu edit>delete adjustment, then try again

when you lowered the bulk item by 20, there was a value at the bottom right of the adjustment screen, lets say 12.00

when you do the new item 2# bag, you enter the value 12.00 in the new value column THEN you enter the new qty (10) in the new qty column.

Sorry I see that is not clear on the page, with a qty of one it makes no difference the order, I'll edit that page.

You should also have done the same thing again for the bags, or combined the bags and the bulk in the same intitial adjustment.

Thanks for the clarifications. Could you please expand a bit on your very last sentence? You lost me there.

Also, someone made the following very interesting suggestion to me today and I'd like to bounce it off you for a 2nd opinion:

At the end of each month as we're adding in the data stop and see what quantities of the different sizes of rice we need. Then go back to the vendor bills which have already been entered as bulk items and change the items on the bill FROM the bulk item to 5 of these and 3 of those and 2 of them (where these, those, and them refer to specific bag sizes of rice).

In this case we shouldn't have to do any inventory adjusting except for where WE actually had to do an inventory adjustment from a physical inventory and we have a few of those through the year.

In this process we're going back and "fixing" the incoming purchases to match exactly what we used during the month (there would probably be some bulk still remaining on the purchase) so that the individual bagged item quantites are zero at the end of each month during the catch up.

When you do the first inventory adjustment, you lower the qty of the bulk item and get the value, you could also lower the qty of bags used, then the two values (bags and bulk items) would add to give you one value for the adjustment

otherwise you have to do the same thing again to move the bags item to the simulated assembly item

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What the other is going to do will probably cause some problems long term and will be hard to explain to an auditor.  the first time they forget to make that change things will start to domino. and keep in mind that as time goes by you buy more bulk, so finding the pruchases gets a little trickier, what would have to be done is to double click on a purchase in the item quick report, then if the item has not been converted at all, close it and try an earlier one, until you find the one that is being used.  Then edit that one, and if you need more than what is left on that one, find the next one and start there.

Too many steps, too much chance of things going wrong.

and I don't see anything about the bags item being combined with his rice.

You could try enterprise as Slip suggests, and if you like the assembly item and its use, then buy premier. BUT if you try enterprise - make a new folder called test-enterprise and copy your present data file folder to it - enterprise will convert whatever file it uses and there is no going back to pro with the same file.

the article on my blog about how to set up an inventory item will help you
http://my246shop.com/Rustler/t...

I see - I got confused when you mentioned "bags" because we call the individual items that we sell "bags", as in "a 2# bag".

My thought has been that for the catch-up period - getting 1/2011 thru 10/2011 data entered, we were not going to bother with the assembled items and do as we have been doing with the bags for the rice and the labels - expense them. Once we are caught up, we plan to do the full blown assembled item with labels and bags, plus the product , etc.

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It didn't seem like you saw any big problems with the new method I learned today other than it would be complicated going forward, etc. And that's fine because I'm just looking for a way to get this initial data input in a way that works. Since we're creating a process for the catch-up, we won't miss anything because it will be a step in the process. Once we're caught up, we'll be using assemblies. I had already tested assemblies using the Quickbooks Enterprise online demo installation. It worked great.

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btw the enterprise online demo has demo data in it - you can't load your own.

Hi and thanks for responding. I'm not an accountant or even a bookkeeper so you sort of lost me in the paragraph under the link you provided.

Could you please restate in more "lay" terms so I can understand it? It sounded pretty interesting from what I could gather :-)

Thanks

Are you setting up QB to be your financial system?  Who is defining the general ledger accounts?  Do you have an accountant?

What I was describing is how to set-up your beginning general ledger account balances.   Normally when you transition from one accounting system to another, you cut-over to the new accounting system at the end of a month.
I am assuming the earliest you can cut-over to QB is November 1.

Once you start  using QB on Nov 1, you stop using your old system, or, you duplicate transactions in both systems (run parallel) for a month or two.

There are several websites and/or Intuit tutorials that help with setting up QB, and transitioning the general ledger account balances, Accounts Receivable Invoices, Accounts Payable Invoices, and possibly sales tax.   Many companies hire a local QB ProAdvisor to make the transition.

Yes. Me with help from the bookkeeper and accountant. Yes, I do now, but they're just coming up to speed on what we do.

Thanks for responding, but the rest of your email doesn't really apply. We do not have an accounting system in place which is why my original question was about how to enter the data for 2011 into a new QB install so I can catch-up on the year's data and finally have a picture of our business financially...and that's why your first response didn't really make sense to me since I don't know about general ledger entries and journal entries, etc.

The reason I was asking the question I asked is because my issue is not addressed by tutorials or other websites, etc - from all the searchingn I've done, it seems to be pretty specific.