Non-Inventory item import cannot update Cost field?

US QuickBooks Pro for Windows

I am helping a friend update his item list. One of the things he's most interested in doing is getting the cost of each item (from the vendor) imported into QB. Almost all of the items are currently non-inventory items. He is an electrician and these are items he buys from a vendor and then uses to do work for his clients.

We have exported his item list to Excel, made some items Not-Active, added several items, and changed some items. I thought this import was going to work great, and then I just read somewhere that the Cost field is not imported for non-inventory items. I also read that you CAN set it to insert cost if you set the fields a certain way and add a column for "is reimburseable charge" on the import.

The article I read states that this works for NEW items, but you cannot update cost for existing non-inventory items. Is there no way around this? One of the things we were hoping to do is get updated cost numbers from the vendor periodically and re-import them to QB so his list always has current prices.

What is the best solution here?

Thanks for any help!

Solved!

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3 Replies

KBorowy

New Member

04/12/12 9:10am PDT

This does not address my problem.

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CCRussell

Allstar

04/12/12 9:10am PDT

The solution

I have an article about importing to the item list from Excel at http://qbblog.ccrsoftware.info/2008/04/importing-inventory-with-excel/

Your understanding of the process isn't exactly right, you are mixing up a few concepts.

First, if you are looking to add OR edit costs in non-inventory parts, and you have a relatively current version of QuickBooks, it is very easy to change the cost from an import by using the "Add/Edit Multiple List Entries" feature. I don't recall when that was added, if you are using QuickBooks 2008 I think you don't have it. But that is a very simple way to paste in updates for non-inventory parts.

If you are using the Advanced Excel import, you CAN import the "cost" value easily for existing non-inventory items. All you need are (at the minimum) three fields: Item name, type, and cost. If you are adding items then you need to add a income account, expense account, and another column that you would map out to the "is reimbursable charge" field and have a "Y" value. These columns are only needed if you are adding new non-inventory part items.

So, just create three columns to update non-inventory costs - item, type and cost.

What you cannot update is the "expense account", which some people have referred to as a "cost account". You can update the cost, but not the account that the cost would be posted to in a transaction. Again, that is only in an update.

Also, if you are working with "inventory part" items, you cannot update the "average cost" on an import. Different item type, but sometimes that gets confused with non-inventory parts and "cost".

Hope that makes sense!

In addition - if you can't get these built-in imports to work the way you want, try considering a third party import tool. There are several available, and they are more powerful and flexible than the Excel imports in QuickBooks. My favorite is the Transaction Pro Importer from Baystate Consulting. See my review of this at http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2012/02/quickbooks-transaction-pro-importer/

Charlie Russell
CCRSoftware
http://www.ccrsoftware.com
http://www.sleeter.com/blog/

http://wildflowers.russellramblings.com/

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KBorowy

New Member

04/12/12 9:16am PDT