Inventory management requires precision, constant attention, and smart decisions. QuickBooks Online can help.

If you started small with your business, keeping track of your product inventory was probably pretty easy. Maybe you kept your stock in a few boxes or a closet, and it was easy to tell at a glance what needed replenishing.

As you grew, the process of inventory-tracking started to get unwieldy. You were selling too many products in too large a volume; a casual look at your inventory no longer sufficed. And  physical inventory counts took a lot of time. So you found yourself with too many of some items and not enough of others.

Keeping inventory items at financially-responsible levels is a delicate balance. If you have too much on hand, you tie up money. Too little in stock, and, well, you know what happens: you wind up with unfulfilled orders and unhappy customers. QuickBooks Online can help.

Building Inventory Records

QuickBooks Online’s inventory-management tools help you:

• Create thorough records for each product and service that you sell.
• Fill out sales and purchase forms — like invoices and purchase orders — quickly and accurately using these item records, and,
• Generate reports that provide the real-time status of your inventory.

Figure 1: You can build a database of product and service records using QuickBooks Online’s inventory management tools.

Here’s how to get started. Click on the gear icon in the upper right, next to your company name, and select Products and Services. Once you start adding records, this screen will display a table containing critical details about your inventory and non-inventory items as well as the services you sell.

Click New in the upper right corner. A vertical pane will slide out of the right side of the screen, asking you what type of item you want to describe. Select Inventory item, and the Product/Service information window opens. Enter the name of your item in the first field and its SKU (optional) in the next. You can upload an image if you’d like, too.

The line below this information reads Is sub-product or service. You should only click in the box in front of it if you have already created a parent product or service and want to put this item in a sub-category of it. In the example above, Writing tools is the parent category and 3 4×6 journals, multi-color is one member of that product category. (Questions? Ask us.)

As you can see, you can modify some options here without completely starting over. If this item should have been classified as a Non-inventory item, click Change type and select the correct one. You can also delete your image or replace it with another.

Figure 2: You need to be absolutely sure that your Initial quantity on hand figure is correct in this window, since it will affect transactions and reports.

How many units of this item do you have right now? Enter that number in the field and then choose today’s date from the calendar that’s available in the As of date field. Your Inventory asset account should be pre-selected to Inventory Asset. Account designations must always be correct in QuickBooks Online.

Warning: If you are unfamiliar with assigning items to accounts, let us walk you through the early stages of setting up your inventory records. We can help you understand the Chart of Accounts and how it relates to various tasks you’ll be doing.

Enter the description you would like to appear on sales forms in the Sales information field. Then complete the Sales price/rate box. This is the price that you will charge customers for the item. If sales tax will be applied, click in the box in front of Is taxable to create a check mark. Sales of Product Income will probably already appear in the Income account field.

Go through similar steps in the Purchasing information fields, keeping in mind that the Cost field should reflect your cost to buy the items you sell, if indeed you do purchase and resell inventory. When you’re done, click Save and close or Save and new.

This is a lot of work, but it’s important work. You’re building the foundation for your inventory management system.

Next month, we’ll look at how you will be using your item information in transactions and reports.

QuickBooks Online’s mobile app lacks some features found in the browser-based version, but it provides mobile access to tools you may want on the road.

First, it’s free (except for your mobile data plan costs). Second, it’s good. And QuickBooks Online’s mobile app offers more functionality than you might expect. Available for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, it gives you remote access to the features that you probably use most frequently on your desktop or laptop.

Figure 1: The navigational menu in QuickBooks Online’s mobile app slides out from the left side (iPhone 6+ version pictured here).

Why Mobile?

Since you can already access QBO on a laptop, why would you need an app that’s missing some of the main site’s functionality?

You don’t, necessarily. If your work doesn’t take you out of the office much and you don’t travel for the business, downloading the app may just create one more icon on your smartphone screen that you always see but never open.

But you may want to consider using it if you, for example:

• Want to work at home or in a coffee shop on your off hours,
• Regularly purchase items or services that you will submit as expenses to your company,
• Sell something on the spot and want to create a sales receipt,
• Need to nail down a sale by creating an invoice immediately,
• Get a question from a customer or vendor about a past transaction, or,
• Have to look up a price and description for a product or service.

Figure 2: Using QuickBooks Online’s mobile app, you can create sales transactions wherever you are.

Many Limitations

QuickBooks Online’s mobile app is far from a replacement for the browser-based version. It has numerous limitations. For example, there’s no dashboard — no home page that gives you an overview of your finances and provides reminders about tasks that need to be done. Rather, the app opens to Company Activity, a list of the most recent transactions.

Customer and vendor records are not quite as detailed, and you can’t view or work with your Chart of Accounts. Some settings can be altered, but not nearly as many as on the main site. There are only two reports available, Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet, which is a tiny percentage of what’s offered online. You can’t enter and pay bills, create purchase orders, or work with payroll. And you can’t check inventory levels.

But the app isn’t designed to be a management or everyday tool. You wouldn’t begin your QuickBooks Online experience with the mobile version; setup and high-level functions like reports, bank reconciliation, and assignment of user roles would be done online by the administrator. There’s a separate application for Intuit’s online payroll, and activities like issuing credits and defining recurring transactions would more likely be done from the office.

While they’re laid out differently, the QuickBooks Online mobile app manages to pack a lot of detail in a small space. It includes the features that a remote worker would most likely need to use. And some of those are quite comprehensive. Forms in the app, for example, lack very little compared to those in the browser-based version, especially those that deal with expenses and payments, which are often done outside of the office.

Figure 3: The QuickBooks Online mobile app looks different from the browser-based version, but it’s very easy to use, and some screens are quite detailed.

Examine Your Workflow

The ability to do accounting work on an app away from the office offers convenience and flexibility that browser-based QuickBooks Online doesn’t. First off, mobile applications show a degree of professionalism and responsiveness to customers and vendors you meet with outside the office. And it keeps you in touch with some of your financial data when you’re on the move.

But can using it create problems? Possibly. Data entered in the app shows up in the browser-based version as soon as it’s entered and saved. But you or your administrator wouldn’t necessarily know to look for an onslaught of expenses or invoices, and by the time they’re discovered, there could be some complications.

So if you’re planning to let employees loose on the QuickBooks Online mobile app and you expect that they’ll use it frequently, it’s best to establish policies ahead of time and make sure that the work that’s done remotely will mesh with the rest of your accounting activities. We can help you prepare well for your new mobile capabilities.

QuickBooks Online Plus offers the ability to create purchase orders. But they require knowledge that may be foreign to you.

If your business purchases products from vendors that you then sell, you may have occasion to use purchase orders. These forms simply tell your suppliers what items you want to buy from them.

Not all companies that you buy from will require purchase orders. However, if you place an order without one and the wrong items are delivered, you won’t be able to prove that your order was filled incorrectly.

Purchase orders add an additional layer to your bookkeeping – one that can improve accuracy and accountability, but that’s also complex. If you want to take them on, we’d like to introduce you to the concepts you’ll need to learn. You can, though, begin the process on your own to start familiarizing yourself with purchase orders.

Readying QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online Plus contains purchase order templates. You’ll fill these out much like you complete an invoice. And like invoices, purchase orders should include as much detail as is possible to ensure accuracy.

Before you can begin, though, you need to make sure that purchase orders are turned on. Click the + sign at the top of the screen and look at the Vendors list. If Purchase Order is there, click on it to open a blank template.

If not, click on the gear icon next to your company name in the upper right corner, then click Settings | Company Settings. Click the Expenses tab on the left. Click in the box to the left of Use purchase orders.

Figure 1: You may have to go to the Company Settings page to turn on purchase orders and define custom fields in QuickBooks Online.

Now the Purchase Order link will appear when you click the + sign at the top of the screen. You’ll also be able to create purchase orders by clicking Vendors in the left navigational pane, and then clicking the drop-down arrow in the ACTION column.

QuickBooks Online lets you define up to three custom fields for these forms. That is, you can add additional fields that will appear on all of your purchase orders. Consider your entries here carefully.

If you want to create your own transaction numbers, click in the box in front of Custom transaction numbers. If you don’t, QuickBooks Online will automatically assign them. When you’ve finished by entering a default message for these forms (optional), click Save.

Creating a Purchase Order

If you’re not already there, click on the + sign at the top of the page and select Vendors | Purchase Order. QuickBooks Online’s Purchase Order form will open without any fields filled in. In the upper left corner of the screen, click on the small up/down arrow to the right of the first field to open your list of vendors. Select the one you want.

Figure 2: QuickBooks Online’s Purchase Order form resembles the invoice form, except you’re ordering rather than selling here.

Directly below that, you’ll see the word Open, with a drop-down arrow next to it. A purchase order is considered Open until you pay for it, at which point the status changes to Closed.

If you want the item(s) shipped directly to a customer, click the up/down arrow to the right of the field under Ship to, and select the right one. If this remains blank, the shipment will be delivered to your business mailing address.

The date should fill in automatically, but you can change it. Enter a courier name in the Ship via box, and fill in any custom fields you’ve created.

That’s the easy part. You’ll notice in the screen shot above that there are two sections below the information you just entered, Account details and Item details. Knowing when to fill in one or the other – or both — takes some advanced understanding of purchase orders. This is where you’ll need some guidance from us.

Paying for the Goods

When you receive the items you ordered and are ready to pay for them, your purchase order information will be available. If you select the vendor from the screen shot above and want to write a check, for example, this box will appear in the right vertical pane when you select his name.

Figure 3: Purchase order information will be displayed when you pay the vendor.

The purchasing process is second only to payroll in terms of bookkeeping complexity. QuickBooks Online provides the tools you’ll need, and we can help you gain the understanding required.