Tracking Inventory.

Question:

I work in a body shop that is having trouble with it's inventory. I thought I would try doing it on my QuickBooks 2004. Problem is, (maybe I'm just not doing this right) when we buy from our supplier, a lot of times it is a box or case of something, but when counted on hand for physical inventory, we count by the piece.

Example:
Box of scuff pads (20 per box) cost is $20.00 or $1.00 each.
Now, either way I enter this would work, except when it comes to doing a purchase order. If I put it in as box of scuff pads, the P.O. works, but the physical inventory sheet won't work. If I put it in as each, then the P.O. shows to order 1 scuff pad instead of a box. I hope that makes sense. It's just really frustrating, It really doesn't seem that difficult to me, but I can't figure it out. Please help! I will take any suggestions, we do have quite a bit of inventory and I need to have this done by November. If you know of another program that can accomplish this please let me know. Thank You

Answer:

Using your above example, I would set up the item as single scuff pads, because that is how you use them and bill them (assuming that you bill inventory to a job). So your purchase order would be for 20 scuff pads…if you wanted to order a case. I would think that it would be irrelevant how many are in a case unless your vendor requires a purchase order (rare) to be set up as the number of cases you want to order.

I can't imagine doing it any other way if your going to track scuff pads. I must admit that I know very little about body shops, but unless you are invoicing scuff pads...and if they only cost a dollar do you really need to track them? Aren't they just shop supplies? Just something to think about.