Hello korrim21,
I've read through the above posts and hope to be able to shed some light on what's going on here so you can track your inventory items as needed. I hear what you're saying about how making the corrections would cost a lot of time and I want to make sure you're spending less time bookkeeping and more time taking care of business. I'll do what I can to help.
What stuck out to me from your original question is you mentioned that you're using the expense account inventory asset. If you mean to say that you changed the expense account in the Purchasing information section of the item setup to this asset account, that's why the items are not tracking to the COGS account.
With that in mind, it sounds to me like you're setting up your inventory items as service items in QuickBooks. Using QuickBooks Online Plus's built-in inventory item setup, it automatically tracks to the COGS account, like André mentioned, and it cannot be switched to another account type. The Purchasing information section on a service item, however, would allow you to choose the inventory asset account.
QuickBooks relies an account mapping to know when and where to track items that you enter into the books. Since it sounds like you want to record inventory items, I recommend using inventory tracking to do so. That way, you'll be able to accurately hit the inventory asset account, the COGS account, and the sales account.
I'll leave you with a couple of inventory articles for QuickBooks Online so that you can familiarize yourself with how it works.
Luckily, once you have inventory tracking turned on, QuickBooks gives you the option to change a service item to an inventory item. This should save you from having to re-enter everything if you're wanting to change the item type to track inventory. Here's how.
- Hover over Sales in the left menu and choose Product and Services.
- Click Edit in the Action column for a service item.
- Click Change type at the top of the edit window.
- Select Inventory.
- Enter the necessary details for Initial quantity on hand and As of date.
- Verify other details as necessary.
- Click Save and close.
Doing this will not retroactively affect transactions you created previously, so any adjustments that you made before should be okay. Feel free to check in with an accountant or bookkeeper if you're not feeling certain. QuickBooks gives you the tools to connect with one of these professionals by providing the option to add someone you're working with as an accountant user in the My Accountant tab. In that same tab, you can also find an accountant near you with QuickBooks certification that can help. Simply click the Find a pro to help button to begin your search.
In the event that you're not in a position to upgrade to QuickBooks Online Plus if you're using a lower level plan or what's available isn't as in-depth as you need for tracking, I encourage you to consider Fiat Lux's recommendation of a third-party app for managing inventory. You're welcome to check out the one they linked or you can learn what other apps connect with QuickBooks by going to the Apps tab in the left menu and then using keywords to search.
I hope that helps sort this out! Have a great rest of your day. :)
