How to set up products & services in QuickBooks Online

[0:00] QuickBooks comes with some basic products and services, but setting up your own gives you more accurate reports and helps to save you time later. Before you record any sales in QuickBooks, it's best to set up the products and services you provide to your customers. Let's go over how to do that to get started from All Apps. Navigate to Sales & Get Paid. Then Products and Services.

[0:21] Then Create Items. First, let's choose the type of product or service you want to enter. Non-inventory products are physical things you sell, but you don't keep track of exactly how many you have. If you manage inventory with QuickBooks, then you could choose an inventory product here. Services are any services that you sell to your customers.

[0:44] We'll set up a service, but both products and services are set up in the exact same way. Our business is a landscaping company and we charge customers for tree trimming. There is a field for Stock Keeping Unit if you need to track that for your products. You can also group your products and services into categories.

[1:05] You can select this box to upload a picture of the product or service, enter a description of the product or service. This appears later when you record a sale of this item and will be something that your customer sees on their invoice or receipt. The sales price or rate field lets you record what you charge customers for this service.

[1:25] You can leave it blank, but recording your default price or rate saves you time later. We charge $50 an hour for trimming. The Income account is the account that QuickBooks uses to categorize sales income for this service. You'll see it on your Profit & Loss Statement, and over time it tracks how much income you've generated from this service and others like it.

[1:48] You don't need a different income account for each product or service. Just for whatever categories you wanna keep track of. For example, we want the income from this service to go to Landscaping Services Income. If Sales Tax is turned on, you'll also choose whether or not you charge sales tax for the product or service. Once you're done, select, Save and Close.

[2:11] And now we have a trimming service that we can charge to our customers for $50 an hour. If you have many products and services to enter, you can import them all from a spreadsheet instead of entering them one by one from the products and service page, and select import items or navigate to the dropdown of new product service. Choose batch, import, and import from file.

[2:35] Attach the spreadsheet and select next. Then map the fields in your spreadsheet with the fields in QuickBooks. Select next. If everything looks good, select, import, and all these products and services will be added to QuickBooks. Now, try setting up your own products and services in QuickBooks.