We purchase both direct job materials that go immediately on jobs (coded as COGS on the Bill), and Inventory to stock at warehouses (Inventory Item linked to Inventory Asset on Bills). The warehouse inventory eventually gets put on specific jobs. We rely heavily on job costing and inventory is huge $$ amounts, so we need to be able to track the inventory pulled for specific jobs and have the cost show up on the Customer P&L (or other job cost reports showing Customer cost).
We do not buy and sell widgets, so I can't simply put X Items on an Invoice removing it from Inventory and adding to COGS. Our Invoices look more like "Draw: 20% complete".
Doing this on QB Desktop is easy - the Inventory Adjustment screen has a Column for Customer, so when reducing inventory you select the Customer and the cost shows up on your job cost reports. On QB ONLINE the Inventory Adjustment screen does NOT have a Customer field so I can't select Customer (see attached screenshot).
Everything is turned on in Settings. I know assigning Customer to Inventory Items on the vendor PO and Bill don't work as Inventory behaves differently.. I know how Inventory works so don't need the basics on how to create Inventory - just how to reassign Inventory to jobs using QBO.
The only (highly undesirable) workaround I can think of is:
- Use Inventory Adjustment, select Inventory Shrinkage account, and remove Items as necessary.
- Run report on Inventory Shrinkage to see total $ amount removed.
- Create Journal Entry with Debit: COGS (using dollar amount from above) and Credit: Inventory Shrinkage (to zero out new balance in Shrinkage account), and select Customer on the COGS line.
^That would make the total $ amount of adjusted inventory show up as a lump number on Customer reports and properly affect Inventory amounts, but is undesirable because we need to see exactly what was pulled for each job without having to drill down and play Research Detective all day trying to match JEs with the Inventory Adjustments they correspond to. We also wouldn't be able to "track" our inventory history to see where all our X Items went. The Inventory Item report wouldn't show # X's went to Customer A & B.. the entire report would be nothing but the original purchase and a hundred Inventory Adjustments that don't show Customer.
We also need to be using Inventory and not some 18-step workaround using Non-Inventory or Service, or going back into Bills and changing the Inventory Item to COGS Category. Inventory is the only Item Type that tracks # of Widgets, and we need to see this. Our financials need to show Inventory Asset for everything remaining in warehouses and we need to [easily] track X Widgets used on jobs.
Why isn't the Customer column on the Inventory Adjustment screen? Seems like this feature is way too crucial, and simple, to not have there..
