create sales items that show up on work orders and not on invoices

Thanks for sharing detailed info about your concern here in the Community, @luxl.

Allow me to give you some insights on how to set up these sales items so they won't appear on the final invoice.

To start with, you're able to convert a sales order to an invoice in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT). This way, you'll have the options on what sales items to include on your invoices. To do this, you'll just have to select the Create Invoice button in the sales order page. I'll guide you on how to do it:

1. Go to the Customers menu then choose the Create Sales Orders option.
2. Tick Create an invoice for selected items then click OK.
3. On the pop-up window, put a check mark sales items you wish to include on the final invoice then pick OK once done.
4. Hit Save and Close or Save and New on the invoice page to confirm the action.
   
   

You can refer to this article for more information about the process: How can I convert a sales order to an invoice in QBDT?.

Also, feel free to check out this help article on how to manage your item lists in QuickBooks Desktop: How can I manage my item lists in QuickBooks Desktop?.

Please let me know if you encounter any bumps with managing your items list in QuickBooks Desktop. I'm just a Reply away ready to assist you. Stay safe and have a good one, @luxl.

Hi, Appreciate your input but I already know how to create an invoice from a sales order. I thought that was obvious in my question (unless you are a typical bot answering a question).  We have convert sales order to invoice figured out.    My question is how can I have certain Items we have put in the Item list automatically NOT SHOW UP on invoices as items.  if I ask my staff to go thru the step of "Specify items and quantities for Invoices" then very likely we will screw this up and not charge for things.  I will even screw this up. How can I have a list of instructions that I can select from, when making a work order, that will automatically NOT show up on an invoice?  Ideally creating this canned list of instructions in the ITEM list is great, but then it automatically shows up on the invoice.  Anyone out there have any thoughts about this?  

Hello, @luxl.

I understand the importance of having this feature or option in QuickBooks Desktop.

In converting sales order to invoice, items will automatically show up on the invoice that you created for your customer. In the meantime, you can follow the workaround steps above given by my colleague. 

The steps above will give you an option to select manually a specific item from the sales order that will reflect on the invoice. 

You can check out these articles for additional reading about creating invoices and adding, edit items in QuickBooks Desktop.

• Create an invoice in QuickBooks Desktop.
• Add, edit, and delete items.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. Take care and keep safe!

In other words, what I want to do is not possible.  And it would have served all parties better if both people who answered this question would have just said so in one sentence.  Where both of you are coming from with a long winded answer that does not actually help is so typical of how Quickbooks is as a company. Believe me, if I had a better option or could afford to have custom software built, I would do so. Hope you folks are continuing to earn qb forum badges.