How do enter my cost for non-inventory products that I sell at a markup?

Hello there, petergcole.

You can edit the markup and enter the cost, sales price, and markup percent if you have QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise. Just click the Edit Markup option when you edit or create a new item. Let me show you how:

1. Click the Lists menu and select Item List.
2. To edit, double-click a non-inventory item. 
3. Select Edit Markup.
4. Enter the markup details and then click OK.
5. Click OK to close the window.

The Price Level function in QuickBooks Desktop allows you to set prices for all your inventory and expense items. You can also check this article to learn how to compute the average cost and know which report will help with inventory management: Understand Inventory Assets and COGS tracking.

Please know that you're always welcome to post if you have any other concerns. Wishing you and your business continued success.

So you're saying I can't do this in QBO? Is there a workaround for QBO or do I need to switch to Quickbooks Desktop? Also you specified QB Desktop Enterprise, does that mean this feature is not available in the regular Desktop version? I am a one-person company so the idea of needing an "Enterprise" version of the software is little odd to me.

Thanks for the follow-up questions, @petergcole. 

To clarify, the steps shared by my peer above are for QuickBooks Desktop. Let me share with you a few insights about the Markup feature in QuickBooks Online. 

This feature is only available in Plus and Advanced versions of QBO. Here are the steps to enable the Markup feature: 

1. Go to the Settings menu (Gear), then choose Account and Settings.
2. Select the Expenses tab. 
3. Hit on the pencil icon for Bills and expenses.
4. Leave the default markup rate box as blank so you can change the markup percentage, then update other information if needed.
5. Click Save, then Done.

Once done, you can record the billable expenses to invoice. You can refer to this article for more information: Enter billable expenses.

We're always around to help you more and make things clear for you if you have other questions. 

Thank you for the quick followup!

OK, so a) I can't afford $80/month for the Plus version and even if I could I don't need any of those other features, and b) looking at your solution I don't think that is actually what I am looking for. So let me try and explain my need a little better.

In QBO when I create an invoice for a customer there's a line item for labor and then several line items for non-inventory products. In Products and Services I set the sales price for the non-inventory products that I include in my invoices. All I want to do is somehow account for the cost of purchasing those products, so that I can calculate the difference between the sales price and the cost paid, e.g. profit. This seems like an incredibly basic accounting need that should not require an advanced version of the software. It's the equivalent of someone who owns a food truck and buys a case of Coke for $10 wholesale and sells each can for a $2 profit. I'm just selling electronics instead of Coke. Hopefully this clarifies things. So where would I enter the cost for my products?

I appreciate you for explaining what you're trying to achieve today, @petergcole. I understand you'll want to track the cost of purchases to calculate the difference between the sales price and its cost. 

However, this feature is only available for QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced version, wherein you can enter the cost of your non-inventory item. 

Furthermore, tracking the Cost of Goods Sales (COGS) in QBO Plus/Advanced is only available to your inventory-type products. 

You can check out this article to learn some more: Add product and service items to QuickBooks Online.

Should you decide to upgrade your subscription, you can visit this link to see our plans and pricing to choose the level that suits best your business needs: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing/.

Get back to me if you have more questions. I'll be here to help some more. 

Well that's certainly disappointing. I'm not paying 300% more a month for this one basic feature so I guess I'll keep using a spreadsheet for this.

Just ran into this problem and found this thread.  Very helpful information, as I was strugglig to figure out what I was missing.  Now that I know the problem, I have a question for Quickbooks:

The "Simple Start" plan provides for Income & Expenses, those being the most basic functions of a business.  The "Essentials" plan only adds Bill Management in this case.  Managing bills has nothing to do with expense tracking.  This isn't just disappointing as the OP stated; this is false advertising and outright absurd for QuickBooks to call this a product.  If the most basic small business cannot function using QuickBooks without the help of an excel spreadsheet, what is the point of using it?  

This is not a rant, I genuinely would like a response on how QuickBooks can explain to me how "Income & Expenses" doesn't include expense tracking and how the "Simple Start" plan can genuinely serve a small business.

It would be difficult to later check your margins on individual items this way, but when you pay for the item you have already sold, you could enter the purchase simply as COGS.

Otherwise you could:

1: Enter the item into inventory with the bill function before you actually pay for it.

2: Sell the inventory item to your customer as you normally would on QuickBooks Online

3: Use the "pay bills" function when you *actually* pay for the cost of the goods sold.