Item Level Discounts on Daily Sales

You can add a Discount item to apply the discount for your customer, remccabe.

To get QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT) to show the full sales price and a separate discount line on your Profit & Loss (P&L) report, you must use a Discount Item directly on the sales form. This method ensures that revenue is recorded at the full amount and the discount is tracked separately, which is what you're looking to do.

Here’s how to create a Discount item:

1. Go to Inventory, then click New Inventory Item.
2. In the Type dropdown, choose Discount.
3. Enter the Item name and leave the amount blank.
4. In the Account, select Less Discounts given or the account you want to associate with this item.
5. Make the Tax code to Non-Taxable Sales, then Save.

When creating an invoice, on the first line, add the item you sold for its full price of $20. This will post the full revenue to your Merchandise Sales income account. On the very next line, add your Customer Discounts item. You must enter the discount as a negative amount, so type -$5. This will subtract the discount from the subtotal. QuickBooks Desktop will then correctly show the $20 in income and the $5 in the separate Sales Discounts or Less Discounts given account on your P&L, resulting in a net income of $15.

You can also check out this article about adding items in QuickBooks Desktop: Add, edit, and delete items in QuickBooks Desktop.

Feel free to go back to this thread if you have more questions.

Hi GenmarieM, thanks - that method works to reduce my total sales but it doesn't seem to work to apply the discount to a specific item, which is what I am trying to do.  

When I am entering Daily Sales (not invoices as I run a retail store), I put in item level detail.  Not all items are impacted by a customer discount reward and I'm trying to reflect the discounts only on the items that were included in transactions that received a discount.  I already have a Discount set up called Customer Discount.  Is there a way to apply the discount to only some items within my Daily Sales for a day, not just my total sales?  

Thanks for your detailed response, @remccabe.

Please ensure that you place the Customer Discount item immediately after the product to which you want to apply the discount. This will deduct the total amount of the previous item only. You can refer to the screenshot below for guidance.

For additional information on applying discounts to an invoice, please read this article: Use discount and subtotal items on an Invoice.

When you generate a P&L report, the income displayed will reflect the discounted amount. To see the complete breakdown of your income, including both the original and discounted amounts, simply double-click the figure.

Feel free to revisit this thread if you have any further questions.

Hi @Jessavell_A , thank you for the reply.  However I am not using Invoices - I am using Sales Receipts.  All the documentation that is being referenced seems to be specific to Invoices only.   I have tested the above method using Sales Receipts and it doesn't appear to work the same.  Can someone please confirm that it also works using Sales Receipts?  Thank you!

Yes, it also works in sales receipts, @remccabe.  Although the article highlighted invoice transactions, the steps are also applicable to sales receipts.

Have you followed each step accurately, or are you seeing a specific prompt that is preventing you from creating the discount item?

To help you further, here are the steps:

1. Go to the Customers menu and select Enter a Sales Receipt.
2. In the sales receipt, add the product or service item.
3. On the following line, include the Discount item you previously set up.
   
   
    
4. Once all the details are correct, click Save and Close.

If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, feel free to reply to this thread.