QBPOS: Physical Inventory Upload from Scanner - How to Prioritize Item # over ALU?

Thanks for posting, @tena2.

I'll share some information about the Universal Product Code (UPC) also called an item number. The default identifier when importing transactions into QuickBooks POS is the item name field, but you have the option to use the ALU (Alternate Lookup) or UPC (item number) field to identify the item.

Here's how:

1. Go to QuickBooks POS
2. In the Import module select the More options button.
3. Check either ALU Lookup or UPC Lookup. Make sure to map the field for ALU or UPC.
4. Follow the steps that'll guide you through the rest.

For more information about UPCs, check out this guide: Point of Sale barcodes and UPCs defined.

Additionally, there's the link that'll help you manage POS-related tasks: View all help for QB POS.

Please don't hesitate to reply to this thread if you have other questions or concerns with item scanning. I'll be around to help. Take care and have a good one.

Hi @ShiellaGraceA

Thank you for the rapid response! I don't think this will help with our issue, though. I'm actually talking about taking a physical inventory, our yearly count of our on-hand merchandise.

We use the CipherLab inventory scanners to scan the QBPOS-assigned Item # (not UPC and not ALU) from the barcodes QBPOS prints on our price tags and type in a quantity on the scanner's keypad. When we're all done scanning our products, we follow this path in QBPOS:

"Inventory > Start Physical Inventory"

Since it's a complete store inventory count, we check the box to "Set all items not counted to zero" then click:

"I Want to... > Add Counts from Scanner"

We then follow the steps to upload the data from the scanners. While the quantity for most of our scans correctly gets assigned to the QBPOS Item #, if an ALU happens to match the QBPOS Item #, then that product's quantity gets assigned to the product with the matching ALU instead.

Here is one example: While counting inventory, we scan Item # 110144 with an inventory scanner and enter a quantity of 2 into the scanner. Later, when we upload that scanner in the Physical Inventory module, it finds an Alternate Lookup of RZ110144 and adds a quantity of 2 to that product, which is actually Item # 94693. Because the manufacturer's product number (what we use the ALU field for since it's not a UPC) happens to include our QBPOS Item #, it comes up as a match.

As I was looking through the help files, I saw instructions that suggested a workaround of including letters in ALUs to avoid this duplicate number issue, but from the example above you can see that doesn't work. Matching even part of the ALU was enough to get the quantity assigned to the wrong product.

As our product catalog grows and more QBPOS-assigned Item Numbers match manufacturer product numbers in the ALU field, this is increasingly becoming a problem. We had a quantity discrepancy of over 3,000 this year. While some of that is from shoplifting, a sizable number is due to QBPOS assigning quantities to the wrong products. We have another store with a completely different product selection, and it is also experiencing this problem, so I imagine it's not just us struggling with this.

I hope I am just missing a setting for a Physical Inventory scanner upload. We really need a way to let QBPOS know which field to use while uploading scans during a Physical Inventory, or at least an option to prioritize Item # over Alternate Lookup. It just seems so odd that the Alternate Lookup field is matched before the Item # field since the Item # assigned by QBPOS is what gets printed on the price tags and is more likely to get scanned while counting inventory than an ALU.

I hope that helps to clarify the problem we're having. Thanks in advance for your continued help!

Hello again, @tena2.

I want to ensure this gets resolved for you. To further check your account set up to import it correctly, I recommend contacting our Customer Care Team. They're equipped with tools to securely look into your account and check the main cause of this.

You can click the Chat with us link or get the phone number in this article: Contact Payments or Point of Sale Support.

For more tips about doing physical inventory in QuickBooks Point of Sale, you can open this link: Perform a physical inventory.

I'll also add this guide to learn more about QuickBooks Point of Sale: QuickBooks Point of Sale (POS) FAQ.

If you have any other questions about your inventory transactions, feel free to post here again. I'm more than happy to help. Wishing you a good one!

Hi @MirriamM

Thank you for your reply. Do you know whether the inventory scanner upload looks at custom fields? I was just wondering if we might be able to resolve this by moving our vendor product numbers out of the ALU field and into a custom field we could name "Vendor #" or similar.

If the inventory scanner upload only matches numbers from the ALU, Item # and UPC fields, it seems like using another field for our vendors' product numbers would ensure that our quantities all get matched to the correct products?

Thank you again!

Hi there, @tena2. 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

As my colleague has mentioned above, I agree that contacting our Point of Sale Team would be the best route for this one. This way, one of our specialists can review your account and take a look into your setup. They can also advise the best way possible to upload.

You can use the Contact QuickBooks Point of Sale article for different ways to connect with an agent. 

Please don't hesitate to reach out again if you have additional questions or concerns. Take care!