I have handmade products. I cannot figure out how/where to track the cost of each item. Everything has at least four components that go into it, which vary in cost.

First, you need QuickBooks Online Plus, as this version will allow you to track inventory and the related cost of goods sold. When you setup your products and services you map the items that you sell to an income account, and you map the items that you purchase to a COGS account.

Note that you can create parent and sub-account for COGS expenses in your Chart of Accounts.

@bignuggetfarm 

Could be that using inventory will work for you, but I would like to know more about how you do things, inventory might not be necessary or useful since unique items in QB are problematic when using inventory

do you create the finished item when you get an order, or do you just make them and keep them on hand waiting to sell them?

when you make an item, do you make more than one of the same thing, the exact same thing is what I mean?

I have a similar question.  I sell fabric online (I buy wholesale and sell them at retail).  So I have all that inventory already set up in QBO.  I've started selling handmade items, using the fabric from my store to make these items.  How do I track that in QBO?  I noticed that no one ever got back with an answer to your question.  Thanks in advance.

Thanks for joining us here, @creativemomma0919.

Currently, building an Inventory Assembly item is only available in QuickBooks Desktop. While this is not an option in QuickBooks Online, you can use bundles as a workaround.

Bundles are several products or services you sell together as a single item. You can use it if you don't have to transfer and track the finished products before you sold them.

For more details about setting up bundles, check out this article: Product and service item types in QuickBooks Online.

You may also want to consider handling your assembly and item group transactions with the help of third party applications. Here's how:

1. Login your QuickBooks Online account.
2. Go to the Apps menu.
3. Type Inventory Assembly in the search bar.
4. Choose an application from the result and then click to open.
5.  You can click Learn more for more details about the app.

Additionally, I've included an article that'll guide you in changing the income account for any of your product or service items. This will ensure your company has an accurate record of your transactions: Change the account for a product/service item.

Feel free to tag my name if you have other QuickBooks concerns. I'll be around to help, creativemomma0919. Take care always.

@creativemomma0919 

Consider having an inventory management app to integrate with your QBO.

Hi there! 
I sell origami earrings and origami paper. Let's say I purchase 5000 sheets of origami paper and 100 earring hooks. Some paper will go to make bundles of  24 sheets that I retail for, let's say $10. Other sheets I use them to make the earrings. I make for example 10 earrings to display in my booth and 20 packages of 24-sheets each. The cost of earrings, including paper and metal is $5.00 and I sell them for $15.00. I only make earrings as I sell so I can't calculate an exact number for inventory in advance. Same for the bundles of paper. I have no idea how to put all this in Quickbooks as I don't know in advance how many sheets of the 5000 initial will end up as earrings and how many will be sold as bundles of paper. Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Laura

I appreciate you for posting in this forum, @morggan.

I understand that you are looking for a solution to manage the inventory of the items you plan to sell using QuickBooks Online. Currently, QBO doesn't offer a specific feature to support this type of inventory tracking.  However, to better track your items, you can use a third-party application that specializes in inventory management to fulfill this need. QBO's functionality is limited to bundle tracking of products and services, which doesn't fit your specific needs.

To access or search for apps in QBO, you may follow these steps I'll provide:

1. Go to Apps.
2. Select Find apps. 
3. In the search field, find the appropriate application for you. 

If you want to view the value of your inventory assets manually in QBO: Track inventory manually in QuickBooks Online.

If you have any other follow-up questions about managing your items, please let me know by adding a comment below. 

@morggan 

Consider having an inventory management app with the assembly feature to integrate with QBO.