I'm looking for an efficient way to classify line items on a Home Depot or Lowes purchase to different COG's accounts in the P&L, based on what the purchases are for (i.e., paint, lumber, roof materials, etc.). The transactions already feed directly into QuickBooks online since the bank account they are purchased on is connected via live feed. As of now, I have been classifying them all in uncategorized expenses until I can come up with a process, app, import, etc. to quickly classify the transactions.
I can think of a few options myself but would like to know if anyone has any better ideas. Here's my ideas:
1) I can access the receipts by the Home Depot Pro login and I can export the data into a spreadsheet and run a pivot table and post a JE but this is a temporary fix. There are about 5 different purchases a day, some with large purchases of all kinds of different items. However, if I choose this option, it will just move the expenses all in one big JE to each expense category and the owner won't be able to see the detail of the purchases that make up each expense category (besides my JE spreadsheet). Also, if I do this process every month, the owner won't be able to see an accurate P&L on a weekly basis - it would only be accurate at the end of the month when I reclassify these expenses to the appropriate COG-material account.
2) Home Depot Pro has a QuickBooks import option, however, I'm skeptical of trying this since all the transactions have already fed into QuickBooks via the live bank feed. So I don't want to duplicate them.
3) Old school. Manually split the expense as it feeds into the bank feed by looking at receipts and trying to figure out what SKU belongs where (I'm a CPA not a construction worker!). This would require alot of work on the owners part to identify the expense account for each item purchased and alot of work on my part to key it all in.
4) I'm sure there's an app for this!
Any suggestions or ideas?
