Can you do inventory assembly in quick books online?

Greetings, @kay2.

I'm here to share some insight regarding inventory assembly.

Building an Inventory Assembly Item is only available in QuickBooks Desktop. While this is not an option in QBO, you can use Bundles as a workaround.

A bundle is a collection of products and services you sell together. You'd use it if you don't need to transfer and track the finished products before it is sold.

For more information, check out this article: Product and Service Types.

You can also find some third party applications for creating assembly and item group transactions through the Apps menu or on this link: https://apps.intuit.com/app/apps/home.

To do that, follow the steps below:

1. Login to your QuickBooks Online account.
2. Go to Apps from the menu tab.
3. Type in the clue word of the specific app you're looking for.
4. Click the magnifying glass to search.

That should do it. Please touch base with me here if you need anything else, I'll be here to help. Thanks for reaching out and have a great day!

Real work around for this problem. First make sure you have inventory items for what you want to build and inventory items for each part. Second set up a dummy bank account (i.e Inventory Purchases; $0Balance). Create a bill to yourself as a vendor and purchases the item you want to build. Pay the bill out of the dummy bank account (Inventory Purchases). This well create a credit balance in that account. Finally use inventory quantity adjustments for the inventory parts that go into the inventory item you want to build. Make sure that the total cost of the item you are building equals the total cost of the inventory items that go into the part. Make sure your adjustment is going to the dummy bank account. If you have done this correctly your dummy bank account should be $0. If the account is any other number your cost was not correct; also keep in mind you may be dealing with fifo cost layers if you buy the same item at different prices. If you still have a balance + or - write it off to Inventory shrinkage. One final point; if you try to reconcile the dummy bank account; you well not be able to do this because QBO does not recognize inventory adjustments as transactions. Just keep in mind the account after you have build your assemblies should be zero. 

There are several methods how to do it, but functionally speaking, QBO does not have specific functionality for it.

So, generally, these options are in two categories: either using manual methods or workarounds in QBO, or using an external manufacturing app that plugs into QBO (option 3 below).

Option 1. Manual journals.

Recording manual journals at every step from Raw materials -> Work in progress -> Finished goods -> Cost of Goods sold.

Option 2. A workaround, which gets the same result as previous, without using manual journals.

Option 3. Choose an inventory or a manufacturing app that can do it.

In the QuickBooks app store there are inventory apps that support light assembly (simply converting raw materials into finished goods), and several apps for manufacturing (in addition, calendar and capacity scheduling, MRP, shop-floor control, FIFO), like MRPeasy, depending on depth/complexity required. They sync automatically with QBO.

Totally crazy that you cannot make assemblies unless you pay $2200 for the desktop software. The work around does not work when you have to "assemble" a problem from different inventory parts. 

And you are forced to subscribe to a 3rd party app on top of this software in or to use the QBO system.

Seems like it's a money grab for intuit.

@MaxieMax 

QB Desktop 2024 Premier Plus starts from $950 to have the assembly feature.

As far as I know, the assembly feature is not a basic feature in most QBO-class cloud-based accounting applications.