Why did all my inventory items merge as non-inventory when switching from Desktop to Online?

Thanks for visiting the Community today, @sales-polarisusa. As an insight, the Inventory feature is only available in QuickBooks Online Plus.

When you convert your file from QuickBooks Desktop to the Online version, it will recalculate your inventory based on First-In, First-Out method.

Additionally, QuickBooks Online doesn't support units of measure for inventory items.

For additional details, check out this article to learn more about how features and data move from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online.

You can also check out this article to get an overview of converting from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online.

I'd be glad to guide you again if you have additional concerns about data migration. Take care!

NO...this issue was NOT resolved.

After multiple phone calls with various individuals at Intuit I have now learned that if a company HAS inventory, it will be translated from an Inventory Item to Non-Inventory almost every time. QBO does not recognize Inventory Items, due to the merge process. If your Sales people were award of this fact and had informed me of this, I would have designed a MUCH different system moving from QB Enterprise to QB Online. Now 5 months of research and work completed to get our file ready to transfer has been washed down the drain. My file has been corrupted in the merge and cannot be used in its current form. The chart of accounts is not being recognized, several inventory parts were listed as Deleted in the program and my customer data has been corrupted. We are going to have to either re-merge our company file at the risk of getting the same results or go back to the beginning and design a new configuration. This means I will ALSO need to re-input ALL of the data from January after we come up with a system that will get our website talking to our accounting software and maybe an additional Inventory Application that will allow our company to HAVE inventory and conduct business. 

THANKS QuickBooks Sales Team!!! Perhaps upper management will start to see how important it is for your sales staff to actually KNOW the software and not just try to move units. 

NO...this issue was NOT resolved.

After multiple phone calls with various individuals at Intuit I have now learned that if a company HAS inventory, it will be translated from an Inventory Item to Non-Inventory almost every time. QBO does not recognize Inventory Items, due to the merge process. If your Sales people were award of this fact and had informed me of this, I would have designed a MUCH different system moving from QB Enterprise to QB Online. Now 5 months of research and work completed to get our file ready to transfer has been washed down the drain. My file has been corrupted in the merge and cannot be used in its current form. The chart of accounts is not being recognized, several inventory parts were listed as Deleted in the program and my customer data has been corrupted. We are going to have to either re-merge our company file at the risk of getting the same results or go back to the beginning and design a new configuration. This means I will ALSO need to re-input ALL of the data from January after we come up with a system that will get our website talking to our accounting software and maybe an additional Inventory Application that will allow our company to HAVE inventory and conduct business. 

THANKS QuickBooks Sales Team!!! Perhaps upper management will start to see how important it is for your sales staff to actually KNOW the software and not just try to move units. Their BAD INFORMATION has temporarily SHUT DOWN MY COMPANY! 

Did you ever get any assistance with this?  I'm having the same issue and am looking for a quick work around.  

Sorry, lorim28...there is no quick "work-around". The only option QBO provided was to manually open each items and switch it from "non-inventory" to "inventory" item. Since we had over 1,500 different parts, this was not an acceptable solution. That's when I found was SOS Inventory. This program was developed by people who had the same experience as us and found there was NO work-around, so they created their own software to work with QBO. This company is incredible. The software is very user-friendly and the support is like nothing I have ever found with any other company (no, I do not work for this company).  I highly recommend you take a look at the site. I found the staff to be very knowledgeable, honest and professional. You will not be sorry.

Thank you for joining the thread, @lorim28.

Let me help and provide insight about the inventory items that merge as non-inventory when switching from QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT) to QuickBooks Online (QBO).

To start, there are limitations when switching companies from QBDT to QBO. Also, when you convert your file from QBDT to QBO, it will recalculate your inventory based on the First-In, First-Out method. However, you're able to easily change the product type from non-inventory to inventory. After changing the product type to inventory in the Product/Service information page, I'd recommend selecting the Choose a Special Category option instead of the Nontaxable one directly. From the said page, you can select the Nontaxable option to update the product type successfully. Let me guide you on how.

1. Go to the Gear icon.
2. Select Products and services.
3. Find the service item you want to change, then select Edit under the Action column.
4. Select the Change type hyperlink, then select Inventory item.
5. Go to the Sales tax category section, then select the Choose a special category option.
6. In the Choose a special category page, go to the Standard categories section, then select Nontaxable.
7. Click Done.
8. Select the Save and Close button.

However, in case the above steps didn't work, you can import a list of your inventory items to your QBO account. Then, merge them to the duplicate service items to keep your account updated. You can refer to this article for the step-by-step guide: Merge a product or service. It also includes a guide on how to reactivate a produce item.

I'll also add this article to help you keep track of your product and service items in QBO and give you more detailed financial reports to help you complete transactions faster: Product and service items to QuickBooks Online.

I'll always be here, ready to back you up. If you have any further questions about updating your product type or other QBO-related concerns. Please let us know any time in the thread. Keep safe!

@sales-polarisusa 

Does this mean when we purchase the solution you recommend (i.e. SOS), they will take over our QBO account to convert non-inventory to inventory and integrate it with SOS as part of the on-bording process?

Are you sure? ...

They do not "take over" your inventory. You will need to migrate all of your inventory from the file you saved as an Excel file prior to migrating over to QBO. You will turn off the function in QBO "...tracking inventory quantity on hand". SOS Inventory will end up doing that for you...and so much more. Please read the information from SOS Inventory. They can give you all of the details on how to get started. SOS will work WITH QuickBooks Online...not instead of. QB will still be managing all of your accounting - invoices, payments, check writing, reports, etc., with information received from SOS, but SOS will manage your inventory, including Purchase Orders, receiving inventory from vendors, etc. This information will flow from SOS to QBO, but SOS Inventory will be the main program you use for anything inventory related. It is a complimentary software program. And the support you will receive from the technicians at SOS will SHOCK you. They are SO helpful.

I create Estimates, Sales Orders(something QBO doesn't even offer), and Invoices in SOS Inventory. Then I hit the "sync" button in SOS and it send all of the information over to QBO. There's more to the process than that, but this is a brief explanation. The two programs work together. The huge difference is SOS manages your inventory similar to how QB Desktop would do. I love the program...and the support from the people who work there. They are extremely well versed in using their own program. 

Yes, we had QuickBooks Online Plus all last year. During the migration from QB Desktop to QuickBooks Online, which your migration department had to perform twice when one of the technicians did something wrong the first time, all of our 1500 items were migrated as "non-inventory". I was unable to access any of the items for customer orders until this could be repaired. When I contacted QBO, one of your support staff confessed that switching the live inventory items to non-inventory was a problem with the program. Despite the fact that I spoke to at least 8-10 people over the course of 2 months at Intuit prior to the migration (researching...doing my homework), no one mentioned this very important issue. Our company was down for over one week trying to recover from the results of this issue. It was apparent that the sales technicians (plural) I spoke do knew nothing about the inventory issue. Their solution? "Simply" click on each individual item and switch it from non-inventory to an inventory item. All 1500 items! That would have taken me weeks to accomplish. In the mean time, we would not have been able to fulfill any orders. QBO was link with our website and advertised ALL items as OUT OF STOCK. This significantly hurt our sales. Thank God for SOS Inventory. They had us up, and running in just a few days after the solution was found. QuickBooks Online cannot handle large inventories.