We can turn on the left side shortcut for Inventory items, but I don’t see a way to do this for Non-inventory items. I do a lot of services and custom order (non-inventory items) and will have to access this menu a lot.
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What you describe as shortcuts are not. They are major functional tabs. Selecting one often enables built-in accounts, reports, transaction options, and so forth. Ironically, non-inventory items actually are shortcuts. They do not enable any capabilities. They are merely settings that standardize use of other features.
That said, non-inventory items appear in the same menus as inventory items. So your desire to access them regularly and conveniently is already accommodated in the program.
Interesting, and good to know.
Alright then, how do I make an inventory item that does not contribute to inventory cost accounting? I do not want it to track profit and loss, cost of goods on hand, etc. Below a certain gross sales threshold in the USA, we no longer have to track inventory costs for taxation write-off purposes. We can write-off the purchase of the products when we buy it and record the income when we sell it.
Although it is useful to have a full inventory for management reporting purposes, it’s sometimes more trouble than it’s worth to track it all for a one-man business!
You cannot. That is how the program handles inventory items. But you need to understand what qualifies as inventory—generally tangible goods held for production or sale. Consumable supplies are usually not considered inventory, but current expenses.
This is a misrepresentation or over-simplification. There are no national sales tax laws in the USA (because all sales taxes are imposed at the state or subsidiary jurisdictional level) and, therefore, no national exceptions to tracking inventory related to sales tax. If your state, city, or other taxing district provides exceptions, you would simply not apply tax codes to purchase or sale of the items. Whether that is actually legal in your jurisdiction is a question for a qualified local accountant.
If you are referring to something else, please furnish details.
Accounting is never a question of what is “worth it.” It is a question of what is required by law and applicable accounting standards.
I’m not talking about sales tax here, that was the other post. I’m talking about income tax here. Sales tax will still be payable to the state/city agencies at time of sale. Income tax tracking for write-off of purchases can be made easier if sales are below a threshold and considered de minimis. I have consulted a CPA, and he said that at my company size, it is OK to do what I’m doing due to a law change a few years ago.
I’m well below the threshold of gross sales where I would need to track inventory on an accrual basis. I basically want to set my entire inventory to cash basis, is that something that can be done? Then tracking may be fine - if the expense incurred when I buy it is still recorded when I buy it, that would be okay. I also don’t keep more than a couple thousand dollars of inventory, as they are mostly spare parts since my business is service-based. On the occasion I do order expensive items, they are pre-paid by the customer before I even order it (I don’t carry the inventory).
QuickBooks has a function for this with “non-inventory item”. You’re basically just creating an item listing that you can quickly add to an invoice, but it does not track how many you have on hand, nor the asset value, nor anything else. It basically works it the same as if it is a service item. It counts the income. You can run reports on how many you have sold, and that’s about it - which is fine by me.
If you’re saying all inventory tracks, what do you do for service items that you want to save? I could probably make it work by setting all of my items as if they were a “service” in Manager.
When I account for purchases, I’m just taking the line from my bank or credit card statement and putting it in the correct expense account. I’m not doing individual PO item receivals. It will still be COGS if I’m reselling it, or if I know it’s not resale it will go to the correct other account. This also helps when I have a generic item type (which I often do) and it may be any of a bunch of different actual items that are sold (I don’t track one-off sales!)
Same with Manager. Your question was answered by @Tut that this on purpose is in Settings and not a Tab such as inventory tab. @Tut did not advocate that you start using inventory items when non-inventory items can be set in Settings and used in invoices, payments, etc as explained in https://www.manager.io/guides/7344
Honestly I think this was a misunderstanding on my part. The way he was saying it was a shortcut into inventory made me think that all items (including non-inventory) were counted as inventory. If it is indeed non-inventory items that just happen to show up in inventory list, but work as I’m saying, this whole thread was circular because I wasn’t understanding what @Tut was saying. He kept referencing inventory items when he could have just said that non-inventory items work exactly as I need.
Sorry for this seemingly silly thread then.
@KJabs, all your questions on this topic would have been answered if you had read the Guides carefully. You are also advised to create a test business where you can try things out without corrupting your actual records.
Yeah that’s my bad. I think we got off on tangents after my question about the shortcut. I am running a test company now but haven’t fully threw a bunch of stuff at it to see how it would report. I guess I need to.
So to be clear, non-inventory items do work as I’m hoping they do. That’s great.
I will say that right now, I made a non-inventory product and a non-inventory service, and while I can add them both to an invoice, neither of them show up in the inventory tab. So now I’m even more confused about how you’re saying they would show up in the same menus as inventory?
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Non inventory itemms are just a short cut to aid data entry
Non-inventory items show up in the Item dropdown menu when you enter transactions. I never said they would show up in the Inventory Items tab. Again, that is all explained in the Guides.
They are not supposed to! Read the guides on both inventory and non-inventory items and you will see why, even though this has already been explained in this forum most recently by @Joe91 and @Tut. There is no need for anyone of us here to copy the contents of the guides. When using a test business it is advisable to follow the guides and start understanding how things work.