QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual

Adjusting Inventory in QuickBooks

As you probably know, inventory can succumb to breakage, theft, and the damage caused by a paintball fight in the warehouse. When these accidents happen, the first thing to do is report the loss to your insurance company. Adjusting the quantity of inventory in QuickBooks follows close behind. Similarly, if you have inventory that you can’t sell—like personal computers with 10 MB of disk space and 11-inch monitors—adjust the inventory in QuickBooks when you take the computers to the recycling center.

TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT: Freezing Inventory While You Count

It’s sheer madness to ship customer orders out and receive inventory shipments while you’re trying to count the products you have on hand. QuickBooks doesn’t have a feature for freezing your inventory while you perform the physical count, but you can follow procedures that do the same thing.

Because a physical inventory count disrupts business operations, most companies schedule it during slow periods and off hours. To keep the disruption to a minimum, print the Physical Inventory Worksheet just before you start the count. Then, until the count is complete, do the following to keep your inventory stable:

• Sales. In QuickBooks, create invoices for inventory sales as you would normally. After you save an invoice, edit it, and mark it as pending (Using Pending Invoices for Backorders). When you finish the count, edit the pending invoices again to mark them as final, fill the orders, and then ...