Items and inventory · TaDa Books

An item is a product or service you sell or buy: a consulting hour, a widget, a delivery fee. Give it a description, a price, a cost and the accounts each side posts to, and every invoice, estimate, purchase order and bill line fills itself when you pick the item. Inventory items also count what is on hand.

The item list

Open Items in the Books menu. Every item shows its kind, description, price, cost and accounts; inventory items add what is on hand and what it is worth. Search by name, code, description or account; the chips on the band filter by kind.

New item asks for:

Name, and an optional code (a SKU) and unit (hour, each, box).
Kind. Service (work you do), Product (a thing you sell or buy without counting stock), Inventory (a thing you keep in stock), Other charge (a fee, shipping, a deposit).
When you sell it: the description the customer reads, the sales price, the income account, and whether sales tax applies.
When you buy it: the description on the bill, the cost, and the expense account. An inventory item posts purchases to its asset account instead, so this side asks for that account and the cost of goods account.

An item can be deactivated when you stop using it; it leaves the pickers and stays on every line it was ever on. Only an item on no line can be deleted.

Items on your documents

Every line grid now starts with an Item column. Pick one and the line fills with the item's description, rate and account. Change any of them afterwards; the item stays on the line for reporting. Type a name that does not exist and choose Add an item to create it from the line, on the line's account, without losing your draft.

Inventory

Make an item an Inventory item and its stock is tracked at its cost - average cost, or first in, first out (see Average cost or first in, first out below):

Buying it on a bill (or a purchase order billed) adds the quantity at the bill line's cost and posts the money to the inventory asset account. The bill grid grows a Qty column the moment a stocked item is on a line.
Selling it on an invoice posts the income as always, and a second pair of lines: cost of goods sold against the inventory asset, for the quantity times the average cost on that day (or, under first in, first out, what the oldest units on hand cost).
Adjusting it. Open the item and press Adjust stock: how many were found (+) or lost (-), at what cost (blank means the average), and the account the difference goes to. The quantity and the money move together.
Voiding or deleting a bill or an invoice puts its stock back the way it was. A credit memo line with a stocked item puts the item back on the shelf. An adjustment is undone by voiding its entry (it cannot be edited: void it and adjust again).
Its asset account cannot change while stock is on hand, because the money already sitting in the old account would stay behind.
Buying by check or card. A check, bank payment or card charge can buy stock: pick the inventory item and how many on the line. It moves to the item's inventory asset account, and saving adds the quantity at the line's cost (amount divided by quantity). On any other account the line is an expense and no stock moves.
Selling on a sales receipt. A deposit can be a sales receipt: pick the item and how many. Saving takes the quantity off the shelf and posts its cost of goods at the average cost on that date, just like an invoice.

Sold before cost was known. An amber chip with these words means a sale was costed before a purchase dated earlier was entered, so its cost of goods is off. Open the item to see each sale and by how much. To fix it, open the sale (the invoice, or the sales receipt in Transactions), change something small such as the memo, and save: saving re-costs it at that day's average and the chip clears.

Selling more than is on hand is allowed and flagged, never blocked.

Counting stock

To count the whole shelf at once, press Count stock on the Items tab:

Pick the day of the count and, with two or more sites, the site you are counting. The sheet lists every stock item with what the books hold there on that day.
Press the printer to print the sheet and take it round the shelves.
Type what is actually there in Counted. Leave an item blank to leave it as it is; type 0 when there are none. Each row shows the difference, and the band counts how many were found and how many are missing.
Pick the account the differences go to (an inventory shrinkage expense is usual) and press Post the count.

Every item that differs moves to the count, and the value of the differences posts in ONE entry: missing stock at its cost against the account, stock found back into inventory. Under first in, first out, missing units leave at the cost of the oldest units and found ones come in at the last cost paid. The count is worked out again on the day you pick when you post, so a sale entered while the sheet was open does not make it wrong. To take a count back, void its entry in Transactions: every item goes back as it was.

Average cost or first in, first out

Settings > Accounting > Stock costing chooses how cost of goods is worked out when stock leaves:

Average cost (the default): every unit on hand costs the same - what you paid in total divided by how many you have.
First in, first out: what you bought first is what you sell first, so each sale costs what those oldest units cost. Buy 10 at $10 and 10 at $12, sell 15, and the cost of goods is $160 (10 at $10 and 5 at $12); the 5 left are worth $60.

First in, first out starts on a day you pick. Everything on hand that morning counts as one lot at its average cost, and every sale before that day keeps the cost it was posted at - so the day cannot be earlier than the day after stock last left (the card says which day that is). Going back to average cost is always allowed.

Under first in, first out:

A return on a credit memo comes back at what the item last sold for.
A count loss leaves at the cost of the oldest units, so it takes no typed cost; a count gain with no cost typed comes in at the last cost paid.
Selling more than is on hand takes the units beyond at the last cost paid (else the item's cost); the next units bought fill that gap first.
A purchase entered late but dated before a sale changes which units that sale should have taken. The books keep what was posted, the valuation still agrees with the asset account, and the sale is flagged Sold before cost was known with the cost it should have had; saving it again re-costs it.

The valuation report

Valuation on the Items tab lists every inventory item with its quantity, unit cost and value as of a day, and checks the total against the inventory asset account. When they agree, the band says so to the penny. When they do not, the report names the account and the difference: something was posted to the asset account outside the item rules, and that is where to look.

Stock in more than one place

Keep stock in a shop and a warehouse, or a van and a yard? Open Items > Sites and add a second site. The first stock you ever buy creates the default site, Main; a line that names no site uses the default.

Once there are two sites, every bill, invoice, credit memo and entry line for a stock item gains a Site, the item window shows how much each site holds, and Adjust stock asks where the count was taken. With one site you never see any of it.

Quantity is counted per site. The average cost of an item stays one figure for the whole company, and each site carries its share of the item's value, so the sites always add up to the total the valuation checks.

The default site cannot be made inactive or deleted (make another the default first). A site that ever held stock cannot be deleted either; make it inactive and its history keeps its name.

Moving stock between sites

Items > Transfers > Move stock: pick the date, the site it leaves and the site it goes to, then the items and how many. The window shows what the sending site holds on that date. A transfer changes where stock is counted, not what it is worth, so nothing posts to the books.

A transfer is refused when the sending site would be short on any later date - a sale or a build already uses that stock - and the message says which item, where, and how many. Undo puts the stock back, unless the receiving site has used it since.

Assemblies

An assembly is something you make from your own stock items: bread from flour and salt, a gift basket from its contents, a kit from its parts.

Make the item an Assembly (it needs an inventory asset, a cost of goods and an income account, like any stock item) and save it.
Open it again. What goes into one lists the parts and how many of each go into one. A part has to be an inventory item. Save the parts.
Press Build, say how many, on which date and (with two sites) at which site.

A build takes the parts out of stock at their average cost and brings the assembly in at exactly that sum. When a part's value sits in a different inventory account than the assembly's, the build posts one entry moving it; that entry belongs to the build and changes only through it. The card shows what one costs at today's averages and how many each site could build.

A build short of a part at that site is refused. Items > Builds lists every build; Undo takes one back unless its assemblies have been sold or used since. Sales already costed on a build keep their cost; if a bill dated before the build is entered afterwards, the parts' item shows the build as sold before cost was known, named by its number.

Not built yet: assemblies inside assemblies, services or non-stock items as parts, and building ahead of having the parts.

Reorder points

Give an inventory item a reorder point and the Items tab flags it the moment stock is at or under it; the band counts how many need reordering.

Items in and out

Moving in from QuickBooks Desktop? Add its Item Listing report to the import and the whole list arrives, inventory quantities included. See Import from QuickBooks. Your own export carries the list back out: the books archive holds an items file, and the QuickBooks file in it declares every item before the first entry, so a company file built from it has its items ready.