Read this first: Products Overview and Variants Overview
Read this next: How to edit a variant and/or How to create a variant
Recall
In QuickBooks Commerce terms, a "product" is the broadest classification of the goods that make up your inventory. What is sold on your sales channels are different "variants," which reside within their product hierarchy.
Here we'll cover:
- The difference between a Purchased Product and a Manufactured Product
- How to manually create a new Purchased Product in QuickBooks Commerce
- How to create Purchased Products in bulk via .csv upload in QuickBooks Commerce
- How to manually create a new Manufactured Product in QuickBooks Commerce
Before creating any products, we should do a quick refresher on Initial Costs and Moving Average Costs.
Properly setting up and understanding Initial Costs and Moving Average Costs will help to ensure that QuickBooks Commerce Intelligence reflects the right information with regards to your operating costs, what products to order when, and accurately reflect your Stock on Hand Value and Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).
The Difference Between a Purchased Product and a Manufactured Product
QuickBooks Commerce allows you to create and manage two product types - Purchased Products and Manufactured Products.
A Purchased Product and its subsequent variants are bought directly from a supplier as finished goods. Its variants can either be sold in their final form or used as components to assemble Manufactured Products.
A Manufactured Product and its subsequent variants are assembled from various components, which are variants of Purchased Products. Its variants (e.g. manufactured variants) can either be sold in their final form or used as components to assemble Manufactured Products.
How to Manually Create a New Purchased Product in QuickBooks Commerce
To create a product manually in QuickBooks Commerce, you must first navigate to the Products section by clicking “Inventory” from the navigation menu, then “Products”.
Click the “Create New” button located on the top right-hand side of your screen. Follow the steps in the pop up window to create either a Purchased or Manufactured product.
Fill in the purchased product’s details.
When creating a product, important fields are:
- Manage stock level: this will indicate that you want QuickBooks Commerce to be the master of stock for this product otherwise the product will be listed with infinite stock availability
- Sellable: this will indicate whether or not this product can be listed and sold
- Initial Cost: the dollar value of acquiring one unit of your existing stock on hand
If a product has multiple variants (i.e. sold in multiple sizes, colours or flavours), you can create these variants now.
If this particular product is sold in different pack sizes, you can create these options for each variant now.
If your product has multiple variants and pack sizes, you’ll be taken to a Product Summary page after you click “Continue to Summary” where you can create and input:
- A SKU
- Initial Stock
- Initial Cost
- Buy Price
- Retail Price
- Wholesale Price
- Mark the product as sellable
- Indicate unit weight
Once you’ve input the correct information into these fields, click the “Create Product” button located at the bottom of the page.
To make any modifications to each product and variant, including adding images, editing descriptions, changing prices, locations and more, click on the variant you want to modify.
Once clicked, you’ll be taken to is the main product Details tab, where you can input and edit your product’s information.
Once complete, click the Images tab to attach one or more images to each product.
Next, click on the Stock Locations tab.
Here you can:
- Input and make modifications to bin locations
- Set reorder points
- Set lead times
- Set safety stock levels
- Set stock cover values.
These attributes will help you and your staff locate your products and feed information into QuickBooks Commerce Intelligence for accurate reporting and forecasting.
Click on the Sales Channels tab.
This section will allow you to manually manage where each product and variant is published, listed or linked in your integrated sales channels once they are installed.
Click on the Activity tab located on the far right-hand side.
Here you can review time stamped activity associated with a particular product or variant. This can be done by stock location and you can filter by:
- Stock Movement
- Open Sales Orders
- Incoming Purchase Orders
- Production Orders Committed (Manufacturing)
How to Create your Purchased Products in Bulk via .csv Upload in QuickBooks Commerce
To bulk upload your products into QuickBooks Commerce via .csv file, click on the “Bulk Manage” button located at the top right-hand side of your screen.
Select “Import New Products.”
A window will appear where you can choose to upload a prepared spreadsheet or a template.
As this is the first time uploading inventory into QuickBooks Commerce, click “I need a product spreadsheet template.”
If you sell any products that have multiple variants (i.e. a shirt that comes in multiple colours and sizes), select the button on the left.
If you only sell products that have a single variant, select the button on the right.
For this example, I’m going to select the button on the left to upload products that have multiple variants.
The next step is to select the product attributes, price lists and sales channels you want to update with the product information that you’ll populate in this spreadsheet.
Once you select all of the attributes that you want to upload into QuickBooks Commerce, click “Build Product Template.”
Next click “Download Product Sheet,” open the spreadsheet and input all of the required details by using Excel or Google Sheets.
In this example, I’ll upload the .csv into Google Sheets to edit.
Once you have made all of the appropriate edits, save the file as a .csv on your desktop.
Upload the .csv file via this same window that you used to download the template or upload it via the Inventory>Products section by clicking on “Bulk Manage.”
Click “Import New Products,” then click “I have a spreadsheet with product data ready to upload.”
Once you select “Upload,” you’ll be taken to a preview window where you can confirm the import of your data.
If there are any errors pertaining to suppliers, country codes (you must use 2-character notations) or the “Initial Cost field is blank,” an alert will appear stating the issues so that you can take action to correct them and attempt to re-upload the file.
If everything has been entered correctly, your product list will upload and you’ll be able to view the products and variants within QuickBooks Commerce's Inventory section.
How to Manually Create a Manufactured Product in QuickBooks Commerce
To create a Manufactured Product, go to the Inventory tab, click on the “Create New” button and select “New Manufactured Product”.
Fill in the details of the product.
Set up the initial values of the product.
Setting Initial Values:
- Enable “Manage Stock Levels” in order to track the inventory levels of the finished product. Once you have enabled this option, ensure that the Initial Stock on Hand is not left blank. You can put “0” if you do not have initial stock. Your Initial Stock on Hand and Initial Cost are important in calculating your Moving Average Cost needed in accounting.
- Put in the Wholesale and Retail Price.
- Select the Initial Stock Location.
Set up product variant attributes.
- Enable the option “This product has multiple variants” if the manufactured product has multiple variations. You may uncheck this option if the product only contains a single variant.
- Click “Proceed to Summary” once you have added all the details.
Review the product summary.
The Product Summary page will display information about the variants that can be created under the Manufactured Product. You will be able to bulk set the Prices, Initial Cost, Initial Stock, Weight, and Sellable option. You can only add Wholesale and Retail prices on the variant, Buy Price is not applicable since the variants are manufactured. Once all the information has been added, click “Create Product”.
You can view all the variants under the Manufactured Product by going to the variants tab. You will also have other options such as editing, cloning, arranging the position of your variants or publishing them to your sales channels.
Great work! You have successfully created a Manufactured product and variants!
For more Manufacturing related articles, click here. Got a feedback about QuickBooks Commerce for Manufacturing? Let us know!