One of the biggest retail and eCommerce sales days is the Friday after Thanksgiving, which by many is called ‘Black Friday’ (because the red ink in the income column turns to black for a positive year-end). So, what better time to share a brief story about Intuit incorporating some “style” into QBO Inventory?
One of the new Inventory functionalities incorporated into QuickBooks Online Advanced inventory is “Item Variability,” sometimes called ‘Item Attributes.’ This is where an inventory item can vary (differ) by one or more attributes, even though it remains fundamentally the same item.
Attributes might typically be Size or Color, for example:
- You might have some flip-flops available in sizes of 6, 6-1/2, 7, 7-1/2, etc. Each size is an attribute (or variance) of the primary item.
- Another example might be that men’s underwear is available in XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL, 3XL, 4XL, and 5XL. Again, each size is an attribute (or variance) of the primary item.
- Yet another example might be that you have a plastic water bottle, 30-ounce, that comes in blue, black, and red. In this case, the three colors are attributes (or variances) of the 30-ounce water bottle.
- But let’s take this concept one step further. Let’s assume you have identical flip-flops in all those sizes but also in blue, brown, black, red, tan, green, and purple. Each of those colors, as well as the sizes, are different attributes. The combination of the color and size attributes essentially defines a ‘style grid’ for the flip-flop primary item.
This is one of the advanced features of the old ‘QuickBooks Desktop Point-of-Sale’ and TradeGecko, which became QuickBooks Commerce. Those features are beginning to make their way into QuickBooks Online Advanced and some other QBO SKUs.
The most common Item variants are 'size and color'. You will be able to manage that in QBO Advanced." (Murph)
Notice the two call-outs reflecting the two items with variants in the illustration below.
Source: Adapted from Intuit QuickBooks media source content by Insightful Accountant
The “Bottle-Eco-Wa(ter)” has 9 variants available in a grid that can be seen or selected from simply by clicking on the “9 variants.” The same applies to the Collapsible Lun(ch Box), which has “3 variants.”
For those who have been needing this functionality, it is almost like having "Point-of-Sale" built into your QuickBooks. (Murph)
On the Products & services page, the Quantity on Hand (when variables exist) represents the total of the combined quantities on hand of each variable. As seen in the top example above, one of the variables is ‘out of stock.’
You have to click on the ‘# variables’ to have each variable and the associated quantity on hand displayed.
Since you will undoubtedly notice that each of the items in the example above, including the variants, have been linked to a eCommerce channel, it's important to note that the various eCommerce shopping carts and marketplaces have different terminology for SKUs, item identifiers, and variations.
One of the advantages of having many of the QuickBooks Commerce 'eCommerce functionalities' incorporated is the ability to map the flow of data to ensure that each of the items in your inventory and their variations match the parent, child, variation, and sub-variation configuration in your eCommerce channel.
With some additional capabilities being planned for the ‘inventory side of the house’ in QuickBooks, it shouldn’t be long before QBO, especially QBO Advanced, can meet a majority of the inventory-based retail, wholesale, and eCommerce supplier needs that have held many QuickBooks users to QuickBooks Desktop Premier or Enterprise.
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