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If your business physically produces, manufactures and/or sells product, you’ll want to use an inventory assembly list to keep track of these items. Doing so will allow you to combine multiple material and construction costs into a single line; thus, making the process of creating sales and purchase forms easier and less time consuming. While inventory assembly lists aren’t necessary to perform basic accounting tasks in Quickbooks, they will certainly improve your efficiency. To learn more about how to build an inventory assembly list, keep reading.

Note: Inventory assembly lists are only available in QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise Solutions editions. If this is a feature you need for your business, consider upgrading your Quickbooks account to one of these editions.

The first step in creating an inventory assembly list is to define what exactly goes into the products’ assembly. Also known as the Bill of Materials, this is your list of materials used to create the product. When you are logged into your Quickbooks account, click on the Inventory Assembly button to add each and every item associated with the manufacturing of your product. It’s important to note that you’ll also need to list the amount, if any, of the assembly material currently exists in your inventory. After entering this information into your Quickbooks account, go back and double check it to ensure the information is correct.

The next step is to add the assembly material items to your inventory. Also known as ‘Building,’ this is necessary to keep production running smoothly. If you get low on a vital assembly item, your Quickbooks account will send you a notification to purchase more. During the setup of your Build, you need to define the costs associated with each assembly material. When a product is manufactured, Quickbooks will automatically deduct the costs using this information. It’s nearly impossible to accurately determine the exact cost for every item that comes off the assembly line, but you can estimate it using previous figures.

If you happen to create a build when there’s not enough assembly items in your inventory to complete the request, Quickbooks gives you the option to set these as ‘Pending.’ All of the information and details associated with the build are locked into place until your assembly material items are replenished. When the build successfully completes, go back into your Quickbooks account to change it from pending to final.