What is an Assembly Item in Quickbooks?
When using Quickbooks to keep track of your small business accounting, you may come across something called an assembly item. Based on the name alone, it’s difficult to tell what exactly an assembly item is, let alone how it’s used. So, today we’re going to take a closer look at this feature, revealing everything you need to know about assembly items in Quickbooks.
An assembly item is essentially a type of line item used when creating a sales form. They combine existing inventory part items and assembly items into a single convenient item.
To create an assembly item, you’ll need to perform two separate steps. First and foremost, you must define the Bill of Materials, which specifies the components used to make the assembly item. Next, you’ll need to build a quantity of assembly items in Quickbooks so the software can deduct the components from your inventory while also adding new quantities of the respective assembled item.
Keep in mind that once you build an assembly item, the respective components will be removed from your inventory as separate parts, simply because they are now part of a new inventory item, which is known as an inventory assembly. After defining your assembly items, Quickbooks will automatically move them to your inventory via building them. Assembly builds are required to keep the inventory quantities correct. If the items weren’t moved, the inventory quantities would be wrong. When an assembly item is built in Quickbooks, the inventory parts and assembly items (known as subassemblies) are deducted from the inventory; thus, the quantity of the assembly item increases.
Some business owners and accountants assume that group items and inventory assembly items are the same. While they both allow you to record a group of items as a single entry, there are some stark differences between the two that shouldn’t go unnoticed. A group item, for instance, cannot be included in another group item or in an inventory assembly item, while an inventory assembly item can be included in other inventory assembly items and group items.
You also don’t have to option to run reports for specific group items. With inventory assembly items, however, you can build reports. These are just a few of the many differences between group items and assembly items.
Did this give you a better understanding of assembly items? Let us know in the comments section below!