 Modifying, Hiding and Deleting Quickbooks Item

  

Modifying Items

You can change information about an item even if you’ve already used the item in transactions. The changes you make don’t affect existing transactions, but when you create new transactions using the item, QuickBooks grabs the updated information to fill in fields.

In the Item List window (click Items & Services in the QuickBooks Home page to open it), double-click the item you want to edit. QuickBooks opens the Edit Item dialog box. Simply make the changes you want and then click OK. If you want to modify several items at once, use the Add/Edit Multiple List Entries feature  instead.

Be particularly attentive if you decide to change the Type field. You can change only Non-inventory Part or Other Charge items to other item types, and they can morph into only certain item types: Service, Non-inventory Part, Other Charge, Inventory Part, or Inventory Assembly (this last type is available only in QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise). If you conclude from this that you can’t change a Non-inventory Part item back once you change it to an Inventory part, you’re absolutely correct. To prevent type-change disasters, back up your QuickBooks file  before switching item typesH ╉Hiding and Deleting Items Figure 5-14:╇ Before you can create a sales tax group, you first need to create each of the Sales Tax items that you plan to include. After you type the name or number of the sales tax group and a description, click the Tax Item drop-down list to choose one of the individual Sales Tax items to include in the group. QuickBooks fills in the rate, tax agency, and description from the Sales Tax item. UP TO SPEED

Hiding and Deleting Items

 Deleting items and hiding them are two totally different actions, although the visible result is the same—QuickBooks doesn’t display the items in the Item List window or item drop-down lists. The only time you’ll delete an item is when you create it by mistake and want to eliminate it permanently from the Item List. As you might discover when you attempt to delete an item, you can only delete an item if you’ve never used it in a transaction.

Hiding items doesn’t have the same restrictions as deleting them, and offers a couple of advantages to boot. First, when you hide items, they don’t appear in your Item List, which prevents you from selecting them accidentally. And unlike deleting, hiding is reversible: You can switch items back to active status if you start selling them again. Suppose you hid the item for bell-bottom hip-huggers in 1974. Decades later, when ’70s retro becomes cool again, you can reactivate the item and use it on sales forms. (Of course, you’ll probably want to edit the cost and sales price to reflect today’s higher prices.)

Hiding Items

 As mentioned above, if you’ve sold an item in the past, then the only way to remove it from the Item List is to hide it. Hiding items means that your Item List shows only the items you currently use, so you’ll scroll less to find the items you want and you’re less likely to pick the wrong item by mistake. If you start selling an item again, you can reactivate it so that it appears on the Item List once more. If you’re wondering how you make an item reappear if it isn’t visible, here’s a guide to hiding and reactivating items in your Item List:

• Hide an item. In the Item List, right-click the item and choose Make Item Inactive from the shortcut menu. The item disappears from the list.

• View all items, active or inactive. At the bottom of the Item List window, turn on the “Include inactive” checkbox. QuickBooks displays a column with an X as its heading and shows an X in that column for every inactive item in the list. (The “Include inactive” checkbox is grayed out when all the items are active.)

• Reactivate an item. First, turn on the “Include inactive” checkbox to display all items. Then, to reactivate a hidden item, click the X next to its name. When you click the X next to a parent item, QuickBooks opens the Activate Group dialog box. If you want to reactivate all the subitems as well as the parent, click Yes. Otherwise, click No.

If you find that you’re constantly hiding items you no longer sell, your item list might be too specific for your constantly changing product list. For example, if you create 100 items for the clothes that are fashionable for teenagers in May, those items will be obsolete by June. So consider creating more generic items, such as pants, shorts, t-shirts, and bathing suits. You can then reuse these items season after season, year after year, without worrying about running out of room on the Item List, which is limited to 14,500 entries.

Tip: To see how many items you have, press F2 to open the Product Information window. Then, head to the List Information section on the right side of the window and look for Total Items.

Deleting Items

If you erroneously create an item and catch your mistake immediately, deleting the offender is no sweat. Use any one of these methods to delete an item:

• In the Item List window, select the item you want to delete and then press Ctrl+D.   chapter 5: setting up invoice items 127 ╉Hiding and Deleting Items

• In the Item List window, right-click the item you want to delete and then choose Delete Item on the shortcut menu.

• In the Item List window, select the item, and then head to the main QuickBooks menu bar and choose Edit➝Delete Item.

• At the bottom of the Item List window, click Item➝Delete Item.

If you try to delete an item that’s used in even one transaction, QuickBooks warns you that you can’t delete it. Say you created an item by mistake and then compounded the problem by inadvertently adding the item to an invoice. When you realize your error and try to delete the item, QuickBooks refuses to oblige. If you used the item in one or two recent transactions, you can find those transactions and replace the item pretty easily: Open the Item List by choosing Lists➝Item List. Then rightclick the item and choose QuickReport on the shortcut menu, and QuickBooks displays a report with all the transactions using that item. When you’ve removed the item from all transactions, use one of the methods above to delete it.

 If you added the erroneous item to a bunch of transactions, it’s easier to find the transactions with the “Sales by Item Detail” report, which includes a heading for each item you sell, and groups transactions underneath each heading. If you sell lots of items, you probably want the report to show the transactions only for the item you want to delete. Here’s how you modify the “Sales by Item Detail” report and then edit the transactions:

1. To create a “Sales by Item Detail” report, choose Reports➝Sales➝“Sales by Item Detail”. QuickBooks opens the “Sales by Item Detail” report in its own window.

2. To modify the report, in the report window’s menu bar, click Modify Report. QuickBooks opens the “Modify Report: Sales by Item Detail” dialog box. To produce a report with transactions for one item, modify the date range and filter the report based on the item’s name, as shown in Figure 5-15.

Figure 5-15:╇ To filter the report by an item’s name, click the Filters tab. On that tab, in the Filter list, choose Item. Then, in the Item drop-down list, click the downward-pointing arrow and then select the item you want to delete. QuickBooks displays the changes to the report in the Current Filter Choices section. Give these settings the onceover, and if they look correct, click OK to revise the report.

   ╉Hiding and Deleting Items

If you know when you first used the item in a transaction, on the Filters tab, select Date from the Filter menu and then type or click that date in the From box. QuickBooks sets the date in the To box to today’s date, which is perfect for this situation. Alternatively, in the Date drop-down list, choose a predefined date range, such as “This Fiscal Year-to-date”. When everything looks good, click OK to update the report.

3. To edit a transaction to remove an item, in the “Sales by Item Detail” report window, double-click the transaction.

Based on the type of transaction you double-click, QuickBooks opens the corresponding dialog box or window. For example, if you double-click an invoice, QuickBooks opens the Create Invoices window and displays the invoice you chose. In the Create Invoices window, in the Item column, click the cell containing the item you want to delete, click the downward-pointing arrow in the cell, and then choose the replacement item from the Item drop-down list.

4. To save the transaction with the revised item, click Save & Close.

You’ll know that you’ve successfully eliminated the item from all sales transactions when the report in the “Sales by Item Detail” window shows no transactions.

Tip: To be sure that you’ve removed all links to the item, in the menu bar at the top of the report window, click Refresh to update the report based on the current data in your QuickBooks file.

5. Finally, back in the Item List window, select the item you want to delete and then press Ctrl+D. In the Delete Item message box, click Yes to confirm that you want to get rid of the item. The item disappears from your Item List for good.

6. To close the report window, click the X button at the upper-right. The item is gone and you’re ready to get back to work.