Sometimes you need the vendor item number on your item screen and need to be able to see it when selecting items to reorder. Up until now most recommendations were to put it in either the vendor number on the item screen, or in a custom field. Those suggestions work.

This one is a little different.

Issue: I use a company item number, and a vendor reorder number. I do not want my customer to see the vendor order number, but I do want them to see my item number. The problem I have is that my g/f insists on the vendor initials being part of the company item number. So if the vendor was called “Clothing for You” and she bought a blouse, her item number would be B-88 CFY, where 88 was the 88th blouse she stocked and CFY was the initials of the vendor.

Since the Item list on the sales order comes up with her item number, B-88 CFY, and she doesn’t want to see that on the sales document, that poses a problem.

So the work around I came up with is to set the item list column heading to show the purchase description (it defaults to the sales description) and in the purchase description block I enter the vendor item number followed by her description of the blouse.

Then in the sales description I enter her company item number followed by the description of the blouse.

On the sales document the company item number shows in the description field. She prints it out, and heads out to the warehouse to pull the 88th blouse in the rack. The customer also sees her company item number and if there is a problem the customer can refer to that number. Returns make it easy since the item number is right there too.

On a PO the purchase description shows in the description block making it easy to know what vendor item number to re-order.

Someone is going to ask how we handle sizes. Since QB does not do matrix inventory (called attributes sometimes) we have a work around for this too. She has a print out of the inventory list that I exported to excel. In excel I added columns and lines for the sizes. She notes on the paper what sizes are in stock, and as she sells a large (as an example) she lowers the count for item B-88/large on the print out.

Cumbersome – but it works for now. At some point the limitations of QuickBooks will force her to change to a software package that is more capable and up to date with the realities of store inventory management.

And when that happens I will change software too (since we will share the cost, her business and mine), so this blog will go away and a new one will replace it.