QuickBooks Tips – 5 Reasons to Use QuickBooks Group Items – Part 1

QuickBooks provides you with a powerful, and time saving tool within your items list, which is often under utilized and often misunderstood — the QuickBooks Group Item.

5 Reasons To Use QuickBooks Group Items:

1. Creating and using Group Items is useful for quickly entering a group of individual items that you have already set up as single items in your Item List.
2. Group Items are versatile – you can choose to print – or – not to print the items within the group, meaning you can track more detail than your customer needs to see.
3. Group Items ensure that you don’t “leave something out” – which means lost dollars on your part.
4. Group Items speed up the creation of Estimates and Invoices – imagine being able to pull in 19 items with a single click of a mouse.
5. Group Items allow you to bridge the difference in units of measure used to buy and sell products or materials.

The following example deals with the CSI MasterFormat Cost Code section 03.20.00 for Concrete Reinforcing.

How to create a Group Item

In the QuickBooks Item list, you’ll want to have the individual items set up (03.21.00 through 03.24.00) as double-sided items.

Once these items are in place.

From the Item List, click the Item button at the bottom of the list window -> select New.  From the New Item window choose Group from the Type drop down menu.  In the Group Name/Number type in 02.20.00 Concrete Reinforcing, in the Item column select each of the individual components on the Concrete Reinforcing section.  I’ve even added an Subtotal and Overhead & Profit item to the group.  My group now contains a total of 10 line items.

IF you want your customer to see all 10 lines within the group, click into and place a check in the “Print items in group” option.  IF you do not want your customer to see all 10 line items, leave this option unchecked and they will see ONLY 03.20.00 Concrete Reinforcing, while YOU still see all the detail.

How to Use the Group Item After It’s Created

Open an Estimate or Invoice form, click into the Item Column, find the Group Item and enter you cost amounts (enter costs ONLY if you are using an Overhead & Profit item within the group).  As you enter the cost associated with each line item, QuickBooks calculates and updates the subtotal, overhead & profit (if the item is setup as a percentage), sales tax (if applicable), and Estimate total.

When you use the Item list for job costing (on vendor bills, checks, etc.) you would still job cost against the individual items in the item list.

Tomorrow,  in Part 2, find out how to use Group Items to bridge differences in units of measure.

Related Posts

• QuickBooks Tip – 5 Reasons To Use QuickBooks Group Items – Part 2
  Before QuickBooks had a Unit of Measure option - I think it was introduced with QuickBooks 2007 - we had to rely on QuickBooks group items to perform Unit of Measure calc...
• How to Set Up Timetracking – #QuickBooks Tip
  How to set up timetracking and use QuickBooks timesheets is a question that I see nearly every day on the Intuit Community forums. There are several ways in which you ca...
• QuickBooks Tip – Job Costing Starts With A Simple Item
  Job costing in QuickBooks starts with the Item List. When you tell this to most contractors they respond with “Items --- I don’t sell ITEMS --- what does Items have to d...
• Weekly Wrap-Up: News You Can Use 4/27-5/3/2012
  There is so much news and information floating around the web - it's difficult (at best) to keep up! I've added a Wordpress plug in that grabs information from my Twitter...
• Entering Bills or Checks in QuickBooks – Items vs. Expenses
  Your business spends money on a wide variety of things - employee payroll, payroll taxes, office supplies (such as paper and envelopes), utility bills, things that you pu...
• Weekly Wrap-Up: News You Can Use 4/20-4/26/2012
  There is so much news and information floating around the web - it's difficult (at best) to keep up! I've added a Wordpress plug in that grabs information from my Twitte...
• QuickBooks & Your Construction Business – What’s Your Gripe?
  We’ve talked with contractors who are frustrated with QuickBooks only to find that they aren’t utilizing many of the features that would provide them with the information...
• Learn To Use QuickBooks In Your Construction Business
  Learn to use QuickBooks in your construction business is a new support and training site provides answers and techniques that are not available in the QuickBooks® Help fi...
• QuickBooks Tip: How To Create a Summary Invoice for Customers
  This QuickBooks tip discusses how to create a summary invoice for a customer when you need to track details for job costing purposes....
• QuickBooks Tip: Prior Amount Totals for Invoicing from Estimates
  There are several ways of accounting for prior amounts invoiced when creating a new QuickBooks file and no two contractors will want the same level of detail....
• QuickBooks Tip – An Audit Trail for Accounts Receivable
  An "audit trail" for Accounts Receivable in QuickBooks is only one of the many complexities faced by government construction contractors. Learn various ways to get this ...
• QuickBooks Tip – Easy Access to Employee Payroll Forms
  Easy access to common employee payroll forms {I-9 and W-4} from the QuickBooks Employees menu -> Employee Forms....
• QuickBooks 2012 – Turning Off Annoying Pop-Up Messages & Ads
  How to turn off most annoying pop-up messages and ads in QuickBooks 2012, including the new Powered by Intuit logo that is printing on employee pay stubs....
• QuickBooks 2012 – Best Practices & Tips for Installing an Upgrade
  Installing a QuickBooks 2012 upgrade on a computer that already has an existing version in place. Windows Vista & 7 Standard User account. 3rd party applications....
• QuickBooks Tip – File Size & DB File Fragments What Do They Mean?
  The size of your QuickBooks file and the number of DB File Fragments determines the health of your QuickBooks company data file. YouTube video on how to create & restore...