Volume Pricing in QuickBooks

Q My question has to do with inventory vs non-inventory items. For example, if I had a t-shirt company, and to simplify things, let us just assume that all the t-shirts are the same size and same color. I sell these t-shirts in boxes of 500, 250, 100, 50, 25, and as a single t-shirt. The price goes down when the quantity bought goes up. How do I track the inventory is my question. The blog example states that I should do all this as volume pricing and set the items as non-inventory, however, how do I track the amount of t-shirts I have on hand. I receive these shirts by the thousands and I package them as they are sold, priced accordingly to the quantity of the order. I would love to be able to know how many t-shirts I have at all times, as well as being able to price the t-shirts accordingly upon receiving the order and the knowledge of the amount of quantity of the order.

A I agree that you want to use the inventory functionality to keep track of what you have on hand, re-order points, etc. so using non-inventory items does not seem to make sense to me either. In your example, you said assume that all the t-shirts are the same size and color, but I am assuming that is not the case in your business. My suggestion would be to use a custom field which will show on the sales order, invoice, etc. but does not print which includes the pricing. If the price breaks are always based on the same quantity, you could put the price per each separated by a comma, dash, etc. so you know that the first price is for the 500 piece order, the second price is for the 250 piece order, etc. With this method, as you review the pricing for that item, you will simply override the per piece price on the sales transaction.

For a more robust inventory solution, you might consider an inventory add-on from www.marketplace.intuit.com. For one suggestion: While not specifically designed for the apparel industry (since it is not set up to handle a matrix type item so the size and color results in individual items like there is in QuickBooks) Fishbowl Inventory does handle volume pricing as you have described as well as providing a much more robust feature set.

The decision will really depend on what makes the most sense for the business.