How to Track Your Clothing Inventory by Size and Color Product Matrix in QuickBooks
Published 12/19/2011 | 
However, style grids are only available in the Pro version of QuickBooks POS. They are not available in any version of QuickBooks financial, including Enterprise. However, QuickBooks POS will work fine with QuickBooks Premier 2010.
This article is provided for informational purposes and is not intended to be construed as legal, accounting, or other professional advice. For further information, please consult appropriate professional advice from your attorney and certified public accountant.
Written by +Ruth Perryman, CMA, CFE, CFM, MBA
Ruth is the president of The QB Specialists, an Intuit Premier Reseller that offers huge savings and expert advice on QuickBooks POS and QuickBooks Enterprise. She is an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and a member of Intuit’s Trainer/Writer Network. She is also certified in QuickBooks POS and QuickBooks Enterprise and has provided expert QuickBooks help to thousands of businesses all over the world since 1996.
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I am a manufacturer / wholesaler / retailer. I make shoes, and sell them to stores + sell them retail. I have been using quickbooks premier manufacturing & wholesale, but I would like to upgrade to POS pro in order to help integrate the retail portion of the business.
Each shoe style has 3 attributes: Size (length), width, color. Will POS Pro allow for more than 2 attributes in the grid?
Also, can I use the POS system to scan finished goods into inventory? We are a small business, operating in one location, so production & sales all happen in the same location.
Hi David,
You can only have two attributes, but width is really part of size once the shoe has been manufactured (10D, 10E, 10EE, etc.)
You can scan your inventory onto receiving vouchers as long as you’ve printed labels for them. If you don’t want to label your shoes, you can print labels and store them in a notebook.
Ruth
hi
i am going to open a small uniform store.can i use quickbooks pro as pos ?i just wana give receipt to the customers for every purchase and track the inventory(not important).can i print receipt?i wan a process credit/debit card too.how can i do that?do i need to start any account with any bank.pls reply
rgrds
sherin
Hi Sherin,
Unfortunately, QuickBooks is not a POS system.
You can’t use a receipt printer with QuickBooks, only QuickBooks POS. You could print receipts through your regular printer, but retail store customers don’t normally like receipts that big.
You can process credit cards with either QuickBooks or QuickBooks POS, but you need a QuickBooks merchant account. An account with your bank won’t work with the software, but you could process your credit cards outside QuickBooks and manually enter the payments in QuickBooks.
The credit card swiper will work with both QuickBooks and QuickBooks POS. You can accept debit cards with a credit card logo on them (most have them these days) with the credit card swiper but it’ll be processed as a credit card. If you want the lower debit card fees, you’ll need a pinpad so your customers can enter their 4 digit PIN. Unfortunately the pinpad only works with QuickBooks POS.
Ruth
Hi Ruth,
So as I understand it, in QB, if we want to add inventory of apparel, we have to create an item for each size and color. That means we have to invoice this way as well which is not how customers like to see their invoices. What is the solution for apparel wholesalers?
Thank you.
Hi June,
If you want to track inventory by color/size, any program is going to require you to have separate items for each combination that you use on your purchase and sales documents. There’s no other way to increase/decrease inventory for each size/color combination.
I don’t know why your customers wouldn’t want to see the color/size of their purchase, particularly if they are wholesalers, but you can create group items to control what’s shown on the receipt. For more info, search Help for group items.
Ruth
I am trying to get my website in 3dcart to understand inventory and sizes in Quickbooks Pro 2010. Is the only way to do this, to change one style # into 12 with each size attached? like: 247small, 247medium, etc?
Hi Kat,
QuickBooks Point of Sale Pro has style grids, but unfortunately QuickBooks financial doesn’t. So, yes, you’ll need to create an inventory item for each combination.
Ruth
Hi Ruth,
Our company currently has quickbooks premiur manufacturing and distribution 2009, and we are interested in upgrading to the enterprise solution system. Our only problem is that we need to add a grid to our invoice so we can list different shoe sizes and jeans sizes (length and width). I spoke to a number of Quickbooks specilists and none of them knew if this was possible. How can we do this?
Thanks,
Shayna Estulin
Hi Shayna,
I’m so sorry for the bad news, but QuickBooks Enterprise doesn’t have style grids either. Only QuickBooks Point of Sale Pro (the most expensive version) does. However, if you only need 1-2 users it’s actually less expensive than QuickBooks Enterprise.
Ruth