and now we will learn how to input and manage the items list
what is the items list an item is something that you would list in the body of an estimate invoice
or sales receipt it represents some service or product that you sell to your customer each item
is connected to an income account as part of your chart of accounts each time the item is placed on
an invoice the income account for that item goes up for example let's imagine that we charge for
a service called steam cleaning we want all the income from this service steam cleaning
to accumulate in the account called income from heating repair when we put it on the items list
we will connect it to the income account when we put it on an invoice or receipt the income account
automatically goes up so in other words this is the process of tracking our income now this is
the complete items list that you will have in the files that you will use for this course and in the
file for the video that follows this video these items are here and they're already set up but our
first example will be steam cleaning we want to put an item of the items list called steam
cleaning and we want to connect that item to the account in the chart of accounts called income
from heating repair this way when we put the item steam cleaning on it invoice the computer knows
that the account called income from heating repair is the account that will go up so let's record an
invoice after we put this item on the items list how do we open the items list very simple from the
main menu click list item list now all of these list windows are controlled by the bottom left
button the bottom left button controls the list click item and scroll to the top and click new
now we're in the new item window now in this case we will click service because that's the type of
item the contractors usually use now for the item name let's just double check here steam-cleaning
that's the name of the item as it shows up on the invoice receipt or estimate steam-cleaning
now which account will leave the raped length so that you can make it different each invoice
or each estimate and you could put whatever rate you want from job to job but which account and the
chart of accounts should automatically change when you put steam-cleaning on an invoice or a
sale receipt when we click for your list in the chart of accounts we choose income from heating
repair and now we have all the information we need on the items list we click OK and this is
what one item on the items list would look like your complete items list would look like this if
you put in the rest of the items that we will use in this course so when this video is over
you can practice putting in or editing the rest of this list but let's continue with our actual
example let's imagine on January 1 2017 we made an invoice for customer Roxie now Roxie is not
yet on the customer list so another thing you will learn from this video is to add a customer what we
call on-the-fly that means add the customer at the moment you make the transaction and you can
always come back later to the customers records to put in all their other information like address
phone number and so on and of course we're going to charge her five hundred dollars for the steam
cleaning service so let's see how to enter it we can open the invoice window from the shortcut that
we made earlier and of course we're going to put the date January 1 of 20:17 now the only item on
the items actually we should put the customer first and we add the customer on-the-fly notice
there are no customers on the customer list but we can click add new and put Roxie and click OK
now we can click directly under the word item code to bring the item arrow click once on the
arrow and you can see you get the full list from the pulldown but at this moment there's only one
item on the list steam-cleaning and of course we can put the money amount 500 in the amount field
now of course in a real situation we would put very much more information on the invoice but if
we click Save and close right now we can see the results in the trial balance income from
heating repair shows up as the first account that ever has a balance in this file for five
hundred dollars because we earned five hundred dollars from income from heating repair because
the item steam-cleaning are accumulates income in this account income from heating repair and
of course accounts receivable goes up because that represents what customers owe you and of
course if you made an invoice the customers owe you the money so that's the idea of items
and the items list and that's how it relates to using QuickBooks and getting your results