This section of the forum is for discussing the business and finance issues of the t-shirt industry. Which business structure to use (sole proprietor, LLC, S Corp, etc), how to handle billing, where to register your business and get the proper licensing, etc.
Does anyone have a good system for organizing their blank apparel items in Quickbooks?
We're a screen printing company that is allowing for clients to print on a variety of different items. We're just starting to learn Quickbooks and I can soo see our item list getting really out of control.
For instance, if we tell customers that we will print on Hanes style # 5170 then that's over 150 items in Quickbooks (28 colors, and 5-7 sizes in each color) I'm assuming that there is no way around having to create a gazillion items in our item list, but does anyone know of a "good" way to do this?
Currently our item list is set up with sub-items as follows:
T-Shirts:Hanes:5170 (Ash Grey) S
This gets us individual item names but it doesn't lend itself to data integrity and in general it just doesn't seem right.
On the other hand, if we separated things into more sub-items we'd have a bunch of sub-items listed as "S":
Soooo what's a good way to do this? Does anyone use their own model numbers? We toyed with creating descriptive sub-items like gender and fit to make it easier for us in a bunch of different ways. We are planning on using a Yahoo Store, does anyone how much does this will affect the "back end" of our store?
QuickBooks Point of Sale "POS" Pro system has an "item style" setup. This lets you create item variations simply, but is not offered in QuickBooks Pro, Premier or Enterprise. You would need to purchase "POS".
This will save tons of time initially and tons of time when adding/taking inventories. FYI-This feature is not in the POS Basic only the Pro version.
From the link below...
"Imagine that you carry 20 different shoe lines, all of which tend to have the same or similar size and color combinations. Having to re-enter the same sizes and colors for every shoe you carry would quickly become tedious.
Enter the style template. A style template is a user-defined array of item attributes: sizes, colors, patterns, material, etc., that can be used repeatedly to quickly add a style to inventory. Each template can be used for an unlimited number of styles." POS: Item Styles: Overview
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Last edited by PrintForProfit; June 26th, 2008 at 07:09 AM.
As someone who has sold POS systems for years, I can tell you there are many systems better than the one tied to QB.
IN fact, there is one I used to sell for about $ 800 that is now free.
And it has what you need. It's called a "matrix" or "grid". Think of it as a spreadsheet with sizes down the rows and colors across the columns. This is how salepeople take orders for soft goods, either on the phone, at shows or in your place of business. It's how they think. Bath linens or tee shirts, it's how to track soft goods.
Anyhow, this program has a built in matrix setup, (they call it a template) where you enter 5170 one time and then apply the sizes and colors and when you go to sell a 5170 you are prompted for the size and color.
And it will export your daily sales to QB if you want. I always dicouraged this, as it's just a simple "cash receipt" entry per day to enter your sales into QB, but the export is available if you want to use it. That is basically how the QB POS add-on works, it's really not QB, but an add-on POS system they chose to use.
Thanks guys! These programs totally can save me from importing my item lists from excel. I'm going to get more info on matrices and how they can help with general item organization and scalability and I'll be back.
As you have already figured out, until you get to the POS versions of Quickbooks, their idea of managing inventory sucks to put it 'politely'
Since I was moving from an Access Database over to Quickbooks, I created a report that generated all the combinations of style, size and color and exported them from Access into an Excel spreadsheet. Then I used the custom import to bring them all into Quickbooks. I end up with a ton of items in my list but it was easier to do them all up front then to try to add them by hand later.
Now imagine trying to do this where you keep track of things by design, style, color and size
I know a Promotional Products Company that uses this software... I don't know all the details. I do know that the company has been listed as a top ten company in AZ and they generate 1mil in revenue annually.
I guess if it helps them I'm sure it's worth looking into.
Help managing item lists in Quickbooks 
