How do you estimate/invoice for one-off's (special orders)?

[DocGreen]

I don't really carry much of anything as far as inventory goes... so when I estimate/invoice a customer that requires parts, what's the best way to go about it for record keeping purposes. As I see it, there are really only 2 ways of going about it.

1. Any time you estimate or bill a customer for an ordered item, add that item to the inventory along with the item details (description, price, supplier part number, etc). This would make sense if it's something that you order more than once... but what about when it's just a one-time deal and you don't expect to re-order that same item in the foreseeable future?

2. Create a "parts" item in the inventory, and modify the details (description, price, etc) every time you add it to an estimate/invoice. This way would prevent your inventory from becoming cluttered with a bunch of entries that you'll never use again... but is it sufficient for record-keeping purposes? I do suppose that, at least in mHelpDesk's reports, it would give you an accurate representation of the percentage of sales that are ordered parts.


What's everyone's thoughts on this? What do you guys do to keep things making sense?

 

[Kitten Kong]

Hey doc.,

I'm not sure how it works in mhd, but in pcrt, there is a item, where we can add the one off's, or non inventoried items. Here we simply put the sale price and the cost price.

This will then be added to our reports.

If mhd doesn't have this feature, then personally I would still add it to my inventory, and amend the costings / sale price on a as and when basis. I know it's a little more work involved, but to keep things all in check, I think its the way to go.

 

[TenYardFight]

Would generic inventory items called "Misc Hardware" and "Misc Software" work?

 

[Maniaman]

We have a few generic items in our register that are set up as Non-Inventory items. "Custom Ordered Parts" "Hard Drive" "RAM" "Custom Used Parts" etc. We add that item and then adjust the price accordingly.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Every part gets a part number. Had too many situations of part failure at 11 months and 15 days. Need to be able to find the part and pull up it's history so I can replace it AND get warranty extended to me. It is a PITA but Quickbooks does let you mark items as special order and deactivate parts so that they don't show up on every list. That and categories make searching the item list easier.

 

[DocGreen]

TenYard & Maniaman: That's pretty much how I'm thinking of doing it. I can see the benefit of specifying new/used parts or part category like RAM/HDD, etc.

Every part gets a part number. Had too many situations of part failure at 11 months and 15 days. Need to be able to find the part and pull up it's history so I can replace it AND get warranty extended to me. It is a PITA but Quickbooks does let you mark items as special order and deactivate parts so that they don't show up on every list. That and categories make searching the item list easier.

Is that your only reason for doing so? I still maintain paper files for most customers that way I can keep hard copies of things like order receipts, warranty info, etc... if I didn't keep those files I could see the need to record more detailed info about orders in Quickbooks /mHD.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I maintain paper files too but you have to know what to find. If you sold them a scanner that you don't normally stock and it dies inside of the warranty then you first have to find the client's invoice so that you can figure out the part number you assigned it. Then you have to check that part number and find out the vendor you bought it from and find THAT invoice so that you can RMA your dead scanner and get the client a new one.

If I was larger scale I'd track by serial number. The company I use to work for before going independent did that. But they custom built there PCs so it was critical to be able to track and find that info. They had an access DB that tracked serial number and matched it to vendor and invoice date and number. Bad part comes back and all you had to do is a search on the barcoded number. If the part didn't have a barcode on it one was assigned to it. Made RMA much easier.

 

[drnick5]

We keep some common items in stock (Various RAM sticks, a power supply or 2, and a few hard drives) but all other stuff (laptop Ac adaptors, batteries, keyboards, etc.) are all special ordered.

When we make the invoice in quickbooks we just use a "hardware custom" field and enter in the price, we don't have any sort of inventory tracking right now. We are moving to mHelpdesk shortly and are going to use its Inventory tracker

 

[DocGreen]

We keep some common items in stock (Various RAM sticks, a power supply or 2, and a few hard drives) but all other stuff (laptop Ac adaptors, batteries, keyboards, etc.) are all special ordered.

When we make the invoice in quickbooks we just use a "hardware custom" field and enter in the price, we don't have any sort of inventory tracking right now. We are moving to mHelpdesk shortly and are going to use its Inventory tracker

Does your version of Quickbooks not have this already? Mine did, and it was actually more feature-rich than mHelpDesk's.

 

[drnick5]

Does your version of Quickbooks not have this already? Mine did, and it was actually more feature-rich than mHelpDesk's.

Yes it does have inventory tracking but we don't use it. Part of the issue is we only have 1 quickbooks license so its not always available for one of the techs to jump in and edit inventory. With mhelpdesk i'm hoping we can utilize it better

 

[DocGreen]

Ah, I see your point there. I'm the only one who accesses my inventory, So I didn't have that issue.

One thing you'll be able to avoid that I didn't was having inventory transfer from QB to MHD in funky ways. I'd setup a custom "short description" field in my QB inventory so on the paperwork it showed "Virus Removal" instead of my inventory numbering system (for example, 104-022). When I imported everything, my custom field was discarded so now my MHD inventory is really confusing. Once I go through and rename all my items it'll be fine though... just a lot of initial work.

 

[pceinc]

We use the item code 50-OEM in Quickbooks. We have several sub-item codes such as 50-PRINTER, 50-NOTEBOOK, 50-CABLE, 50-NETWORK to separate out different one off items. This item is type "non-inventory" which means the item is posted to COGS when purchased instead of when sold which is the opposite of an "inventory item". The reason is we don't track these inventory items since they are typically ordered special for a repair or job.
When we invoice the part, we simply type in the description on the invoice.
This does not provide granular reporting of individual items sold since it's one item code for many different item costs.