How to Set Up Products and Services in QuickBooks Online

Welcome to the Fit Small Business QuickBooks Online training course! In this lesson, we’re going to cover how to set up products and services in QuickBooks Online.

You can follow along on your own QuickBooks Online account. If you don't have one already, click here to sign up for a free 30-day trial and follow along below.

To complete this lesson, you can either watch the video below, read through the step-by-step instructions, or do both. Let’s begin!

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Why is it Important to Set Up Product and Services?

It is important to set up products and services if you plan to provide your customers with an invoice or a sales receipt for products or services that you sold to them.  These settings determine how much information is included on all invoices and sales receipts that you create in QuickBooks.

How to Set Up Products and Services

Below are the step-by-step instructions on how to set up product and services in QuickBooks Online:

Product and Services determines what information appears on sales forms when you invoice your customers for products and/or services sold.

As you can see, there are a total of four fields that we can edit here.  To edit a field, just click on the pencil icon in the upper right portion of the screen.  

Below you will find a brief description of each feature along with how we would set this up for our fictitious company, Paul’s Plumbing:

1. Show product/service column – this feature will add a Product/Service column on sales forms so you can choose from a list of products and services when creating an invoice or sales receipt for a customer.  This will allow the customer to see the details of what you are billing them for. (i.e. Plumbing services)

Example: Paul provides a variety of different types of plumbing services from your normal residential toilet clog to a brand new restaurant that requires commercial kitchen sinks and the works. He needs to provide as much detail as possible when he creates an estimate for a customer whose business he is trying to get or when he invoices a customer for work that has already  been completed.  This helps Paul to make sure that he has billed his customer for everything that the job entails.  From the customer perspective, it should be clear what work they are being billed for.

  2. Show SKU column – An SKU is a store or catalog product code, also known as a barcode that is used for inventory tracking purposes.  This feature will add a column for SKU/barcode to all      sales forms.  If you do not track inventory by SKU then you can leave this feature off.

  3. Track quantity and price/rate – this is only applicable for businesses that track inventory.  This feature will add Quantity and Rate fields to all sales forms.

Example:  Since Paul does track inventory for the parts that he uses on most jobs like faucets and toilets we will turn this feature on.

  4. Track inventory quantity on-hand – this feature is only applicable to businesses that need to keep track of inventory even if you do not invoice your customers.   By turning this feature on,  QuickBooks will track available stock for each product you sell and its related inventory costs.

Wrap Up

That wraps up the lesson on setting up products and services. The next lesson in our QuickBooks Online Training Course will be How to Set Up Messages. In this lesson, we will walk you through how to create custom messages for your customers on invoices and sales receipts.

To access this lesson or any of the others in the series, click here. 

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