What If: I Need to Change Inventory Quantities in QBO?

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General Ledger

A reader wrote in to ask if it's possible to adjust inventory quantities in QuickBooks Online, and how to go about doing it. 

QuickBooks Online ‘Plus’ is the only version of QBO that allows you to track inventory items. As such, it's the only version of QBO that allows you to adjust inventory quantities.

You might indeed determine that your inventory count in QBO is off for some reason. Perhaps you have more of an item, or perhaps you have less of an item. QBO ‘Plus’ allows you to adjust the item’s quantity to match what you actually have in stock. 

Of course, you should confirm the actual quantity you have before making changes in the quantities reflected in QBO.

To make adjustments follow these six steps:

1. Click the Gear icon, then select Products and Services:

2. Select the inventory item you want to adjust by clicking on the arrow next to the Edit button at the right end of the row for that inventory item. QBO will open the item drop-down menu:

3. When the drop-down menu opens, select Adjust quantity (as shown in the close up view below):

4. Click in the New Qty box and enter the correct quantity you have in stock (as shown in the close up view below). For example, the Qty on Hand column shows you have 10 Deluxe Riding Law Mowers, but you discover you actually have three more than QBO reports. Adjust the quantity by entering 13 in the New Qty column:

Once QBO is updated the quantity in stock will be adjusted and the quantity of the change (in this case three) will be reflected in the Change in QTY box (as shown in the illustration below Step 5).

5. Returning to the Inventory Quantity Adjustment window, verify that the Adjustment Date and Inventory adjustment account are correct. QBO sets up a default account for this purpose, but you select a different account if appropriate:

6. When you’ve finished with your adjustment, click Save and send.

That’s really all there is to it. Pretty simple, right? Of course, if you have a lot of inventory items to adjust, you might want to use the "batch actions" feature. But that's an entirely different article for another day.