Accounting for stock/inventory costs is important to help you understand whether your retail business is making money. You'll need to understand how much your stock costs you, and how much your inventory is worth.

It is essential that you use Retail POS's stock order feature when adding new product inventory. If you do not, your product costs will be incorrect. To sync stock orders, you also need to have a QuickBooks Essentials plan or higher.

When you're processing your stock orders through Retail POS, you'll need to send these to QuickBooks Online to create an accounts payable invoice in QuickBooks Online. Unlike the rest of the integration, this does not happen automatically.

To post a received stock order to QuickBooks Online:

1. Navigate to the Stock Control page in Retail POS.
2. Filter the stock order page by Received orders.
3. Click Send to QuickBooks Online to create the invoice in QuickBooks Online.
4. You can now click the View on QuickBooks Online button to load the invoice in QuickBooks Online.
   

When you pay your invoice, you can match the outgoing payment transaction in your bank feed to the accounts payable invoice in QuickBooks Online.

The information sent to QuickBooks Online is:

• Date the order is fully received in QuickBooks Online.
• Supplier name.
• Products received.
• Quantity received.
• Order name and Supplier Invoice Number is sent to the reference field in QuickBooks Online.
• Supply cost exclusive of tax. Tax is applied by QuickBooks Online according to your settings.

  For retailers in the US and Canada, QuickBooks Online features automated sales tax and will calculate the correct tax rate based on customer tax exempt status, location, and type of product sold.

• Shipping, duty fees, and discount as individual line items (only if you track inventory in QuickBooks Online).
• The due date on the bill will be based on the supplier's terms in QuickBooks Online. You can update the supplier's terms in QuickBooks Online if you'd like to change this.

To record line items in different expense accounts, customize their settings by adjusting your QuickBooks Online account mappings.

Stock Adjustments: breakage, wastage, shrinkage and inventory counts

It is important to track adjustments to your stock levels, whether they are damaged or broken stock, wastage (like food at the end of the day), or shrinkage (stolen items). Sometimes, you'll know about the loss when it happens (damaged stock, wastage), and other times, you might not realize until you do an inventory count.

All of these different types of adjustments can be recorded in Retail POS using the Inventory Count feature.

Stock adjustments, including inventory counts, are not able to be directly sent to QuickBooks Online. You'll need to complete a manual journal in QuickBooks Online to account for these.