QB QuickItem

QuickItem is a tool that's primary goal is to simplify the process of setting up inventory in Quickbooks.  QuickItem automatically categorizes all similar items and can auto generate items that may have similarities, but with only a few distinct differences such as color or shape.For an example, if a store sells Bikes and Tricycles and would like to keep track of inventory in 10 different colors, normally the person responsible for entering these items will have to enter the information 10 times for the Bikes and 10 times for the Tricycles.  With QuickItem, two Master items, 'Bike' and 'Tricycle', can be created and the part numbers with color information can be automatically generated, significantly reducing the time required to create all desired items.All generated items will be categorized under the Master product in Quickbook's inventory view, so that when entering a portion of the part number, the category information for that specific product automatically pops up.In order to efficiently use QuickItem, it must be set up properly to work with the distinct information that makes up the product.  Going back to the previous example of Bikes and Tricycles, in order to set up QuickItem to generate 10 distinct part numbers for the Master Part 'Bike' and 10 distinct part numbers for the Master Part 'Tricycle', the "color" distinction must be set up so that the required information can be generated.  This can be done by creating a new distinction called "Color" which either appends a string or a number to the end of the Master part number.  The Master Part number may be 'BIKE' and the "Color" distinction may append 'WH' to the end of the part number creating the item id 'BIKEWH'.  Distinctions also append information to the description of the Master product it generates, such as "White" in this example. 

You can create as many different distinctions for each Master part that you need.  Distinctions are global, which means if you have more than one Master product that may have the same distinction (eg color), you don't have to set up the distinction each time you create a new Master product.  Each portion of a distinction can also be disabled for a specific Master product.  EG, if you don't sell a specific product in 'red', you can un-check the 'color: red' distinction for that product.  Specific distinctions can increase or decrease the base price of the product by a dollar or percent amount.  EG, if colors are $5.00 higher than white, that is considered when generating the products.

The generated products are written to a comma seperated value (csv) file, which can be imported into Quickbooks through File->Utilities->Import.