Help with initial inventory - after the fact

Neither, I would not treat items that I do not normally keep in stock as stock items. Doing so adds an additional level of complexity as well as increase the file size, with no benefits. Perhaps I'm missing something. What is your reason for treating these items as if they were stock items?

I should not have said "I don't maintain a physical inventory." Actually, I don't maintain *much* physical inventory. There are actually two parts to my business: A brokerage part and a local service part. For the former, I mostly buy and sell, only rarely even seeing the products. However, from time to time I do buy overage when I get an especially good price. For the local service part of my business, I do stock about 35 part numbers. Basically, I sell from 3 accounts: Electronic components (broker side), Network Componets (local side), and Network Service (local side).

My initial question refers to my immediate need to record completed transactions, all, just by chance, from the broker side. I guess my thinking is to show inventory on all products, since I have inventory of some products. In a past life in a similar industry, I treated brokered items this way, even though I maintained a substantial physical inventory. When I had to purchase something from another vendor for a sale, I would receive the item into inventory against the PO, then pull it from inventory for the order. Although the item was just passing through, I treated it as inventory. In that case, at least, this simplified reporting.

I would be interested in hearing about alternative ways to set this up.

thanks, jm

Still not, in my view, a compelling reason. If you have parts on-hand that you'll use up in a relatively short time - say, less than a year - buy them under COGS, not inventory. You don't keep an inventory of office supplies (copy paper, paper-clips, etc.) for the reason that it's more trouble to keep track of them than it's worth.

Basic rule: Don't use a compute to maintain an "inventory" if there's a better way (i.e., "eyeball").

You say your former method simplified reporting; how so? When you sell something - a service or a part - QB will still keep track of your sales, even if the something is not part of your inventory.

I would set them up as non inventory items. Set one up as brokerage part and the other as service part

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