How does QB handle Assemblies with multiple part options?

[BigMike]

Hello again community,

I am nearing the completion of entering all of my businesses products into QB Enterprise 7.0.

One very obvious problem I have encountered (and have searched the forums on this) is what do I do when I have an inventory assembly that has multiple options per part?

For instance, lets say I have ONE inventory assembly for a bouquet of flowers that consists of the following:

1-vase
2-ribbons
6-roses

Now what do I do if I want to have 3 of the roses yellow and the other 3 red? Or what if I want each rose to be a unique color? Am I supposed to make 6 different inventory assemblies in order to control the inventory quanitiy? What if I have 20 ribbon colors and customers like to mix them?

To be more specific, I have multiple inventory assemblies that contain 3 or 4 different inventory parts that themselves can be sold with the assembly in 4 or 5 different configurations. If I had to setup inventory assemblies for every possible configuration, I would have 20+ assemblies for the same kit I sell!

Am I to expect my employees to hunt through a long drop-down list of Item Codes that only differ by color, size, and length, yet they are of the same overall kit?

Help!

[lisa_mn]

QB can't do options on a BOM. You would need something more robust like Fishbowl inventory.

Or, you could just track your roses and ribbon generically - not keeping track of specific colors and you could put the color in a custom field.

[BigMike]

Ok,

Apparently we are so mis-informed about Quickbooks this is becoming rediculous.

Now we have to purchase secondary software? Fishbowl?! What is going on...

A breif check on the Fishbowl website, and one of the first things I find is "there are many drawbacks to using QB for inventory control."

Then why the heck did we even spend the thousands of dollars upgrading to the Enterprise edition when we can't even use it for our business?

...Unbelievable

[lisa_mn]

I learned long ago to test software myself to be sure of the features that the sales people and literature brag about. I'm sorry you're finding so many shortcomings with QB, but you must not have researched it very carefully before buying.

QB does many things, including basic inventory tracking, very well, but it's definitely not for everybody.