A new feature in the 2009 version of MS Office Accounting Professional is the ability to gather cost of goods sold items into kits. Creating these kits makes preparing customer invoices a quick and easy task.
Part of your job as an arts or crafts business owner is to know how much it costs you to make a product so you can set a reasonable retail price and determine if your retail price is market appropriate. So, you should have all info you need to set up kits right at hand. Setting up kits in Microsoft Office Accounting 2009 takes a little extra effort in the beginning but is really worth it in the long run.
1. Set Up a Kit in Microsoft Office Accounting 2009 - Create a Kit
Select Vendors > New Item. Follow the prompts by selecting Kit as your Item Type and filling out all the mandatory and any needed non-mandatory fields on the Kit form. When naming your kit item be as descriptive as possible. For example, ladies pine desk chair with arms or 5mm pearl stud earrings.
The lower section Item Name is where you list all inventory items used to make this product. You can also add the cost of labor if you've previously set labor up as a non-inventory item.
I've prepared a Kit form using these items:
- Pine wood for chairs - I charge the customer $250 for each section of wood used in making the chair. One section of pine is used to make this chair.
- I cost my labor out at $100/hour. This chair takes 2 hours to make.
2. Create a Customer Quote in Microsoft Office Accounting 2009 Using Kits
From the main menu, select Customers > New > Quote. Select the appropriate customer from the Customer Name field drop-down list. I previously set up Fictitious Customer #1 to use for this tutorial. Fill in any of the other fields as you would normally.
Under Products and services in the Name field drop-down list select the correct kit. in this case, Test Kit 1. All applicable fields auto-populate. If you want to give this customer a discount enter it in the discount field. Now you know exactly how much you should charge your customer for this sale.
3. Create a Customer Invoice in Microsoft Office Accounting 2009 Using Kits
Use the Convert option to prepare the customer invoice from the quote. Print the customer invoice within Accounting 2009 or send it to Microsoft Word. Sending the invoice to Word allows you to tailor the invoice to the specific customer.
For example, I fixed my 'fictitous' typo. I also changed the name and description to only show what I want this customer to see. I removed the individual line items showing material and labor quantities.
You'll note I didn't add all items such as sandpaper, varnish, nails etc. that I'll need to make this chair. For accurate quotes and invoices you'll have to add all cost of good sold items into the kit. Once you have the basic kits set up it's quick work to prepare quotes or invoices.
