Quickbooks ~ Duplicating Group Items

If you have taken any of our webinars that demonstrate quoting then you know that the secret ingredient for quoting quickly is the Group Item. If you own QuickBooks & Quoting your Item List contains over 700 individual items. Everything you buy or sell in the course of business should be listed in your item list. QuickBooks allows you to use special items called Group Items that are collections of individual items. QuickBooks & Quoting includes a group item for virtually every kind of window treatment, service or product you offer. We have "Sub-Contracted Window Treatments" for Designers; in addition to Drapery, Shades, Hard Treatments, and many more. When you choose a Group Item the collection of individual items flows onto your proposal all ready for you to start quoting. Think of it as a "basket" full of the items that we assume you will use almost every time you do that type of proposal. (Note: The ability to duplicate items is only available in QB 2009, Pro & Premier)

A group item will contain several individual items you typically use in certain type of quote. In your Item List scroll down to the bottom and all of the Group Items are clustered together. Right-click on one of the Groups and select edit. Here is a screen shot of a group item setup screen looks like:

You can edit the default description here or on the fly in the proposal, we recommend that you begin all group items with "G-" to make it easy to retrieve on an estimate. You can see that all of the individual items are listed in the bottom of the setup screen. By clicking on an item you have the option to delete it from the group, change it to a similar item or insert a line so that you can add additional items to your group. I demonstrate editing groups in this video clip.

In addition, to editing groups you can duplicate groups to save time. Let's say you would like to create a group especially for furniture sales and deliveries outside of your normal delivery range. You would want to add an item to the group that would have a mileage surcharge appear automatically. Duplicate an Item: Right click on the group item, select duplicate, then edit the name of the item to reflect what you want it to be, as in my screenshot below. I have edited the name of the group by adding "LD" for long distance delivery. Also, notice I have inserted a line by pressing CTRL + Insert to add the mileage item.