If you have to purchase and track the actual part items used later on for building your final inventory to sell, then here are basic instructions to construct inventory builds in QuickBooks Desktop:

Note: this is not for Group type of items.

First, to build a basic part inventory (sub) item (note: some item fields will be skipped here as these instructions are for only building a basic inventory item):

1. Open up your items list in Quickbooks.
2. Create a new item: Either Ctrl+N on your Windows keyboard or select “New” from the pop-up list when you click on “Item” in the lower left-hand side.
3. Select “Inventory Part” as your Type of item to create.
4. Type in the name of the item within the Item Name/Number field.
5. Skip down to the Description on Purchase Transactions field and type in a description of this item.
6. Skip down to the COGS Account field and select an appropriate financial account that will be affected only if you were to sell this item on its own (and not as part of another assembled item).
7. Skip over to the Tax Code field and be sure you make the appropriate selection.
8. Skip down to the Income Account field and select an appropriate financial account that will be affected only if you were to sell this item on its own (and not as part of another assembled item).
   1. Remember, the COGS and income accounts are not affected until you sell inventory.
9. At the very bottom, choose an appropriate Asset Account that will be affected when you purchase and sell these items. This account is ONLY a balance sheet type of account and is to reflect only the VALUE of your current inventory stock status (not the profitability of your sales).
10. Select OK to close out of this function.
11. Now, follow the exact instructions above to build a 2^nd part inventory (sub) item.
12. Once you have two inventory part items created in your items list, now we can proceed with assembly of our final inventory item, using both of the inventory part items created above, that we will be selling to our customers.
13. Again, create a new item, but this time choose “Inventory Assembly” as your item type.
14. Type in the name of the item within the Item Name/Number field.
15. If you are actually building these final assembled items on your own, then you will NOT check mark the “I purchase this assembly item from a vendor”. However, if you are simply just having both of the component inventory part items (created above) shipped to some other supplier who in turn constructs your assembled inventory to sell, then you want to check mark “I purchase this assembly item from a vendor”. In either case, you want the bill of materials to remain the same. If someone else is building your assemblies, you will simply wait until they do this BEFORE you reflect these builds in your own inventory software. That way your part items will be reduced and your assembled items will increase in stock. Please note: you may have a situation where you have multiple warehouses to deal with when it comes to storing your part items and storing your assembled items. But, in any case, I recommend you do not adjust the stock status of part items until actual builds take place; it does not matter where the part items are located; it only matters what their availability is.
16. Just like before, choose appropriate COGS, Income & Asset financial account that will be affected when you build and sell these items.
17. Now, most importantly, choose your Bill of Materials. A Bill of Materials is just a list of materials or items you will be using to construct this final assembled item you are creating now.
    1. To do this, simply click on the box and choose both of the items you created above and the quantity needed (from each item) to build an assembly.
    2. You may notice your total Bill of Materials Cost sits at zero, this is because you need to purchase these part items first in order to have these in stock to build an assembly plus have a cost associated with these part items (the cost is what you paid when you purchased these part sub-items).
18. Click on OK.
19. Now, assuming you have both of the part sub-items in stock (and this is already reflected in Quickbooks), you will now construct the build.
20. To commence the build: Vendors>Inventory Activities>Build Assemblies.
21. Choose your Assembly Item in the upper left corner.
22. Very Important: Choose your Date on the right side. The date you choose will be the date of the actual stock status of your part sub-assembly inventory items. So choose your date carefully. Be sure to reflect the actual build date, no matter who builds it.
23. The Components Needed to Build the assembly (the two sub part items we created earlier) will automatically pop up in QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise.
24. Now just type in a number in the “Quantity to Build” field in the lower right corner.
    1. The QTY Needed fields, on the right side of each component line, will automatically populate. Be sure your QTY Needed for each items is NOT more that what is on hand at that date.
25. Click Build & Close.