Importing items into QuickBooks

Even though you’re new to QuickBooks, you may not be new to running your business. If you have a list of products or services you sell in a spreadsheet, you can import that information into QuickBooks. I’ll show you how in this video.

Video Script

If you’ve been running your business for a while, you probably have a list of things you sell or buy and you’d like to get that list into QuickBooks.

Hi, I’m Shelly with the QuickBooks for Mac team. Today I’m going to show you how to import your items from a spreadsheet into QuickBooks. This is a really handy tool when you’re first getting started with QuickBooks.

So first things first, let’s talk about what an item is. In QuickBooks, if you buy it or sell it, it’s an item. So say I own a pet care business. All the services I offer my clients, like dog walking or cat-sitting, are all items.

Now since I’ve been running my business for a while before I bought QuickBooks, I have a list in this Numbers spreadsheet of all the services that I offer, a brief description, and what I charge for each one. I don’t want to enter all of this all over again in QuickBooks so I’m going to import it.

To do that, I click File > Import > Items. Now, I’m going back to that Numbers spreadsheet I have and copy the columns of information to this screen in QuickBooks. So you can see, now I have all my services copied here, including the cat bath that I charge $100,000 for and if you’ve ever given a cat a bath, you’ll know why.

Next, for each item, I need to select what account that item is associated with. Because these are services I sell, I’m selecting the Sales account.

Now I just started a new service that I don’t have in my spreadsheet yet, but it’s no problem. I can just go down here to this menu, click Add Line and enter that new service here on this screen.

But it’s not just service items that you can import. I’m also going to use the other panels on this window to import Non-inventory items and inventory items.

When I have my items list the way I want it, I just click Import on each of the panels. Now I can go to the Items List to see the items I’ve imported. And if I want to make a change, I just double-click that item name to edit it.

So that’s how you import items in to QuickBooks. Thanks for watching.