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The Item component is used to add any of eight types of items to QuickBooks's item list. It may also get item data, and in some cases, may modify it as well.

NOTE: What follows is a very short description of the component interfaces. For more information, please consult the help files that come with the respective package.

Remarks

The Item component may be used to add or retrieve any of the following types of items: service, inventory, non-inventory, sales tax, discount, payment, subtotal, or other charge. To add an item to QuickBooks, first set the ItemType property to the appropriate value as well as ItemName. Then, you may set a variety of other properties and special fields, which differ depending on the type of item.

Service, Non-Inventory, and Other Charge Items

These types of items may be purchased from vendors, sold to customers, or both.

In case the item is purchased but not sold, or sold but not purchased, the Description, Price, PricePercent, and Account properties are used. The Account property is the only one required; it should specify an income account if the item is sold, or an expense account if the item is purchased.

Equivalently, you may specify PurchaseExpenseAccount, PurchaseCost, and PurchaseDescription. This will have the same effect, because QuickBooks does not distinguish between items that are purchased only and items that are sold only. However, QuickBooks data will always be returned in Description, Price, and Account.

In case the item is both sold and purchased, you should specify Description, Price, PricePercent, and Account for sales, and PurchaseDescription, PurchaseCost, PurchasePreferredVendor, and PurchaseExpenseAccount for purchase transactions. This will cause different default rates to appear on sales transactions (such as invoices) and purchase transactions (such as bills).

Online Edition: Only service items are used, and you may only specify one set of accounts.

Example (Adding a service item)

Item1.ItemType = itService '1 Item1.ItemName = "Accounting Services" Item1.Description = "General accounting services" Item1.Price = 7000 '$70.00 per hour Item1.AccountName = "Accounting:Labor" Item1.Add()

Inventory Items

Inventory items are always both sold and purchased, so the interface is similar to that for non-inventory items that are sold and purchased. Set Description, Price, and Account for sales, and PurchaseDescription, PurchaseCost, and PurchasePreferredVendor for purchases. Instead of setting PurchaseExpenseAccount you must instead set two separate accounts: PurchaseCOGSAccount refers to your Cost Of Goods Sold account, and PurchaseAssetAccount refers to your Inventory Assets account.

Other details are also available as special fields: See Config for details on how to set or query the quantity on hand and on order, reorder point, and the inventory date.

Example

Item1.ItemType = itInventory '2 Item1.ItemName = "French Door" Item1.Description = "Glass French Door" 'this will appear on invoices Item1.Price = 24500 'Charge $245.00 to customers Item1.AccountName = "Construction:Materials" Item1.PurchaseDesciption = "Glass French Door" 'this will appear on bills Item1.PurchaseCost = 16000 Item1.PurchasePreferredVendorName = "Joe's Doors, Inc." Item1.PurchaseCOGSAccountName = "Cost Of Goods Sold" Item1.PurchaseAssetAccountName = "Inventory Asset" Item1.Add()

Other Items

Other types of items are considerably less complex.

To add a discount item to QuickBooks, set ItemName and the SalesTaxCode, as well as the Description, Price or PricePercent (here these properties refer to the rate of discount), as well as an Account.

To add a payment item to QuickBooks, set ItemName, Description, Account, and the PaymentMethod special field.

To add a sales tax item to QuickBooks, set ItemName, Description, and the TaxRate and TaxVendor special fields.

To add a subtotal item to QuickBooks, set ItemName and Description.

Example (Adding a sales tax item) Item1.ItemType = itSalesTax '6 Item1.ItemName = "San Jose, CA" Item1.Config("TaxRate=6.75") Item1.Config("TaxVendorName=San Jose Board of Taxation") Item1.Add()

Modifying Items

This functionality requires QuickBooks 2003. You must first set QBXMLVersion to "2.0" or higher before you may modify items.

Update functionality is limited to service, inventory, and non-inventory items. You may update the name, sales tax code, description(s), and price(s). However, with the exception of inventory, you may not change any of the accounts associated with items, nor can you convert items into other types of items.

In the case of inventory items, you may modify PurchaseCOGSAccount and PurchaseAssetAccount, but not the sales income account.

Getting Items

You may also use the component to get items from QuickBooks using their RefId or ItemName: simply call Get or GetByName.

It is not necessary to set ItemType before getting items from QuickBooks. Both Get and GetByName will get any type of item from QuickBooks, and will populate ItemType automatically. In case ItemType is itUnknown the SpecialItemType special field will contain QuickBooks's description of the type of item. In some cases (such as for inventory assembly items) properties such as Description, Account, etc. may contain relevant information.

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