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January 16, 2019
Question

I want to totally delete my inventory, including all items within and start again. how do i do that?

  • January 16, 2019
  • 7 replies
  • 0 views
Original commenter did not share additional details

7 replies

January 17, 2019

Good day, @arkvalleyinfo,

 

Thanks for checking this with us today. I can help you remove your inventory items in QuickBooks Online.

 

Great news, QuickBooks Online has a Batch action feature which allows you to make your items inactive in just a snap. Let me guide you through the steps:

 

1. Click the Gear icon.
2. Select Products and Services.
3. Mark the items you'd like to remove.
4. Click the Batch actions drop-down.
5. Choose Make inactive.

6. Click Yes to complete the action.

 

You also have the option to restore deleted products or service items. Please checkout this article for the complete steps: How to edit, delete, and restore list elements

 

However, if you wanted to completely delete inventory items in QBO, this option is currently unavailable. Anyhow, this is a great idea we can put forward to our developers, so I'd encourage you to send your product suggestion. You may follow the steps below to submit your request:

 

1. Go to the Gear icon.

2. Choose Feedback from the drop-down.

3. Enter your Comments, Suggestions or Feedbacks.

4. Choose Next.

5. Select a category.

6. Click Send message.

 

That should do it, @arkvalleyinfo. I'll do the same thing on my end to reinforce your request.

 

Please let me know if you need further help with your inventory management. I'll be glad to work with you any time. Have a good one!

September 28, 2019

Good Day

 

Has there been any headway in able to delete all Inventory?

 

I uploaded my batches incorrectly and now have a huge amount of unwanted data in the inactive folder

 

September 28, 2019

Glad to have you here in the Community, @Glue devil.

 

Currently, the option to completely delete inventory items still isn't available in QuickBooks. However, you can consider inactivating the items as mentioned by my colleague Jen_D above.

 

I know you've got a vast amount of undesired items in the inactive folder and want to delete them completely in QuickBooks. But I want to let you know that your voice matters and I'm submitting your feedback directly to our engineers. 

 

For now, you can visit our blog site so you'll be able to get the latest news about QuickBooks and what our Product Care Team is working on.  

 

Please feel free to post any other questions you have below. The Community and I are always here to help you out.

JMEJIA75
March 15, 2021

I've used QuickBooks Enterprise for over 15 years and have no idea how much useless data accumulates in inventory because they can't permanently delete it. It would be interesting an option to replace existing items with a new list of them.

March 25, 2021

This is a very important feature that QuickBooks must upgrade in the platform. I can't imagine how dificult it is for companies who sales different products and are constantly changing their inventory.

December 29, 2022

I can tell you that QBO does not listen to their base. For an engineering company that has multiple pieces and model numbers changing ever so slightly, it's a never ending nightmare.  QBO engineers only for their own profitable desires to figure out how to charge more. Just like ACH payments. ACH doesn't cost them a dime. Yet they burn their base for it starting back in April of 21.

 

This request to delete removed or redundant inventory items has been out there for over a decade and they simply state no. If they had one decent programming engineer they could easily resolve this dilemma. They give no reason for the inability to delete items that are no longer in existence or repetitive. However, if you could show how they could make a dime out of it they would complete the task tomorrow. Maybe its time to look for accounting systems that are inventory friendly.

Fiat Lux - ASIA
December 29, 2022

Inventory management features are very complex. You can switch to another accounting application but you still need an inventory management add-on or an additional app to integrate with the accounting app. Unless you are ready to use an ERP-class accounting application.

May 5, 2021

Has this feature still not been implemented? I am sitting with over 2000 products that have opening balances and I have to manually adjust them to 0 individually to fix my opening balance equity account. This really needs to be reviewed again! I was told by support to just make the unwanted items inactive but because they have quantities and cost prices it has ballooned my OBE to over $1 million (it should only be $300,000+-)

 

Any tips for me? I need to start the inventory from scratch with OBE, Inventory asset, and Inventory shrinkage to be $0

AlexV
May 5, 2021

Hello joslyn1!

 

I understand that you need to delete completely your inventory items. Let me help you.

 

As of the moment, we're unable to delete an inventory in QuickBooks Online. The reason is that we want to make sure your data is intact and accurate.

 

What we can do is to make them inactive. If these products you want to mark inactive still have quantities on hand, the system will automatically create an adjustment to make it zero. Here's how:

  1. From the Gear icon, select Products and Services.
  2. Find the product or service you want to change.
  3. From the Action dropdown, select Make inactive. Tap Yes to confirm.

 

A product feature is more likely to be implemented if our developers received more requests about it. With this, I encourage you to send one by clicking the Gear icon and select Feedback.

 

In addition, you may visit this page if you need more references in managing a business: QBO Articles.

 

Keep on posting here if you have other concerns. Take care always!

May 5, 2021

Thanks for the reply but because they were loaded as an opening balance it has ballooned my OBE account and made the inventory shrinkage huge. Not being able to delete inventory is really, really stupid!

Rainflurry
November 13, 2021

QuickBooks is an accounting system so you can't just delete an asset like inventory.  Every asset on your balance sheet has an offsetting asset, liability or equity amount.  That is why QuickBooks (and Sage) will not allow you to simply delete inventory that has either an opening balance or history, nor should there be, or you would be doing improper accounting.  Deleting inventory is no different than trying to delete a bank account with a balance. 

November 16, 2022

I can understand not being able to delete Inventory items, but what about non-inventory and service products that have no transaction history?  Somehow I have thousands of them now, and can't do a thing to clean them up.

January 1, 2023

Just about four years later. Can we still not completely delete inventory items? Yes, I already know I can make them inactive and how to do it.

January 1, 2023

Hi, hautecreations. I understand that completely deleting inventory items would be beneficial to your business.

 

Note that we're always looking for ways to make your experience with QuickBooks more convenient. I would appreciate it if you share your ideas with our product engineers again on this matter. Your suggestions help them build features that might be added in future product enhancements.

 

Here's how:

 

  1. Select the Gear icon at the top.
  2. Then click Feedback.
  3. Enter your comments or product suggestions.
  4. Then select Next to submit feedback.

You can also visit our QuickBooks Online guide to access our self-help articles for other tasks in the future.

 

Please know that you can always get back to this thread if you have other questions or concerns about managing your inventories in QBO. I'll be around to provide the information you need. Keep safe!

March 4, 2023

I run accounts of 137 clients and my clients pay thousands of dollars to QB. We are going to switch to a better software. Their team are bunch of robots. Here are the problems that will cause the downfall of QB in near future:

1. You cant delete inventory items.
2. There is no harmony in software. You change filters and software flickers and mains screen dances.
3. Unlike SAP their data base takes so much time to incorporate changes.
4. Worst ever engineers on this planet who have made this cheap and useless software.
5. I am going to start a campaign and end all the subscriptions of my clients.
Also I am going to highly discourage my future clients and many consultants like me to instantly un subscribe from QB.

 

Very very bad software.
unskilled software engineers.
The are going to be next nokia in accounting software.