Inventory items on bills

Good morning, @ADK3.

Thanks for taking the time to reach out to the QuickBooks Community. How are you today? I hope all is well. 

To help break down the process, in QuickBooks Desktop, even if you assign an inventory item to a specific customer or job when entering a bill, the inventory count will still be adjusted because QuickBooks doesn't automatically link inventory items directly to individual jobs. Inventory is considered a general asset until it's officially sold on an invoice, meaning entering a bill only reflects the purchase of inventory, not its allocation to a specific customer or job. 

For more information about managing inventory, you can review the help articles included in the link below: 

• Manage inventory in QuickBooks Desktop

Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns. I'm happy to help in any way that I can. Have a good one! 

@ADK3 

"Shouldn’t the fact that it has a customer assigned to it make it go into inventory and then right back out because it already knows where it will be going?"

No, because you have to sell that particular inventory item to your customer on an invoice for it to be removed from inventory.  From an accounting standpoint, that item needs to go into inventory when you purchase it on a bill.  Then, when you sell the item to your customer, it will be removed from inventory and expensed to COGS (this is double-entry accounting).  If QB took it out of inventory and expensed it to COGS at the same time you purchased it, you would be incurring the expense of the item's cost before you sold it - a violation of both GAAP accounting rules as well as IRS tax law.