Question

Tracking free shipping costs

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 9, 2024
2 replies
0 views

Enterprise Solutions: Manufacturing and Wholesale desktop user.

We offer free shipping on a few select products. How can we track the free shipping cost within the sale? We would like to track the free shipping as a Discount on the Sales by Item Summary report. Is this possible at all, let alone as a Discount? It just doesn't seem possible to add this onto the invoice as it would lower the grand total the customer paid us. I've tried by adding the shipping cost we paid to the sale as a line item then taking the free shipping "Discount" that I set up but that messes up the report by showing more shipping cost income. Hoping someone can help. Thank you.

QuickBooks Desktop

Clark_B

Welcome to the Community, @Thill2322.

Let me help and provide information about tracking shipping costs in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT).

Firstly, you have to create two service items (not discount items) - the Shipping Cost and Free shipping items which will use a Shipping Cost income account. In the invoice, add the item you're selling and the shipping cost. Then create a credit memo to apply to that invoice and reduce the total invoice amount. In the credit memo, include the Free shipping item to offset the invoice amount. This way, the shipping cost account will show 0 and won't overstate or double the amount for the profit and loss since it is being used for offsetting the transactions.

To view the report, you need to run the Transaction Detail Report.

Here's how:

Go to the Reports menu.
Select Custom Reports, and click Transaction Detail.
Select Filter, and select Name in the Choose Filter.
Choose the specific customer from the drop-down list.
In the Type field of the Filter section, enter the transaction type.
Select payments, credit memos, and invoices to filter.
Click OK to generate the report.

I'll add this article to help you customize the data, add or delete columns, add or remove information on the header/footer, and even personalize the font and style of the report: Customize reports in QuickBooks Desktop.

Please feel free to drop a comment below, if you have further concerns about tracking or other QBDT-related concerns. I will answer them in any possible way.

T

Thill2322Author

Thank you for your reply.

Rainflurry

@Thill2322

@Clark_B 's answer is close but not the best IMO.

You can add the Shipping Cost item to the invoice and then add the Free Shipping item on the invoice as a negative amount so the two net to zero. Adding the free shipping item as a negative amount makes it visible to the customer on the invoice. A credit memo is a separate document that does not show on the invoice.