QBO doesn't auto-populate items on invoices, but you can use the bundle feature as a workaround. Create a group item, mark it as regularly sold, add your line to it, and selecting that bundle on any invoice automatically inserts the preset line with fewer clicks than recurring templates.
Chapters
Hi there, Linda Artesani. This is Community Live, and I'm from Artesani Bookkeeping. And I'm missing my partner Matthew, but he'll be back soon. And I wanted to answer questions on the forum this week. So this one's from EXA Eric, and he asks, how can I automatically add a product or service when starting a new invoice? Since there's one item that we always charge on every invoice, is there a way to set that item in QuickBooks so that when we start a new invoice, that item will always populate automatically? automatically every time? Well, the short answer is no, it doesn't really have that kind of functionality, but there's a couple of workarounds. Now, while I was preparing this to be put up, someone from the forum— looks like the team, the QuickBooks team— actually came up with a way of doing that. Mentions that pre-filled forms doesn't work and also tells you how to make a recurring template and make it unscheduled. So the problem with the recurring template is if I'm coming over here to maybe bill Marianne Heegan, I actually have to come over to the recurring template. And basically to get there, I'd have to come over here, come over to the recurring, find my regular invoice, you know, go to edit, use it, change it to Marianne Heegan, you know, Marianne Heegan's, because that's who I was going to bill, and then do the steps. So that's a lot of clicking, right? And I don't know about you, but when I do workflows, I don't like to click so much. So an option here, another alternate, and this certainly works. Nothing wrong with Vivian's answer. It's just that this certainly works. It's just a lot of clicking. A way around that is you can save tabs so that this is always open. Then you can go from one side to the other side very simply. Or what I would do, and I would recommend my customer to do to help them with that workaround, is I would come back to my page if I was creating sales and invoices, and I'll come back to Mary Ann Heegan here. And my workaround would be to create a— and I'll take you here— I've created a group item. So it's called bundles in QuickBooks Online. It's a little bit different than QuickBooks Desktop, but it's basically the same premise. So I've already created my regularly sold item group item, and we'll come in here, we'll edit it, and you'll see that I made this widget line here. So maybe your regular item is like not the first item, but maybe it's the 4th or the 5th. Well, that's not a problem either because you can add lines and maybe put widget down here, put widget way down here. I mean, that makes— you just make up your mind where you want to have widget, right? So you can put your item that you always sell or whatever it is that you always have to have on the line. So I'm going to make this item regularly sold item, and I'm going to save and close it. So now that when I use that item on this actual worksheet, they will see this item. So I'll go back here for a moment. Now that I changed the setting, regularly sold item, so it's important to have that box checked off. And now when we come in here to print or preview, you'll see that the customer is going to see the widget line, right? So the widget line is going to show up on the invoice, and then obviously you can put all the other items in at the same time and add the items below it. So it's a little simpler and faster. So, you know, if you make that item, it's just basically coming into your customer once you've created the item in QuickBooks, invoice, regularly sold item, and put your widget in. And the bundles really work well. So that's my workaround, a little bit different than how Vivian did it, but, um, both will solidly work. I think mine's got less clicks. So it's up to you what way you want to work it. I hope that's helpful. I hope that you are happy with that answer, and if you are, I'd love you to give me a little cheers or a thumbs up. And if you have more questions, feel free to reach out to me or Matthew. Thanks, bye!
