Question

Item Level Discounts on Daily Sales

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
September 19, 2025
1 reply
22 views

I have a product set up for Customer Discounts that I have typically applied at the end of a daily sales entry as one total discount line. I'd like to become more granular in my item level profitability so instead of just applying a total discount daily, I'm trying to apply the discounts to specific items.

For example, if I sell an item for $20 and a customer redeemed a $5 reward when they bought it, how do I get the $5 reward to apply to the sales of that $20 item, netting it down to $15? Specifically, I want the P&L to reflect the full amount of the $20 for the Merchandise Sales and then show the $5 in Sales Discounts, netting the Income to $15.

QuickBooks Desktop

G

GenmarieM

QuickBooks Team

You can add a Discount item to apply the discount for your customer, remccabe.

To get QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT) to show the full sales price and a separate discount line on your Profit & Loss (P&L) report, you must use a Discount Item directly on the sales form. This method ensures that revenue is recorded at the full amount and the discount is tracked separately, which is what you're looking to do.

Here’s how to create a Discount item:

Go to Inventory, then click New Inventory Item.
In the Type dropdown, choose Discount.
Enter the Item name and leave the amount blank.
In the Account, select Less Discounts given or the account you want to associate with this item.
Make the Tax code to Non-Taxable Sales, then Save.

When creating an invoice, on the first line, add the item you sold for its full price of $20. This will post the full revenue to your Merchandise Sales income account. On the very next line, add your Customer Discounts item. You must enter the discount as a negative amount, so type -$5. This will subtract the discount from the subtotal. QuickBooks Desktop will then correctly show the $20 in income and the $5 in the separate Sales Discounts or Less Discounts given account on your P&L, resulting in a net income of $15.

You can also check out this article about adding items in QuickBooks Desktop: Add, edit, and delete items in QuickBooks Desktop.

Feel free to go back to this thread if you have more questions.

R

remccabeAuthor

Hi GenmarieM, thanks - that method works to reduce my total sales but it doesn't seem to work to apply the discount to a specific item, which is what I am trying to do.

When I am entering Daily Sales (not invoices as I run a retail store), I put in item level detail. Not all items are impacted by a customer discount reward and I'm trying to reflect the discounts only on the items that were included in transactions that received a discount. I already have a Discount set up called Customer Discount. Is there a way to apply the discount to only some items within my Daily Sales for a day, not just my total sales?

J

Jessavell_A

QuickBooks Team

Thanks for your detailed response, @remccabe.

Please ensure that you place the Customer Discount item immediately after the product to which you want to apply the discount. This will deduct the total amount of the previous item only. You can refer to the screenshot below for guidance.

For additional information on applying discounts to an invoice, please read this article: Use discount and subtotal items on an Invoice.

When you generate a P&L report, the income displayed will reflect the discounted amount. To see the complete breakdown of your income, including both the original and discounted amounts, simply double-click the figure.

Feel free to revisit this thread if you have any further questions.

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