Inv & shipping exp
Inbound shipping should be included in the cost of items held for resale.
When shipping is part of the purchase invoice, I “guesstimate” the shipping per item and change the total for each item on the invoice, when you do that QB will recalculate the per item price. As long as the total on the bill in QB equals the total on the invoice (bill) you receive all is good.
When shipping charges come in separately it gets a little more involved. Pay the shipping and use a clearing expense account. Then bring up inventory adjust, mark it as a value adjustment, set the adjusting account to the clearing expense account, find the item(s) and increase the item value by the amount of shipping expense, do not change the quantity on hand. That takes the amount of shipping out of the clearing expense account and adds it to the items in inventory and QB recalculates the average cost. The clearing expense account should be zero balance when you are done, check it and if it is not, find the error.
