zoltanb thank you, you deserve that expert designation - this stuff causes brain fog in the average person. The way I do it is any item for resale is put into inventory, be it on a bill from PO, check, or credit card charge. It is then taken out of inventory on an invoice.
I can double-click on inventory on the balance sheet and see that what I called "...amount of inventory in QBs used during the year" is equal to the difference between the beginning and ending values. It is also equal to the difference between what TT and QBs define as cost of goods sold.
COGS is handled on Form 1125-A. TT remembers the ending inventory from the prior year - to this you add "purchases" which is what the QBs P&L statement calls COGS and subtract ending inventory from 2021, and that is what TT calls COGS. This is the correct number for tax purposes.
When you move to balance sheet reconciliations, retained earnings is off and it won't reconcile until you make an adjustment to difference between tax and book. So to your point about the IRS being sticklers on gross profit, the return is correct so I'm not concerned.
I made the adjustment on Schedule M-1 Worksheet, under "other timing expense items," as I could not get it to work in the Expense Items section above. The Smart Worksheet at the bottom makes the calculations; income per Schedule K line 18 less the net tax/book differences yields "Computed net income per books" which matches Net Income in QBs.
At the end of the day (this didn't occur to me when I first posted), I'm thinking my issue may be related to the fact that I'm using an older version of QBs. Newer versions may define COGS in the way TT does, whereas my version defines purchases as COGS. So - I think I'm square and perhaps this will be of help to others.
