You're hitting a bit of a snag here, balancing non-inventory setup with tracking COGS and all, especially with pricey items. Non-inventory items in quickbooks are more for stuff u never actually have in hand, but yeah, this messes with cost tracking big time, like you're dealing with now.

When you treat these drop-shipped items as non-inventory, it skips the whole stock management part, which makes sense since they're never physically with you. But here's a downside - your COGS visibility is kinda foggy, making those margin calculations a headache. To get a real-time view of COGS without going crazy with manual math, you might try setting up these items as inventory but disable stock tracking, adjusting how you enter purchase and sales data. In QuickBooks, this trick lets you use the automatic COGS tracking without the hassle of real inventory management.

By keeping these items as inventory, quickbooks handles COGS better, giving you a clearer picture of profits. If knowing margins is a biggie for you, it's something to consider. Otherwise, stick with non-inventory and keep at refining your manual process. Yeah, it can defintely be tricky.