I requested this 10 years ago when I first started using Quickbooks and they told me they were working on a solution. 

The easiest workaround that I found which is you probably already know is that when I am making out an invoice and under item name if I am unsure of what the item number is, I will click on the down arrow and at the top of the scroll bar click on <find and select items> and from there you can search from description and check or uncheck items you want to add. That seems to be the fastest way at the moment to accomplish this. 

I will check back in another 10 years to see if they have figured out how to auto populate by typing the description under the item box.