I buy and sell random surplus equipment\furniture\computers\etc. How can I use Manager to account for the P\L and inventory for the items in the lot?
For instance today I bought a lot for $30 that includes, 3 office desks, 1 38" HP monitor, 6 various brand surveillance cameras, pair of lamps, pair of end tables, love seat and wooden shelf.
How am I supposed to keep up with this? My thoughts are,
Enter as 1 inventory item with a qty of 16, set purchase price to $30, then enter the sold price for each?
Enter 16 inventory items with purchase price of $30/16 = $1.875 each item, then enter the sold price for that? Does it matter that the cameras are more valuable than the lamps, or does it all wash out?
I would not enter such goods as inventory at all. You will likely never see any of those office desks or anything quite like them again, but you’ll be stuck with the inventory item. And you certainly don’t want to try to account for, let alone count, “lots” of random things that passed through your hands.
If I were you, I’d just record the purchase expenses to a Second hand merchandise purchases expense account and the sales to a Second hand resales income account. Presumably, this stuff passes through your business quickly, so it would all be considered current income and expenses. I would keep a list on a separate spreadsheet of approximately what I paid for things to help determine a target sales price. The apportionment when you buy a jumble in one lot is going to be approximate anyway.
Don’t make life more complicated than it needs to be by being more rigorous than necessary with your accounting.