Advice for tracking cost of goods, invoicing, list of items

#1

Hi there,

New to accounting and love this program as it’s extremely easy to use. I’m looking for some help on how to use Manager for my needs.

I buy bulk LEGO parts and enter them into my inventory. I take the pieces and assemble a kit which is comprised of multiple parts with varied costs based on colors. I package the pieces and ship them to clients.

I understand how to create inventory items, track their individual cost, etc.

What I want to do is create multiple versions of a kit where only the colors will vary from one set to another.

When I go into Manager, I want to see what my cost for each variation of the kit will be based on the pieces and know what my gross profit will be on each kit based on cost and selling price.

When I sell a kit to customer, I want to show the itemized parts list including quantities on the invoice depending on the kit sold. This way, anyone picking/assembling the kit will know what’s required and the customer can compare this list to what he/she received.

I’ve tried to use the “Inventory Kits” but the itemized list or cost isn’t available so I created an inventory item tied to a “Production Order” and I see the kit cost but don’t see the itemized list (Bill of Goods?).

I welcome any advice.

Thank you

#2

You’ve explored the two basic options: producing finished inventory items with production orders and inventory kits. You did not mention when the kits are assembled, at time of shipping or in advance. If at time of shipping, use the inventory kit approach. Contrary to what you said, you can get a print-out of kit components. Go to Settings => Inventory Kits and click on View for the relevant kit.

This won’t do your pricing for you. Manager is not a pricing program, but an accounting program. You’ll have to develop costs for the various kits in a separate spreadsheet. As raw component costs change, you can update the spreadsheet with current average cost as frequently as necessary.

If you’re going to stock the assembled kits, then production orders for separate inventory items is the way to go. If you want to know what’s in the finished good, go to the Production Orders tab and click View for the relevant production order. As with the inventory kit, you can print the document after clicking View. The advantage of this approach is that your finished good kit will have an average cost associated with it in the Inventory Items tab. From that, you can decide how much to sell it for.

#3

Thanks for the advice, it’s greatly appreciated!

The kits can either be assembled as the orders come in OR in advance, it makes no difference to me either way.

When I create an inventory kit, I don’t see the average cost but when I create an inventory item and create a production order, the average cost is then calculated for the inventory item. Is that the way it works then?

Why is there no way to show the quantity, item number and description on the invoice for an inventory kit or an inventory item tied to a production order?

Is there any way to do this?

I’m sorry if I didn’t explain myself properly, I’m only looking to track average cost for the kits and gross profit based on the selling price I determine.

Thanks again!

#4

Yes. An inventory kit is just a shortcut for selling items stocked separately but sold together. They are especially useful when the same components might be sold as parts of different kits.

When you sell a kit, you are selling a kit, not a bunch of separate items. That’s just how the program works. When you sell an inventory item produced under a production order, you are selling that specific inventory item. The fact that you formerly had raw materials that went into its production is irrelevant. Your situation might make this seem strange, since the individual Legos in the finished inventory item could also be taken out and sold as themselves. But imagine a baker who takes input items (flour, yeast, eggs, milk) from inventory and uses them to produce pastries.

One thing you could do, regardless of which way you handle the assembled bundles of Legos, is include detailed descriptions of either the finished inventory item or the inventory kit. Use HTML to format the contents of the Description field and list whatever you want. See this Guide: https://guides.manager.io/13392.

Production orders will let you track average cost. Gross profit can be seen in the Inventory Profit Margin report. But that comes after the sale. Also note, there is currently a bug in the calculation of profit margin for inventory kits. See this bug report: Inventory Profit Margin report bug when Inventory Kits are sold.

#5

after making a production order, you can drag select the bill of materials to copy them and then paste in the item description field of your sales invoice.

you can do the same from your inventory kit, but one issue would be that the individual description of bill of materials will be included. try it if that is okay for you.