Before,tot. Before the recent updates, there was in the settings what is called “automatic updating of the cost of inventory” I lost it,this option was helping to update the cost which,makes the profit and loss process in the summary appear directly. Now I need, after each sales process, to go into the settings and then select “Inventory Unit Costs” And choosing to correct the cost of inventory,so that the sale process at its cost becomes recorded in the summary when tabping profit and loss. Is there a solution that is absent from me?
Note:When selling for an item that is not in stock,is there an addition that issues a warning for example that the balance in stock is not enough for the sale?
Thank you to the developer for this program I thank the developer for this program,and for all updates,he is responsive in solving all problems,and most of that he is very patient with us.
On older versions of Manager, before unit cost calculation was changed for the nth time, you could go into obsolete feature and re-enable automatic cost calculations. After FIFO inventory was introduced, you had to manually recalculate each time.
The main concern from the developer was that automatic calculation would be too slow, but many users said it shouldn’t be a problem since every other accounting program can do it. The calculation workflow has been improved several times since, but it’s still a manual task.
Basically, you’d lock your books to prevent prior COGS from changing, but the inventory cost remains a manual process until the developer takes a new approach.
Selling an item would not change your cost per item (unless you are backdating a sale). It’s only purchases or production orders which could change your costs.
I know ergonomics are not that great. However Manager can very quickly determine whether recalculation is needed and offer you to do it. I haven’t implemented this yet.
Recalculation itself is slow which is why I don’t want to do it on demand. Also I need to have flexibility to keep improving inventory costing calculations and if inventory calculations are done on demand, then any change to inventory costing formula can automatically affect historical figures which no business wants (especially in closed periods).
No accounting software does it. They all automatically adjust your costs going forward, not backwards. So your inventory costs on transactional level will be mostly wrong unless you are entering all transactions in correct order, there is no negative inventory and you never backdate anything which is tough ask for most businesses.
And it turns out businesses do care about correct costs on transactional level because then you can show gross profit margin per order, per invoice, per customer for period etc.
The innovation Manager brings to inventory is that you can backdate recalculation and make your historical costs per transaction always correct no matter how complex your inventory or manufacturing is. It’s just that this benefit is not very obvious because Manager doesn’t have reports exposing these benefits. Also, Manager should be proactive by offering to recalculate inventory costs anytime it sees they are inaccurate. Then the process wouldn’t feel too manual.
I’m going to be working on inventory costing workflow in upcoming days. It’s something I want to improve asap.
“Hard coding” of cost (for lack of a better term) is definitely the right way moving forward and it is a big improvement for Manager, and I agree that the ergonomics of this could be improved.
I, myself, am guilty of spamming Recalculate button sometimes.
I think there’s no single solution that will check all the boxes, but maybe a combination of the following could strike a balance:
An automatic update of cost for items purchased
A smart recalculate just as you plan to do which, if I may suggest, should be present on Inventory Items tab as well as related Reports.
True and also true.
Both of these are extremely important for different set of financial statement users, however, I don’t see how both can be met without compromise – it’s the old relevance vs. reliability of accounting data conundrum.
But not all hope is lost; I can’t wait for you @lubos to prove me wrong on this though since there’s always a solution to be found.