On 27 July my last jars of both large and medium raspberry jam sold. The next day I made new batch. Using separate production orders for each size, I registered the new batch in my inventory.
The jars sold on 27th had no item cost as they were my starting balance and I had previously been using cash based accounting. When the new batch was registered in manager on 28th it generated an item cost from the bill of materials.
When I went and looked at my summary later on the 28th, the changed item cost had been applied to the previous day’s sale of medium raspberry jam, but not the previous day’s sale of large raspberry jam.
is it supposed to do that? I have tried deleting and re-registering all related transactions and it still does the same thing.
You need to furnish more information. First, what do you mean by “register?” Exactly what transaction did you enter?
If you had inventory on hand when you began using Manager, you need to enter its starting balance, both quantity and value, regardless of whether you are using accrual or cash basis accounting. If you don’t, the product is considered to have no value by the program. Accrual and cash basis accounting are ways of reporting. They do not fundamentally change entries made to the program (except for apportioning prepaid items).
Again, we need more history here. Some screen shots would help.
The transactions entered were, the sales on the 27th, 3 production orders for different sizes on the 28th, there was also a sale of raspberry jam from the new batch later on the 28th, that I re-entered in case it had been upsetting something.
having used cash based accounting meant I had no idea of product value, because the expenses had already been registered in my ledger and I didn’t keep track of them per batch, especially as I buy seasonal fruit in bulk and freeze it. If I took the new product value calculated by manger and applied it to the starting balance that might completely fix the problem…
the top item is a sale from the 27th, but it seems to be registering it on the 28th, and therefore using the item cost generated by the new batch. All the transactions labelled ‘Various Customers’ were entered in a single receipt.
Your additional information does not get us where we need to be. I asked exactly what transactions you had entered. You responded “the sales”, “production orders”, “a sale” and so on. I need to know what type of transaction you used for the sales. Did you enter a cash receipt? Or a sales invoice? Be specific. Diagnosing a problem on the basis of vague descriptions doesn’t work.
As for your starting balances, you have to put something in. A production order to make a product out of no-cost inventory produces a no-cost final product. Presumably you can go back in your records and see what you paid for seasonal fruit and make some rational estimate of cost for the starting balance.
Basically, you’re going to have to generate a narrative of everything you’ve done in Manager before anyone will be able to tell if you’re doing things correctly.
I know the coast of raw materials, so those were entered when I created my starting balances. The cost Manager generated from creating the new batch was fairly accurate. If I took that generated cost I could apply it to the starting balance, and possibly have rough item cost for my previous batches of raspberry jam.
Please be patient with me as I’m just getting things sorted and am not sure which information is necessary and which will just clutter my post.
done that now, so my raspberry jam all has starting balance costs. However, the medium raspberry sold on the 27th, still appears to register on the 28th instead of the 27th.
That’s probably the best you could ever do given the less detailed records you were keeping before. But that will be close enough, I think. In fact, should you ever exhaust your supply of finished raspberry jam, new batches will be completely accurate. Until then, you’ll only have a slight impact on calculated profit margin for that product.
As patient as you need. Just know that the more detail you can provide, the easier it is to troubleshoot any problems.
Post a screen shot of the Edit screen for one of those transactions. Obscure any personal information about customers, if necessary. But the “various customers” transaction should serve for this purpose.
By the way, I’m assuming we’re working only the medium raspberry jam for now, so I’m not making any comments about other stuff yet.
Click the little X in the Item field for medium raspberry jam. Then reselect the same item. Tell me what happens.
If that doesn’t fix the Inventory - cost account, delete the entire receipt and re-enter it. (Your screen shot will remind you of exactly what was on it.) Tell me what happens if you have to go this far.
I got sidetracked reading all the other information in your posts. I think the solution is contained in the second sentence of your first paragraph. You made the medium raspberry the day after you sold it. So Manager thinks the transaction cannot have been completed (in terms of inventory cost, which is what you’ve showing) until the 28th.
So the solution lies not only in having a starting price, but also a starting quantity of the medium raspberry. See if that fixes things.
I already tried both of those (last sentence, first post), but I can try again if you like.
I had starting balance quantities even before I added the costs yesterday. One of the first things I checked when I found the problem was that my inventory hadn’t gone negative.
Time to reset. We’ve quoted and answered each other so many times, I’m not sure I’m following everything correctly. So let me restate everything as I understand the circumstances:
You entered a single cash receipt on 27 July for a range of products, including medium and raspberry jams. Inventory costs didn’t show up initially, because you had no costs entered for components. After some research, you went back and fixed that (for raspberry only) and inventory costs (for raspberry) now show up correctly.
You entered production orders for more raspberry jams in various sizes on 28 July. At that point, you noticed that the dates for raspberry sales on the 27th now appeared on the 28th. But you didn’t look before entering the production orders, so you can’t be sure what date showed for the raspberry sales before entering the production orders.
Experiments with deleting line items and entire cash receipts and re-entering them did not resolve the problem.
Unless I’ve missed it, you haven’t mentioned deleting the production orders and re-entering them.
Have I got all that right? If so, let’s try some more experiments. If you’re brave (some might say foolish), you might try these on your actual accounts. If you’re more conservative, make a backup of your business and add that as a new business (it will have the date in the name anyway). Play games with the backup to avoid potential problems. Here we go:
Confirm what version of Manager you are using (click About Manager).
Delete the raspberry production orders. Does the date go back to the 27th? If so, this confirms the problem is related to the production orders.
Add the production orders back. Does the date change back to the 28th? If not, there was something about the state of the database when the production orders were first created that caused the problem. Whatever that something was did not reappear. This could be useful debugging information.
Calculate and enter the starting cost figures related to another type of jam sold on the 27th. Let’s choose black currant, because that’s my favorite. Does entering these starting balances change the date of the black currant sale?
Create a production order for more black currant on the 28th. Does this change the sale date?
Please reference your answers to the numbers used above.
Thanks. Just to be sure, please update your software. You are relatively recent, but latest version is 17.7.52.
The fact that the inventory cost for the cash receipt for the raspberry goes away when you delete the production orders is beyond bizarre. Everything else remains, whether there were starting balances or not and hence whether or not there were costs to allocate.
The fact that duplicating the process you went through for raspberry jam production orders with another flavor, yet saw different results from the same cash receipt points to that one line item as the problem. Yet deleting and re-entering it didn’t have any effect.
I’m going to invite @lubos, the developer, into this conversation. He may want to do a team viewer session order have you send in your accounting file for troubleshooting. I can’t figure this one out.
I can reproduce this problem by manipulating the Quantity on hand Stating Balance for an Inventory Item. I’m not sure it is so much a bug as a case of nonsense in, nonsense out, so I will leave it to others to decide.
I created an Inventory Item called Medium raspberry jam (RJM) and set the starting balance:
That RJM was sold by a cash receipt on 27/07/2017. Using a Production Order, I produced another RJM on 28/07/2017, and sold it the same day. The Summary / Inventory - cost correctly displays these transactions.
I then edited the RJM Inventory Item and set the Starting balance Qty on hand to 0:
Now, in Summary / Inventory - cost the cash sale that occurred on 28/07/2017 disappears and the cash sale that occurred on 27/07/2017 displays with a date of 28/07/2017:
If I switch the Starting balance Qty on hand back to 1, the Summary / Inventory - cost will correctly display the 2 transactions.
So @Eagle5 try editing your RJM Inventory Item by changing the Starting balance Qty on hand to a different amount and click update. Then change the Qty on hand back to the correct quantity and click update. Does your Summary / Inventory - cost now display correctly?
My starting balance is currently 1, if I up my starting balance to 2, it displays correctly. However, I only had one jar of that in my starting balance and had only sold one before I made more. Is it possible that a sale of raspberry jam invoiced to customer before my start date is interfering with something?
when I change it back it still displays incorrectly.
Just know that the more detail you can provide, the easier it is to troubleshoot any problems.
