Sorry but you missed my point. If you do not assign Cost Price and Sales Price amounts in inventory for the items the amount will be calculated as 0 as you can not manualy enter the amount (value).
We leave the Cost and Sales price blank and only enter these values in the invoices and/or receipts/payments.
There is no way on write-off to assign a cost price.
And your assumption that we have never used inventory write-offs is based on what observation?
@eko I would suggest that you test this fully in a test database and you will see how it works.
I atested in life database, I suggest you do a test also. Setup an inventory item without a sales and cost price. Do a write-off as suggested here and assing to promotions account. The value in promotion account will be caluclated 0 as I can not enter a cost price in the write-off.
two inventory purchases 50 @ $10, 50 @ $20. Average cost $15.
Inventory write-off of 10 items to Advertising & promotion account
$150 showing in advertising & promotion in Summary screen
I rest my case.
Yes, if you use invoices no problem! However, if you simply do a direct write-off as suggested then not. I rest my case too.
THis follows your own suggestion!
I did not use a sales invoice.
The Purchase invoices were shown to show you how inventory cost uses the average cost method.
You cannot write off inventory that you have not purchased. Inventory is purchased either via cash payment or Purchase invoice
Ok I know what is causing it to stay 0 in the live case I tried to apply it to. The inventory item was in the negative, something that I think has been discussed should be prevented as one should not be able to have - inventory on hand. As such the write-off can not be calculated. It works as advertised when inventory items are in the + and you do not wirte-off more than are available. Not sure if this is a bug or something that as user you need to be very alert of.
We have some inventory items in the negative as we buy and sell items in real time, but use bank statement imports to add the inventory payments and inventory-sales. So although it helps with bank reconciliations our actual inventory in Manager is not really up-to-date on daily basis but kind of on monthly basis. We actually do our sales and purchases also via a POS so not that bothered if inventory in Manager is in the negative. It would be good to prevent it going in the negative or at least give a warning.
This topic is about how to account for free samples, not about negative inventory.
I suggest you start a new topic if you wish to raise an issue about negative inventory.
I was dealing with free samples not working if one has negative inventory so it belongs here as well as somewhere else. Thanks!
Hi Tut
you are correct, I think better use write off inventory, but my problem is my stock or my inventory is not going down or whatever product i sell or i give away is not deducted from my inventory
Thanks
Hi eko
when i did the write off method, yes you dont put value but manager did calculate the value based on average cost already calculated, and was correctly posted on the chart of account right, but not deducted from the inventory, thats my problem
Thanks
correct my friend, your case is well explained but if you look at your inventory is dtill the same amounts, if you had W widget 100 units, after the wirte off or the sale still i have 100 units
And you still have not furnished the screen shots I requested in posts #15 and #20. Please understand; no one can help without that information (and possibly further information, depending on what we see).
Without negative inventory on hand, backorders cannot be indicated. And the write-off is calculated as intended, at the current average cost of zero. It is not a bug.
What you complain about here is that Manager does not foresee and protect you from your records being out of date when you enter a write-off. How is the program supposed to do that? You are writing off inventory you do not have on your books. Both quantities and financials will catch up when your purchasing records do.
Thanks guys, issue resolved 
Yeah, currently you can’t do inventory write-off for inventory you don’t own. I can see there is one use-case where it could be useful. You receive goods from supplier but supplier will issue you purchase invoice at some later date. So technically you do not own these inventory items yet but want to record inventory write-off because goods received from supplier were already given away as a free sample before supplier has even invoiced you for them. Then I guess Manager could have status on inventory write-off as “Pending”. Similar what has been already implemented on production orders when the actual production order is executed only after it can be fully costed.
As far as sale and purchase price on Inventory Item screen, it is just default price for autocomplete purposes. It has no impact on anything else. I will need to make that more obvious.
This method was super helpful. I had one additional question. What’s the best way to include shipping cost as part of the giveaway?
I have a payment imported from my bank account that I’m uncertain how to link to the manual entry.
