I am using Manager for my agriculture which I do as a side job. It works very well and I want to use the chance to say thanks to all the developers.
Lately I wanted to start adding inventory items. My problem is, that I just can´t find a way to do it properly and have a item cost displayed.
Currently I have just 2 items, bags of flour with different size, so one with 1kg and one with 2,5kg. But I don´t have a purchase price in a line item from a supplier. I bring my grain to a mill and they grind it to flour. But I don´t get a invoice saying 1,39€ for a 1kg bag. The invoice has different lines, for example “goods receipt” (per 100kg), “Cleaning” (per 100kg), then the milling fee (per 100kg) and packaging costs. To be as difficult as possible the delivered amount of grain is not the amount of flour received because each step has a bit loss. To complex it even more, I deliver for example 600kg grain and I get 200 1kg and 100 2,kg bags from it. I can calculate the cost per 1kg bag, so I know it is 1,39€ for me for a 1kg bag, but I don´t find any way to get it into Manager, like a manual cost per item.
I have tried to add a line item of the inventory item in the invoice I received from the mill with zero pieces, but it doesn´t help.
Also I tried via settings and “Inventory unit costs”, it doesn´t work as well.
Any idea how I can handle this?
If there is no way, I am fine with just having the item amounts to keep track of my stock.
Best
Fabian
Update: If I create a “Dummy” Invoice with the respective line items and unit costs and add a negative line getting the invoice amount to 0€ it works. So I have a invoice which don´t need to be paid and amount 0€ and the item costs are correct. But I don´t know if this is the smartest way to do it
Update 2: the way described in Update did not work, because it would additionally book a “Cost of goods sold” to my balance
and just keeping track of my stock won´t work as well because if I just book a goods receipt I see the amount in Qty on hand but not in Qty owned, so as soon as I sell items, the qty owned will get negative
thanks for the update. I have searched the forum of course and I have read all the articles already. None of them did answer my question.
But, I am absolutely aware that my request is a very special kind of, because I do not purchase a product itself, I purchase/pay a “service” which then generates a product.
I have found a way yesterday late evening which can work for me.
I book the “services” as a separate “item” and then create internally a production order which includes the service items. I do need to calculate a factor to allocate the items in the appropiate amount but this works fine for me. The item cost look good.
So, if someone else is having the same issue:
create the service items as a separate catalog item
Book them via purchase invoice into the stock
then use this stock with production orders to stock the final product
the service items should be on 0 pieces at the end of this
Your situation is not unusual and Manager already includes the option to Add non-inventory costs. Obviously you need to manually create one or more non-inventory expense accounts in the Chart of Accounts under Settings such as “Production Service Costs”.
If non-inventory costs, such as wages, consumables, or overhead allocations are required to produce the finished inventory item(s), check the box to Add non-inventory cost into production. Enter accounts to which the costs will be posted and the amounts. Add lines if necessary:
Manager will add the non-inventory costs to the current average cost of inventory item(s) consumed by the production order to calculate the cost of the produced inventory item(s).
In the Inventory Items tab, the quantity of the manufactured inventory item will increase while the quantities of input inventory items will decrease by the quantities included in the production order.
Example
Brilliant Industries creates a production order to build three table lamps for its north warehouse. Each lamp uses one each of three other parts in stock. Brilliant also includes 75.00 worth of manufacturing labor in the cost of the three lamps (25.00 each):
The way I described before has had a little negative impact. In the Balance there were the amount of the purchase invoice and a negative amount for cost of goods because the purchased “products” went into production. It has the same result at the end but it was not correct. The way you sent me should work perfect. It is a kind of a other way I currently work today because as soon as I get the invoice from the mill I book it as expense, but I have no stock, so I go into negative balance and with the sales I get to positive back again, but this could be in another year. So the financial correct way is like you described and having the goods as a value in “assets” tab in the balance.
I just tried the complete way in my “test” company!
I will experiment a little bit further with the way you sent me and the way I tried before.
