I would like to suggest a feature in user permission. This suggestion originates from our concern of access allowed to a user to inventory related tabs . In the inventory tab , there are column of average cost & total cost. This information exposes to a user the average cost of a product and the profit margin of the company which, logically speaking, is strictly confidential information. Actually, this information is very sensitive and top confidential supposed to be limited only to upper Management. The company becomes prone to serious harm if the cost are exposed to competitors.
In our situation, the inputs are managed by several users who are given access according to the task assigned to each. No one user has access to all the tabs. However, we find ourselves in a serious disadvantage where we have given userās access to inventory items. There, all the information of our products cost is available to them. This is very serious and peril for our company with constant concern about the information visible to the user lest he exposes it to our competitors. In such situation, it would be very very harmful to our company if the competitor has information of our real and exact costing, please understand.
So, it is our suggestion to hide the average cost & total cost columns by an option as below in user permission features:
I wonder if this feature can be added. But, if it can, no doubt, it would be a great feature for MANAGER and, I am sure, many users will find it extremely useful to protect this sensitive information.
I do not see any benefit of hiding average cost. That only represents your buying history. You are still suggesting to show Purchase price and Sales price, which is where your profit margin comes from. Now, you might say those fields are optional. But that means you need separate price lists floating around the company somewhere in order to create invoices. Those present the same risk.
@tut, you really have a sharp eye and in-depth mind .
What you said is true, the purchase price column is also an indicator of our cost. Actually, while we are concerned to hide is cost of product, selling prices is no issue. Yes, purchase price also needs to be covered up. Since, you have such vast knowledge, may I seek a workaround to my concern. Perhaps, exclusion of Purchase price column could be helpful together with average cost and total cost. Actually, a complete product is made up of several bills of material, so it not easy to find out the cost unless it is right there for you to see. Just for your information, in our scenario, the production, purchase and sales - all are being handled by different users. All having access only to those tabs required for their assigned task. Thus, we will definitely find my suggestion helpful and workable.
So, Iām convinced, the exclusions of column of purchase price, average cost & total cost could safely give me the required expected protection.
You already seem to be following one workaround: you donāt seem to enter purchase prices for your inventory items. So whether that column shows does not matter. I have no workaround for your other concerns except to hire more trustworthy employees. But I would also question what benefit your competitors might get by knowing your costs. If they are competitive, it is because they can also obtain the same goods at the same or better costs. So why would they care what you buy things for? What they really care about is what do you sell for.
I work in a company with proper hierarchy structure & completely understand sonic. My company uses this as a secondary software (its a good cloud alternative in many aspects) but we are severely bottle necked if we fully deploy this, as most of our company officers are not allowed to use it;
Due to incorrect permission allocation.
The sole purpose of an inventory controller or official is to record, label, manage & maintain inventory. They have no business in viewing the costs as that falls upon the purchase managers domain. On the other hand only the higher management seldom āneedā; this information to present & evaluate in meetings.
Similarly, the sale price has nothing to do with an inventory official. Its for the āSales teamā only. We can go back and forth but this is the plain and simple fact.
Likewise Sales invoices should be viewable once after generation and after manager approval shouldnāt be available to a (simply titled) sales officer. It defeats the purpose of Hierarchy and privacy. The sales invoices and such closing details of any business day should only be available to the sales supervisor/manager.
This is what hinders manager from reaching top tier. Apart from these issues, i feel manager has all features that a top tier accounting ERP would have ((Apart from CRM or BI Integration, which is a whole other story)). If this feature would be available i would be kicking out higher priced old brands for a lightweight champ like manager in our firm easily, for 65+ users !
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