We have created a chart of accounts to reflect the type of business we do so we have Attendance Income, Meals Income, Transport Income set up as Income ledger codes. We have set up inventory Kits comprising inventory items for attendance, meals and transport referencing these inventory codes. However on cash and invoice sales, the Kits are posting to “Inventory Sales” rather than the component part ledger code… advice please?
You need to post screen images of the various transaction screens involved (sales invoice, kit setup, etc) to help understand and diagnose your problem and identify any error and/or bugs
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Thanks Joe,
We have worked around the problem by recreating the invoices and cash sales using the component parts but here are screenshots of the inventory kit set up and of the invoice creation. I can’t show you the absence of the allocations against the relevant ledger codes anymore because the work around has fixed it… but BOMs are not allocating to the component part ledger. The version of Manager is 18.4.87
Can you post the kit components details, please
I have a feeling that you are trying to use kits in a way that is not normal.
Kits are meant as collections of inventory items but the components of your kit (attendance & meal) are not really inventory items but just a way of charging specific expenses. After all, there is no stock of attendance fees or meals.
Non-inventory items are more in line with what you need , but I don’t think Kits can be used with non-inventory items.
I will check this out in a test business but …
Yes, I can see that the sales of a kit affect the quantity in stock of the individual items but that the sales income is not posted to the Custom Ledger income accounts associated with the components of the kits but is posted to the generic income account “Inventory - sales” which was created when you customise the business to include inventory items.
I can’t comment if this is the designed manner to treat this or if it is a bug.
I still stand by comments about mis-using the notion of inventory items to track your sales by type
@Fisionchips, you are definitely making some big problems for yourself. Inventory refers to tangible goods held for sale or production. To sell inventory items, you must buy inventory items. Inventory kits are groups of things that are purchased or produced and stocked separately, but that are sometimes sold together. For example, a nut and a bolt are both inventory items. You could sell them individually. But you could also sell a nut/bolt kit at a price discounted from the individual prices.
You are selling neither inventory items nor inventory kits. @Joe91 is correct; you should be selling non-inventory items. See Manager Cloud. But there are no non-inventory kits. Instead, you should define separate non-inventory items. You could, for example, set up a non-inventory item for Daily Attendance and another one for Daily Attendance with Meal.
However, since you seem to want to allocate income differently, you should not mix non-inventory items destined for one income account with those destined for another. Each non-inventory item can be allocated to only one account.
If you make this switch, you will find things much easier to manage. As an example, if a client attends four days in a week, consumes a meal on two of those days, and relies on your transportation once, you would raise a sales invoice (or cash receipt) with three non-inventory items: Attendance (qty 4), Meal (qty 2), and Transportation (qty 1). Tax codes would be selected as appropriate under local law.
Your chart of accounts can then be rid of all self- and automatically-created accounts related to inventory.
If you’ve been doing this for a while, you might consider starting a new business in Manager and carrying forward required starting balances. But the longer you go on with such a misuse of the program, the harder it will be to recover.
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Hi Joe and Tut, Thanks for your replies,
We wanted to establish Bills of Materials as an easier way for the bookeeper to invoice for the standard set of items i.e. a customer who attends will almost always have a meal but sometimes transportation. One line item instead of 2 or 3. Correct that we are not managing inventory because it is not a physical stock item but the component parts should, nevertheless be posted to the correct GL account. Are there any other considerations when using inventory stock in this way - we are not interested in stock levels - these can go negative as far as we are concerned. We merely want the postings made to the correct G/L account.
Joe - in answer to your question… unless there is a setting that I am missing, this could well be a bug. I have not come across an accounting or ERP system that behaves this way.
This is just as easy with non-inventory items. And it is correct. They behave the same way as inventory items, but don’t completely confuse your records (and potential auditors).
They will be, because you will define appropriate accounts when creating the non-inventory items.
Yes. As I said before, this will completely distort your balance sheet. It also unnecessarily complicates your chart of accounts with automatically activated accounts related to inventory you don’t have.
As for where inventory kits post, there are some known limitations in the program currently that are being worked on. But this should not concern you, because you should not be using either inventory items or inventory kits to account for your services. Both assume asset value exists in the inventory prior to the sale. That is just not true when you sell services. Every day you continue this practice, you are digging yourself deeper and deeper into an accounting hole that you will eventually have to climb out of.
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Hi Joe, Tut,
I discussed this with our accountant who agrees that these items should be posting to the component G/L account. This is the way all other ERP/accounting systems we have worked with work.
So i will try and create a BOM of non inventory items and trial this… i won’t be able to do this until later next week however as I am away at the moment.
I shall post back the results here when I have trialled it.
I agree. That is why I told you the inventory kit feature needed work. There is an actual bug related it that has been pending for more than a year.
I am not certain exactly what you mean by “BOM of non inventory items.” Bills of material are part of production orders, not non-inventory items. In Manager, non-inventory items stand by themselves. While they can be used for any sales or purchase transaction, they cannot be used for production orders. Nor can one be a combination of others the way inventory kits are combinations of inventory items. You need distinct non-inventory items if you want to enter them as combinations: A, B, C, A+B, A+C, etc. But speaking from experience, they are easier to use when they are not combinations, because you don’t have to guess at the full description when selecting in the Item dropdown box from the item names.
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