I’ve decided that keeping track of every square inch of material I use to create a product has become incredibly tedious and not worth my time. My average COGS each month is approximately $15.
I’d like to record all purchases straight to COGS but I’d also like to keep track of some inventory quantity balances. So, I’ll have inventory quantities but no cost. So, my Inventory GL account
Does anyone have any suggestions for how I should do this?
Have material stock cards and every time you use some, adjust the figure on the card to represent the remaining quantity.
Note that @Brucanna’s suggestion results in keeping track of your materials entirely outside Manager. When you do this, you are no longer explicitly recording cost of goods sold. Instead, you are tracking material as a consumable supply. This is entirely appropriate as long as you plan to use it within an accounting period or it is of minimal value (as you said it is). Local regulations, though, may include the requirement that such supplies are specifically not subject to physical counting. Check local laws.
The purpose of such regulations is so taxpayers cannot claim immediate expenses for items lingering in inventory and thus avoid paying income tax. But, for example, no one would expect a carpenter to inventory nails in an opened carton. You could certainly make the claim that you are not “keeping track of every square inch of material” as a way of satisfying any such requirement. But that may mean you want to make your informal tracking system very informal, akin to that carpenter looking into the carton and thinking “Hmmm…time to buy some more nails.” As long as you don’t produce any reports on material quantities, you will probably be fine.