If all sales of inventory items have to be posted to one GL account is it then necessary to journal from Sales Inventory items to individual Sales accounts?
My understanding is that there is only one Inventory Account and each inventory item cannot be linked to a Sales Account therefore when items are sold we finish up with
Sales of Inventory Items and therefore must create a journal if we want an itemised set of sales figures
Hi Keith if you go to reports you will find a report called inventory marging. You can use this report to know the sales and purchases with respect to their items. So inventory items will be lined up and their respective sales and purchases will be displayed it goes on to show their profit in value and percentage
Thank you for your response but it not what Im looking for. I need the GL, or Profit and loss if you like, to show something more than sales of inventory items . For example Sales Confectionary, Sales of Soft Drinks, are all inventory items but unless I’m mistaken they will appear in the P & L as one item (Sales of Inventory )?
@keith, I believe that if you look at typical P&L statements, you will see income and expenses are categorized by fairly broad descriptions. P&L statements are not meant as detailed sales analyses. Normally, a P&L statement breaks things down only as revenue from primary activities (operating income) and secondary activities (non-operating income), with no reference at all to lines of business, let alone specific products.
The focus of the P&L statement is to summarize profitability. The format will look quite similar no matter what type of business is involved. To break things down as you suggest, you should really be looking to various forms of inventory movement analyses.
However, if you are selling confections and soft drinks, inventory might not be appropriate for you at all. Inventory refers to goods purchased or manufactured and held for later sale. If all your sales are for items of food and drink, you might be better served (no pun intended) to simply list expenses for purchase of supplies and record income in the various categories you choose. You would not need to go through the inventory module at all. That will depend, to some extent, on whether you are a wholesaler or retailer and how long supplies stay around before they are sold to your end customers. Your accountant should be consulted on this. There may also be regulatory requirements to satisfy on how you report the acquisition and disposition of these items.
okay so if you have a grocery store with a about 30 different product do you think it nice to show everything? I think the Profit and loss statement must show a summary and a special report for the details
Groceries would be broken down in a P &L like this
That’s what Inventory module should do. You create an inventory item called Full Cream Milk you then place it in a group linked to a GL Account called Dairy Items - Inventory
It’s not currently possible to report inventory items under multiple general ledger accounts.
This is not just issue with inventory items though. I think there is valid use across the whole program. For example, all invoices are currently shown under Accounts receivable account but perhaps there is someone who would prefer to have two control accounts on balance sheet: Trade debtors and Other debtors.
So I’m definitely going to tackle this in upcoming months. Not just for inventory but for other modules too.
Thank you, I look forward to an update.
We do not have a need for Other debtors but the concept of being able to create multiple control accounts would be a major step forward
manager account is a great software I feel the only short come being its inventory module should linked to multi G L accounts and its sale of inventory account and purchase of inventory should to linked to multi general account to make the reports in profit and loss account or in balance sheet more elaborate.
I agree with your reservation from AFS perspective, but for periodic/monthly management accounting review one needs the Sales and COS sub-accounts on the P&L also - I think many users will enjoy that option (ie. match inventory items to a Sales/COS Income/Expense on chart of account.
eg. with my club accounts some inventory items have no profit as they are just a direct recovery of an expense per member, but inventory still needs to be tracked …it would be great to separate these from profitable inventory items.
(otherwise amazing free accounting software - very happy thanks!)
@grant, this is something which is now #1 item on the roadmap so expect this very soon.
Thank you for following through on this. I am confident that you will benefit from the effort.
Love the product and love your responsiveness
Keep up the great work