Purchase Price vs. Valuation

I am correcting inventory problems - overages in this case from the initial inventory figures entered when we started using Manager at the beginning of 2019. This requires me to be able to see what costs are in the system for each inventory item.

I can do a custom report that shows the ‘purchase price’ of inventory items. I can also use the Valuation Report provided in the inventory section to see the total valuation of a product (boy it would be nice to add the quantity of an item in a column in that report!). I made the assumption that the valuation should be the quantity of an inventory item times the purchase price. This seems to be completely false as the valuation report shows inventory items as having a valuation which the purchase price report shows no purchase price for an item at all. (Not to mention I have a particular inventory item that shows up in the program but doesn’t print in reports.)

I’m using desktop version 19.12.13.

Before I send a bunch of screen grabs, can someone explain perhaps what the ‘purchase price’ option is in the custom reports? Am I thinking about that all wrong?

Thanks.

The inventory is valued at average price over all the purchases, including any added charges such as freight, insurance

I understand that. Is the ‘purchase price’ just taken from what may or may not have been added when the inventory item was first added to the system or is it created by the internal system using valuation divided by quantity on hand to create the amount?

As I understand it, the value is based om purchase invoices

That was what I expected and so expected that, at the very least, I’d have values for the last time I purchased the item (even if not the correct ‘average’ the system stores. That does not seem to be the case though.

The “Purchase Price” is the price entered on the Inventory Item record. It is entered manually

It does not change to reflect purchases or sales

I have a feeling that the average price is not stored anywhere but I could be wrong

See this thread Inventory Cost Detail Report - URGENT

So - basically, in my world, the Purchase Price is pointless since it in no way actually gives me any idea of cost of an item.

At any point in time it has to be able to be calculated by the system - otherwise they wouldn’t know how much to move from Inventory on hand to COGS when a sale is made. They’re doing the math. Apparently they just don’t want to share that info with us.

Based on the link you posted they want us to go through and do the math again ourselves. THAT’s where problems start to crop up - us manually doing the math vs. using what they actually are doing can cause issues.

I have this same issue with the Production Orders section. Why do I have to do math in every single item inside the production to come up with the total for what I’m making. Seems like if I tell it I want 15 (and the system asks me how many I want to make) If it know how many are in 1 why can’t it just do the math for me.

Oh well. Seems like there’ll be a bunch of Excel spreadsheets in my future.

Thanks,

@KrisK - The Purchase Price is explain in the Guide - Create and manage inventory items | Manager

Also Production Orders is not a Bill of Materials - read this Ideas topic - Production Orders - Enhancements - #53 by mhassam_02

I’ve posted in the Bill Of Materials thread - just venting again here. Seems like simple math should be easy add-ins for the system. But, I’m not the programmer . . . .

In previous accounting software i had, the Purchase Price was determined by actual purchases, not simply put in by the user. (It showed the LAST purchase price, not an ongoing average but was still regularly updated.) So, yes, Purchase Price has little actual use since prices (especially with every changing shipping) change pretty much every time something is purchased.

Thanks.

While average cost can be calculated from a complete purchase history, a principal benefit of the method is the ability to calculate a rolling value from only the previous average cost, previous quantity, and current purchase information. That is faster and requires less data storage. If you need prior purchase details, look it up in the purchase transactions.