Receiving Inventory Items without Payment

I operate in Ontario, Canada. This is as much an accounting question as one about the software. Having trouble figuring out how to make a workflow that will track the inventory properly, while keeping the sales receipts and supplier payment in sequence and in appropriate accounts.

Inventory is all received on account from a single supplier. It is sold retail and then I pay the supplier a wholesale price. Payment to the supplier is by Interac e-transfer. I haven’t used a cheque in years for anything.

The value of the items on any one purchase order is in excess of the payments due upon sales each week, and the sales of items do not align with a purchase order’s contents.

All sales are over the counter and recorded in a cash register. I have itemized sales records at the end of each day (Z report). Customers are not tracked individually. There are no warranty or other reasons to do so. Customer payments are received in cash or by Interac debit card in equal proportions.

I have run some trials and learned a bit more about Managers functions. It’s led to the following solution or maybe a hack.

Manager seems not to post items in inventory on the creation of a Purchase Order. This is useful. I can order from my supplier and receive the items without payment. When I record an item as sold in a Sales Invoice it will show a negative quantity in inventory. I then raise a Purchase Invoice that matches the items and quantities in the Sales Invoice so I can pay my supplier per our arrangement. Inventory should then be zero.
It only leaves me an issue of tracking the items the supplier sends me. Some of the items in any one PO may not be available. They may be shipped at different times or not at all.
I am considering two possibilities. One would be to set up a dummy company in Manager with just Inventory functions. i would generate POs here. But then I’d have to do dummy Purchase Invoices for items received so they would appear in the holding inventory. And I’d have to re-enter the sales information from the real company as dummy sales transactions so the inventory count would be reduced.
An alternative is to create a simple spreadsheet that will track items received and sold. Haven’t decided which way yet.
Anybody have advice on this?

This is by design. Ordering items does not add them to inventory. They might not be available, after all.

Don’t do it. You should be able to manage everything without resorting to twisted procedures like dummy companies and fake transactions. Use sales invoices when you sell something to a customer. Use purchase invoices when a supplier sells something to you, not when you order it. This way, things will be in balance. If you’ve ordered something and it is not available, your supplier should not invoice you for it until it is. If they do, reject their invoice. The bottom line is that standard accounting procedures work. And I see no reason for a parallel spreadsheet system. If you’re going to do that, what’s the point of having a real accounting tool like Manager?

Upcoming warehousing module is going to solve this. Right now, just keep track of physical location of your inventory items in external spreadsheet.

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