We have purchased inventory stock item and wish to allocate those costs to a project at the purchase invoice level. The option to do so is greyed out. Non inventory items and other costs are OK to allocate to a project. see image below.
Being unable to do this will potentially report project performance incorrectly. Any help appreciated.
That would be faulty accounting. Inventory is an asset of the business or division, not a project.
So do I understand you correctly we cannot use stock / inventory for / on a project report?
I didn’t say that. I said you cannot purchase them for a project. Inventory consumed on a project is allocated to the project by a sales invoice as it is used.
Think about this. A project is not a storage location for inventory.
We are ultimately talking about project performance - How are inventory items which are available for sales and projects in a businesses day to day activity not able to be “tagged” as part of a project?
If it could then the project costing can be accurately reflected?
I will point out that Sales of inventory in Invoices can be “tagged” as part of a project. So why OK for sales and not OK for purchases?
Because inventory you buy is an asset. Inventory you sell is income and a cost of goods expense. Projects record income and expenses.
It can be argued any way but it seems to me that any item purchased that has an inventory code ie already an inventory item cannot be allocated to a Project when purchased. From an operational point the Project crew will now be raising a PO then PI with a supplier where the product will need to be split in order for what will go to inventory will remain inventory and then in the same PI add another line for the same inventory item but modified to use the “cost of purchases” account or similar in place of inventory.
Somewhat clumsy though given the Project feature appears to simply be a “filter” collecting and grouping Sales and Cost and no bearing on overall accounting. Having the project functionality at the point of inventory purchase can potentially speed things up use actual cost not average cost.
There maybe benefit to some users if assets were able to be own / reported against projects.
Items purchased for a project may fall in to this class.
However
Enabling inventory item to be assigned to a use or project prior to the sales invoice or stock movement would be a massive change to how Manager treats invoice item. In Manager all invoice items are assumed to be identical and interchangeable. That is how inventory items are valued. Assigning some items to a project would imply a fundamental change in how Manager accounts for inventory.
A possible work around would be to use project specific inventory items for project specific inventory. Alternatively using a different inventory location for specific projects may provide the desired separation.
Two things:
Over to the powers that be, cheers.
