Update inventory for custom fields

Hello everyone! thanks for your work on this great accounting system, I would like to know if Manager can perform this task (I am sorry in case I am repeating thread). I purchase a product based on weight, that’s the way the supplier invoice it, but it comes packed in rolls, Manager has performed perfectly keeping track on entries and exits adding kg when I purchase and subtracting them when I sell (both purchase and sales invoices are done in kg) but I would like to have an inventory statement in rolls too, since customers put their orders in rolls (although they know they will receive the invoice in kg.) I have created custom fields for purchase and sales invoices, but they do not add up or subtract when a purchase or sale is done, just the kg. I’ll really appreciate some help here, thanks in advance.

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You are basically out of luck. You will find many discussions on the forum of buying inventory items in one unit of measure and selling them in another. An example is buying by the case and selling by the bottle. In those situations, you can use production orders to convert one to the other.

But you want to buy and sell by the kilogram, but then track your inventory by the roll. Inventory items can have only have one unit of measure.

Your best option is to continue buying and selling by the kilogram. When you want a report in rolls, produce whatever list or report in kilograms, copy it, and paste the copy into a spreadsheet. Make the conversion in the spreadsheet.

Thanks Tut, :pensive: well it’s a shame, but I really appreciate your help on this, that inventory can be traced only with the numbers entered on the predetermined quantity field. Regards :pray:t3:

Do the quantities in weight and in rolls have a fixed proportion? I was thinking, but I still have to test itthat you can use Inventory Kits made up of two items:

  1. quantity in weight and cost per units
  2. quantity in rolls

When you buy you have two register two lines for two items and when you sell one kit.

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Interesting idea! I didn’t know Manager could do that. Well, they do not have the same proportion, i.e. each roll has a different weight. So for example, the supplier invoice me 100 rolls for a total of 3,500 kg, when I enter the supplier invoice to the system, I put in the predetermined quantity field 3,500 and in the custom field 100, when I start selling, let’s say 50 rolls which weight in total 1,850, And I go to Manager to check inventory, it says I have 1,650 kg available which is correct, but the custom field keeps saying 100 units. Up to this time, I have kept track of this manually.

This is an intriguing idea, @Davide. Leave it to you to think up another creative use for inventory kits. But I think there may be problems:

  • Inventory kits are not represented in some of the built-in reports. Only their constituent items show up. But maybe you can circumvent that with custom reports.
  • While you can enter line items with blank quantities but unit prices, I am not sure it will work out the other way, with quantities but no costs. I experimented very briefly with this and can tell you things got very confusing very quickly. I foresee the potential for whoever uses this inventory structure to become easily mixed up.

@wmartinez, ignore your thoughts about custom fields not changing. If @Davide’s idea works, you won’t need custom fields. The inventory item created for the rolls will keep track of everything. But the entire scheme would depend on the ratio between weight and rolls being constant for a given inventory item.

@Davide, if you are going to test this further, I look forward to your results.

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Just few questions because I have two possible solutions and one is so much easier.

  1. can we assume that each inventory item typology has always the same conversion rate between weight and rolls? Example: 1 roll of Item A is 50kg - 1 roll of Item B is 75 kg
  2. do you always buy in weight?
  3. do you need to show on the selling invoice both the weight and the rolls at the same time?
  4. what kind of report do you need with the secondary unit (rolls)?
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Sure!

  1. No, each team varies in itself, for example, I could have 2 rolls from item A and both will have different weight.
  2. Yes
  3. Yes I do. For example, on the selling invoice the input is: Item A - X kg. - X units - X price - Total
  4. All I would need from the system is to keep track of entries and exits, and to give me at all times the exact amount of units (rolls) available. The same way it does with the quantity field on the purchase and selling invoices.

Based on your answers to @Davide, I think you should switch to rolls as your unit of measure. If necessary, duplicate items measured in kilograms can be used for purchases. Then production orders can be used to immediately convert to rolls based on the ratio for the specific lot.

You should investigate whether your suppliers will sell in rolls, possibly with separate annotations of corresponding weight. After all, you are their customer. If I were in their place, I would happily sell rolls, meters, or furlongs and do whatever I had to to make things work in my own inventory system. Nothing says they cannot ship 20 rolls and weigh them as they go out.

Thanks Tut, well, I think it might not be practical because rolls of item A for example could weight in average 20 kg, when rolls in item B 27kg and item C 32 item D 40 and so on, and since my supplier makes this rolls out from commodities he buys in kg too, that’s why he sells in kg (pre cured tread rubber) So ask them to sell in roll, my guess is they could have to calculate several averages and study the price point where they wouldn’t loose money. I’ll dig a little bit into this “kit” option, and see if it works, and I’ll come back soon.

@wmartinez, I had a much simpler approach in mind. And it does not matter that average weight per roll varies from product to product:

  1. You order, for example, 20 rolls. In communication with your supplier, you convey that you understand he will sell you X kilograms. (The only assumption at this point is that a roll is typically of an approximate size. The approximation does not have to be exact at all, only close enough that by ordering 20 rolls you know about how much you will receive.) You enter the purchase order (if you are using those) in rolls. Put a note on it that this will be approximately X kg and you will accept more or less.

  2. Your supplier ships you 20 rolls and charges you for X kg. (My assumption here is that your supplier is already weighing the rolls, either at the time of shipment or when they were first cut from his bigger commodity purchase.)

  3. You enter your purchase invoice for 20 rolls rather than X kg. This can be copied from your earlier purchase order (again, if you use those). You will have to do a little arithmetic to determine the unit price per roll, since the supplier’s unit price will be per kg.

  4. You sell by the roll or fraction of a roll.

Now, if you want a more complicated life, you can create duplicate inventory items so you can purchase from your supplier in kg, issue a production order to convert to rolls so you can track things in the warehouse, then use another production order convert back to kg to sell to customers.

This is no different from a merchant who buys olive oil by the drum and sells by the liter. You have to make a decision what is the easiest unit of measure for the internal tracking you want to do, then figure out how to do conversions on the front and back end.

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So I don’t think that inventory items will work for you. How about keeping the existing custom fields and create a report in Report Transformation that will do calculations also on those custom fields?

Since you cannot share custom fields between purchase invoice and sales invoices you will have two different ones both of them with positive amount and than do all the calculation inside the report.

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Thanks Tut, the first solution might definitely work, I could do that, I’ll give it a try and see if that suits us, and come back to you. I appreciate.

Hi @Davide if I understood well, that could help a lot, I mean two reports, one for entries and one for exits will definitely simplify work, but I am afraid I don’t know how to generate those. Do I have to go to “custom reports”? and then one field I assume should be “inventory” subgroup “units”? thanks in advance

You cannot use Custom Reports (easiest way to create a custom output) for two main reasons that hopefully will be solved in the near future:

  1. Since you are working at line level you cannot set custom fields typology (number) and so you will not get subtotals and totals
  2. You cannot share the same custom fields between sales and purchase invoices and so you cannot load and unload that field.

So you have to use Report Transformation that was recently introduced and that we are all still studying.

Ok, I found the report transformation option, but under type it only offers me 4 options, 2 for taxes and 2 for employees. I don’t know how to handle this.

I think you should update your Manager to latest version.

I just did, thanks, since I recently downloaded again, I thought it was updated. Now, I can’t find a way in the guide section on how to learn what to put on the script field.

Please read this thread

There is no guide since everything is still WIP

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I think your problem is not with the Manager software but with the way you are thinking about this problem. Your supplier is obviously unable to produce a standard weight roll for some reason, so they do what they can (sell it by weight) and you happily abide by that.

You then want to sell it by the roll (which is the way you look at it) but the rolls vary in weight. You have convinced your customers to buy the product from you in rolls and they are happy to abide by that (the way they now look at the product).

One simple answer is for you to switch looking at the product as rolls of varying weight, and look at it as weights of varying length. Sell it by weight.

Then Manager will be able to track your stock levels accurately, there will be no problems with rolls having different sell prices, no problems with one roll being mistaken for another roll (of different weight) and everyone is working in the same unit calculation.

If you stop looking at your product as rolls of rubber and look at it as Kilos of Rubber, which happen to be rolled-up, you may find yourself in a happy place.