What is the purpose of the Recalculate button in the Inventory Items tab?
And why is the calculation not performed automatically and accurately without requiring user intervention?
It is not practical to process a transaction and then repeatedly return to the Inventory Items tab to click Recalculate, whether after every transaction or after several transactions.
In many cases, I am asked to generate reports unexpectedly, and I may forget to click Recalculate, which can lead to inaccurate report results.
I would appreciate clarification on the reason behind this design choice, and whether there are any plans to make the calculation automatic in order to avoid such issues.
The issue is if it’s automatic, then in case of negative inventory, you either have to make retrospective adjustments to costs once negative inventory recovers or just make them on the day of recovery.
If it’s retrospective - it’s dangerous. You probably don’t want past figures to change unexpectedly.
If it’s on the day negative inventory recovers, it makes it difficult to trace it what is going on. For example, sale was made in previous accounting period and cost of sales was incurred in new accounting period. Difficult to tell why, especially in complex inventory scenarios involving production orders.
The recalculate button does option 1 but only starting from lock date so your inventory figures do not change prior. And it’s not automatic because if you temporarily lift lock date, you don’t want to trigger automatic recalculation to the beginning.
Other accounting systems kind of make it look like automatic but their inventory calculations are almost always wrong on transactional level so you can’t get things like gross profit margin per invoice, per customer, per project etc.
I think we don’t really need much to make this feel less “manual”. The system just needs to detect “recalculation” is necessary and actively suggest it to you. And we still retain benefits of being able to see gross profit margin on transaction level.
Thank you for the detailed explanation — it makes sense from an accounting safety perspective.
As a possible improvement, would it be feasible to add an optional setting to prevent sales when inventory is insufficient?
This could help eliminate negative inventory scenarios altogether for users who do not allow selling without stock, thereby reducing the need for recalculation and avoiding cost allocation complexities.
Making this behavior configurable (On/Off) would allow businesses with different operational models to choose what fits them best, while still preserving the accuracy of gross profit at transaction level.
I believe this could be a practical preventive solution rather than relying on post-transaction recalculation.
Hi Lubos,
I just wanted to politely follow up on my previous suggestion regarding adding an optional setting to prevent sales when inventory is insufficient.
I understand you may be busy, but I thought the idea could be relevant in the context of avoiding negative inventory and reducing the need for manual recalculation.
I’d really appreciate your thoughts whenever you have time.
Thank you for your continued work on Manager — it’s a great system.
That’s a valid point. Preventing sales would not eliminate all negative inventory scenarios, especially those caused by deleting or modifying purchase transactions afterward.
My suggestion was mainly to prevent new sales transactions from being saved when inventory is insufficient at that point in time.
For retrospective changes (such as modifying or deleting purchases), the system could warn the user or require explicit confirmation if such action would result in negative inventory.
This would still reduce most negative inventory cases upfront, while keeping flexibility and transparency when historical data is altered.
