Although I share @BawarYassin’s views on costing of inventories, the developer is of the view that inventory cost should never be estimated by Manager in any situation, whether it was production with negative stock or in this case returns of items not in stock.
I think there is value in Manager estimation of transaction costs mainly due to the following:
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Whatever effects of estimation on inventory value is highly likely to be corrected once the stock has been revalued at reporting dates.
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Non estimation could distort profit and loss statements and cause management to be confused.
The investigation done by @BawarYassin is commendable but normally the user wouldn’t be able to precisely point the finger on where the discrepancy originated. Much like this other topic:
These kinds of errors are difficult to catch and correct and – realistically – this would more likely than not cause management to blame it on the system rather than the original user error.
Imho, I would prefer if Manager could do the cost estimation, but in case it doesn’t, a raised flag of the document (Credit Note in this case) together with a journal view for each document could help users identify such discrepancies and manually correct for them when they arise.