Inventory control and COGS

[benreu]

Inventory control and COGS is in a sad state.

To tackle inventory, we need to look at the current status of products. It appears to me products could have 3 states:

Expense (COGS upon posting PO)
Non-inventory (COGS upon selling)
Inventory (track value in inventory and use this number for COGS upon selling)

In Posting, products already have a multi-state:

Sellable
Purchasable
Manufactured
Job

Purchasable and Manufactured are mutually exclusive. The Job is not done yet. At completion, the individual Jobs on order are supposed to show up in the Time Clock (by request of a user). It may not be apparent, but the user can drag and drop a product from various product windows to an invoice. So sellable and purchasable are merely a convenience to hide/show products in the invoice and PO windows.

With that in mind, I believe products should have a type widget, with the 3 states first outlined. The last 4 multi-states may or may not be necessary going forward. Furthermore, it seems to me that an inventory/non-inventory product should not be convertible to an expense product, as history needs to be taken in consideration.

Any suggestions/ideas welcome.

[rcooke]

You have to explain what your inventory workflow is. There are many possibilities such as:

1. Buy raw parts and have an assembly method/procedure that shows what parts are used to make a stock item (which then has its own part number).
2. Buy COTS that you resale, maybe bundle with other COTS into a new number and sell. You could also "value add" Cots before resale in some way.
3. Buy bolts of cloth, which you sell by the foot/yard/meter etc. (Textile inventory is the worst case IMO).

Which scenario are you?

As an aside, anything owned by the company is potentially saleable (can go on an invoice). I've sold jigs, tools, spare parts, development systems, etc.

[benreu]

1. I use quite a bit in my business.
2. I don't use, yet. It would be a nice addition.
3. I use for buying and selling wire, heat shrink, and etc. It's not only textile that makes for difficult inventory :(

Besides that is normal inventory. You buy 1 piece(s), and you sell you 1 piece(s).

Ideally, Posting would support all types of inventory and all business scenarios. The real life scenario is that very few people have the programming skills and time to bring an open source accounting system to this level.