Inventory Costing Recalculations on Inventory Adjustments
When you enter an inventory adjustment or inventory adjustment worksheet and use the current date, then there is no need to recalculate inventory costing. However, if you back-date the adjustment, inventory costing recalculations are likely to be required.
-
A back-dated inventory adjustment worksheet recalculates inventory costing on all items.
-
A back-dated inventory adjustment recalculates inventory costing only for the items on the adjustment.
The amount of time it takes to complete the necessary costing recalculations depends on the amount of data affected by the change.
Recalculation Time
Typically, the calculations required to update the costing history for a particular item can be completed in a short period. Perhaps, as short as a few hours. This is true if you enter transactions on the same day that they occur. If you change information about a purchase at the beginning of the item's history, that change can affect the costing on all subsequent sales.
Lengthy recalculations are normally due to an edit to a transaction that occurred at some point early in the transaction history of an item. Length recalculations are also due to edits to edits to transaction history of many different items. In that case, the recalculation must go through all subsequent transactions for that item to evaluate what costing adjustments need to be made.
For example, you insert a transaction dated one year prior to the current date. Many transactions were entered between the date of the inserted transaction and the current date. These transactions require an inventory costing update. Another example, you changed a transaction from two years earlier but since then you entered only a few transactions with that item. In such a case, there is not a large quantity of data to be recalculated.
Inventory Costing Recalculations and Reports
When you run a report, you could encounter a message regarding inventory costing calculations.
Changes to items on a transaction that have inventory impact and update costing history, the costing for those items might need to be recalculated. These calculations can run immediately or overnight.
While these calculations are being made, when you view a report that is affected by the calculations, a message appears on the report. The message indicates that the report values might change when the calculations are complete.
After the inventory costing recalculations complete, the message no longer appears when you view the report.
Select Display Title from report Options to read the messages.
Inventory Costing and Closed Accounting Periods
If you open a previously closed accounting period and then edit an inventory transaction from that period, note the following. The costing changes you enter for items on the changed transaction propagate to all subsequent related transactions. Therefore, you must run a complete inventory costing recalculation.
Before you close the accounting period again, verify that the recalculation is complete. If you close the period while inventory costing is being calculated, it can affect the accuracy of your costing and potentially cause errors.
Transaction Changes Trigger Inventory Costing Recalculations
When certain changes are made to a transaction, inventory costing is recalculated for items on the transaction. Transaction changes that do initiate an inventory costing recalculation include the following:
-
changing an item
-
changing the item quantity
-
changing a unit price
-
changing serial or lot numbers
-
changing the date
-
changing the order total
-
changing the taxes charged
Limit Inventory Costing Triggers
To limit the inventory costing triggers that occur, choose settings for the Create and Edit Inventory Transactions Dated in Closed Periods accounting preference.
This preference can prevent changes to transactions that would result in inventory costing calculations in closed periods.
-
When the preference box is clear, it prevents changes to transactions that would result in inventory costing calculations in closed periods.
-
When the box is checked, it allows some changes to transactions that would result in inventory costing calculations in closed periods. However, changes in some fields can trigger inventory costing calculations for an item even without posting to the general ledger. These changes can cause inventory costing errors and failures.
You should disable this preference.
An administrator can choose the setting for this preference. For more information, see General Accounting Preferences.
You can also manage settings for accounting periods. You can disallow some changes to posting transactions after the period has been locked to transactions.
The Allow Non-G/L Changes box is not available until after a period has been locked to transactions.
-
When this box is checked, users with the Allow Non G/L Changes permission can make changes to posting transactions. This is true for transactions that do not affect the general ledger, and after the period has been locked to transactions. These changes can trigger inventory costing recalculations. Examples of fields that do not trigger inventory costing changes are: bin, class, department, and memo.
-
When this box is clear, changes to posting transactions are prohibited after the period has been locked.
Clearing this box can help prevent inventory costing problems by blocking closed period changes to fields on transactions that can impact costing.
Adding or removing transaction lines is also not permitted.
For more information about the Allow Non G/L Changes setting for periods, see Setting Up Single Accounting Periods.