[GNC] Stock Levels

[Duikerbos]

Thank you for your response

To be honest, i have no idea what you suggest below

I did accounting at school, 40 years ago, and all i remember is double entry

Sorry for my ignorance, but thank you

Frederick

On 2020/10/02 22:21, doncram wrote:
> Hi Frederick & others -- It has often been said in this email forum 
> that GnuCash doesn't support inventory, but I think that's basically 
> wrong.  What I mean is that while GnuCash has no separate inventory 
> module as are available in some versions of Quickbooks, say, one can 
> use GnuCash + a supporting spreadsheet (in Excel or freeware 
> LibreOffice Calc which both have some database features) perfectly 
> well for accounting for a business with inventory.  A few 
> demonstrations/examples are needed to provide for arriving potential 
> users though.
>
> A simple approach which might work especially if there are not too 
> many transactions could work as follows:
>
> *When purchasing inventory, perhaps of a few different types*:
> a) enter transaction into GnuCash as increasing one big Inventory 
> account and decreasing cash without any detail about numbers of units 
> of what types, just reference the invoice or sales receipt which you 
> file into a Vendor file.
> b) in the spreadsheet create rows as needed for each the different 
> types of inventory (say Barnevelder chickens and Chantecler chickens) 
> and in three new columns for the purchases record the numbers and 
> prices paid and total dollars paid for each
> Repeat as new transactions happen, adding 3 columns each time.
> Keep one column carrying the sum of all purchases as an estimate of 
> current value of each type, with a sum at bottom reporting the total 
> value of inventory.
>
> *At the end of a month or other accounting period*, do an inventory 
> inspection and record in a new set of 3 columns the number of each 
> type which you count, a price per unit (perhaps use the original or 
> the last purchase price, or a new estimate of your own based on what 
> you see and know), and a calculated current total dollars value.  
> Perhaps some units will have been lost or some new chicks have been 
> hatched and some prices will have changed, so the sum of value of 
> current inventory will be lower or higher.  Then update your financial 
> value in Quickbooks to reflect the amount of that change:  increase or 
> decrease "Inventory" value and recognize a gain (say "Gain from 
> Inventory growth") as income or a loss (say "Loss from Inventory 
> decline") as expense.
>
> Also *whenever you sell any units*, add three columns for the numbers 
> sold, the price per unit, the dollars yielded. In GnuCash enter an 
> increase in cash and recognize "Revenue from sale of chickens" or 
> whatever.
>
> In your business, you will also record expenses for operating costs, 
> and any revenues from sales of eggs say, and in the Income Statement 
> for a given period you will see whether you have made a profit or loss 
> on the period.  In this approach, with your counting and revaluing 
> your inventory to roughly a current market value each period, profit 
> can be shown due to gains in value even if there have not been any 
> sales.  As suggested here, the spreadsheet would tend to expand to the 
> right.  But perhaps that is fine, as after all there is no shortage of 
> empty columns available in any spreadsheet nowadays.
>
> Note there are many possible different implementations.  One could 
> have GnuCash inventories for each type of chicken, so values for each 
> type would appear in your Balance Sheet, though at cost of requiring 
> many more GnuCash transaction entries.  One could use "inventory 
> valuation" approaches other than the current market value estimation 
> approach suggested above, variations that may be legally allowed in 
> financial accounting (e.g. First In First Out (FIFO), LIFO, Average 
> Cost, Specific Identification), but are probably not worth bothering 
> with.  These variations might allow for some gaming to advance or 
> defer taxes due, or to manipulate reported earnings of your firm 
> sooner or later, but such gaming is generally not worthwhile.  Also a 
> more database-oriented approach to organizing the information might be 
> possible, say with columns for each type of chicken and one row for 
> each transaction or re-valuation or new total value.  Perhaps that 
> would allow for some different types of reports using DCOUNT and DSUM 
> type formulas.
>
> But perhaps the above approach would work for you?  Maybe you could 
> explain a bit more about what you want to do?
>
> In my opinion, Quickbooks' inventory feature is cumbersome, requiring 
> one to go through multiple screens to create a new inventory type, and 
> requiring application of just one type of valuation (I think requiring 
> every unit to be valued at same price per unit always, i.e. this is 
> suited only to situations where suppliers are unrealistically required 
> to sell to you at the same price forever).  It does not allow one to 
> choose other valuation approaches.  It probably fails to provide 
> reports that you want suited to your application.  It fails to support 
> useful calculations that are often wanted (such as for when inventory 
> of each type should next be purchased and what order quantity should 
> be used, based on "Economic Order Quantity" theory or similar).  I 
> know of manufacturing firms which use Quickbooks for accounting but 
> absolutely would never use it for inventory; they instead use a 
> separate spreadsheet for inventory that works for them.
>
> Note in past discussions, as mentioned, sometimes users have been 
> directed to try to adapt GnuCash's feature for tracking shares of 
> investment trading securities (which looks up current stock prices 
> online, and handles stock splits, and so on), but stocks are 
> fundamentally different and it never works for a user to take that 
> approach.  By the way I am in favor of several other features being 
> added to GnuCash to make it more widely usable, but not for an 
> inventory module.
>
> Frederick, does this help?
>
> Don Cram
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 5:36 AM Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com 
> <mailto:derek at ihtfp.com>> wrote:
>
>     Gnucash does not have inventory support.
>
>     If you only need to track a few items you can probably hack something
>     together using a Stock account, but it is not a true inventory.
>
>     -derek
>     Sent using my mobile device. Please excuse any typos.
>     On October 2, 2020 5:17:09 AM Duikerbos <duikerbos at gmail.com
>     <mailto:duikerbos at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     > Morning
>     >
>     > I am starting a small Broiler project and using GnuCash to track
>     > transactions
>     >
>     > Is it possible to track stock levels, birds purchased less birds
>     sold?
>     >
>     >
>     > Frederick
>     >
>     >
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