Add an "Invoices" tab to Item Maintenance and provide a list of invoices from the AP Invoice History file that contain that item showing the important info (vendor, invoice number, date, quantity and price paid). The transactions tab shows adds and subtracts from inventory, but adds go in at PO price. To see historical trends or simply to review what you've actually been paying for an item, you have to spend a lot of time going through reports and inquiry screens. Having that information at your fingertips within the item maintenance/inquiry screens would save a lot of time, for purchasing staff in particular.
by: Jeff L. | over a year ago | Sales & Distribution
Comments
The transactions tab can be easily modified using custom office to add all this information.
Not clear what you mean by PO price, mine seems to record the price entered at the time of receipt of goods.
You actually can't get to this information to store it with custom office. Receipt of Invoice data is not written to the IM detail history files. The PO cost is written there when a receipt of GOODS is done, but nothing is written there from a receipt of INVOICE. A common question I get from clients is "where do I go to see my last cost on an item". I show them the last cost field and the vendor button where it shows last cost by vendor. Then I have to explain to them that the last cost field is only updated during the receipt of goods, NOT the receipt of invoice. So that's not actually the last price paid...its the last cost someone put on a PO. As wel all know, the PO doesn't always end up with the right cost on it. The Last Cost field does not reflect or get updated with your actual cost based on an invoice you enter for the products on the PO.
I'm also asked to see the last several invoices where an item was purchased so a purchasing agent can see what all they've been buying, who they're buying it from, and what they're paying for it. Right now, we can get receipt history by item. But I can't get Invoice/Purchase History by item without a custom report. This information is what allows buyers to get a feel for things like trends in pricing or quantities, etc. at a glance. The transactions tab shows you ins and outs for inventory, and to some degree it will give you document numbers (like an invoice number, for sales, but not the PO number for receipts or the work order number for WO completions). But the cost you see there on a receipt of goods is the PO price, NOT the invoice price. If you have a price variance, it gets written off to a price variance account and you'll never see that anywhere in the item. All that is fine. Price variances happen, no big deal. But people still want to have information at their fingertips so they can see what an item is actually costing them and a history of recent purchases, not just recent receipts.
Think about it this way...when a salesperson calls on a customer, they typically want to have an at-a-glance review of what that customer has been buying and how much money they are spending with you. Its really not that different from a vendor perspective. Purchasing agents want to know what we've been buying from a specific vendor and what we've been paying for it. And seeing a history of it allows you to quickly and easily identify where certain vendors have better pricing, or that buying in larger quantities will yield better pricing, etc. Having this in Inventory Maintenance would yield better information at your fingertips, preventing you from having to go to other modules to find data, and in short, provide 'actionable information' to the user. And ultimately, thats what its all about.