Unique Business Challenges and General Discussion

[kevinatsgm]

We have a customer agree to buy so many widgets based on an economic qty for us to build.  They pay for all the widgets, the inventory stays in our building until the customer is ready for it.  Issues:  1) When the customer is invoiced, the items are removed from inventory, now we don't have visibility of what we have on hand. 2) If an inventory transaction is done so that the inventory is visible, when the items are shipped at a later date, the sales and cog amounts are recorded again, suppose this could be reversed with g/l entry, seems to be extra work.  3) Could create a 'dummy' invoice so that the inventory stays on hand, again, sale and cog would be recorded a second time.

Is there a way to invoice the customer and keep the inventory in MAS at zero cost?

MAS 200 C/S 4.3, using FIFO.

[robertcwood]

Well, you could invoice it to the customer and create a warehouse that is that customer's items and do an inventory receipt into that warehouse since costs are by warehouse.

[DFeller]

When you make the items you can store them in a "customer" warehouse code in MAS.  You could use a / item to invoice, then when they actually take the items you can bill the items out and apply the / item against the invoice.

Dawn

[givingtr]

I have the exact issue with a customer that's on 4.4. I'll try creating a script that extracts the items out of the invoice and initiates a IM Receipt into a separate warehouse. This should allow them to invoice properly while maintaining item qty's in the customer warehouse... which will be shipped via Starship at a later date.

[SRYork]

This sounds like a "pseudo" drop ship scenario where you are the drop ship vendor.  I would need to check the actual postings that are made to verify this but ... here are my thoughts ...

Customer Invoice #1 - Actual sale - Have all items invoiced but flagged as drop ship.  This will invoice the customer but not relieve the inventory.

This will:

dr AR

    cr Sales -- ***s/b a 'contra sales account' that will be offset when invoice #2 is posted ***

Note, no COGS is posted.

Customer Invoice #2 - Actual Shipment - Normal Sales order / invoice process

dr AR  -- *** same 'contra sales account' that sales was posted to when invoice #1 is posted ***

    cr Sales

dr COGS

    cr Inventory

I am not sure exactly how I would get the contra sales account set up, but I think I would check out if there is any special account posting or substitution I could do for items flagged as drop ship. I would hate to need to bring the PO drop ship functionality involved here if not needed.  I think that would be necessary ONLY if you wish to keep / segregate these items in a customer warehouse, as noted above.  Then that may be your mechanism to handle the item transfer. (And definition of the sales contra account via the purchases clearing account.

[mjpolk]

Without knowing how many items and/or customers you have this stituation, there are 2 ways that should work and a possible 3rd that probable will work.

1. As stated create a customer based warehouse. and then create a psudeo invoice from the transaction transfering to the warehouse.  the bigest Potential problem is if you have multiple warehouses you will have to have mutiple ware house for each customer so that you know which warehouse the stockis actually at.

2. Create Secondary Inventory Items for the Sale which is always a Negative Quatinity.  This will allow you to keep your quantities in the correct warehouse. Then Transfer to this Item as you ship.

3.  Job Cost.  Look at it as a way to bill for product that hasn't been shipped without affecting your inventory until you ship.