PO Line Item Direction

[ridstein]

One feature we sorely miss from our old platform, was the ability to direct line items on the invoice to different inventory destinations.  For example:

Plumber goes to the supply house and buys (1) 3/4" Press Male Adapter and a contract bag of (10) 3/4" Press elbows.  The PO is all tied to a job.  

The 3/4" Male adapter is consumed and part of the job costing. 
The bag of elbows is received to the truck, and the plumber uses 2 of the elbows. 
The costing should then only recognize 2 of the elbows to the job costing, and the remainder attaching to his truck stock amounts on the balance sheets until they're consumed on other jobs.  

Currently, the whole bag would be recognized as part of the job costing, which is messy and skews our actual job costing.  

In SW, we could point the line items on the PO to the various locations, so we would leave the 3/4" male adapter on the job, and then point the bag of elbows to the truck stock.  The tech would then requisition the 2 elbows, and the job costing would reflect only the 3 fittings.  

[ridstein]

Putting the materials to the truck is certainly an idea, but when it's something we don't actively stock or track, we use a catch-all non-tracked item "Parts/Materials" that we just update the description and costs of on the job, so that the cost sticks to the job entirely.      We do the same thing for other "materials" we use as line items to hit specific G/Ls in QBD (such as "Computer Supplies").  

BUT, when a tech get a mix of things from the store that are both truck stock and not, it's  a mess and a lot of extra steps to sort out where the inventory goes and track it against what we are actually billed. 

[tyl9162]

Inventory is something that still needs work for sure so put it in ideas and that would be great.  We currently do not put POs to the job for this reason but are thinking of starting.   The job costing doubles lists the PO amount and any materials used so it double counts if we tie it to the job.  Looking into ways we can do it better but our inventory has off and hard to track since we moved over from Service Automation .  The PO was tied to a job but it really put the materials to the truck and then the tech relieved what he used and what was left over stayed on the truck. This is how it should be done IMO.  Items in our warehouse inventory could be directly moved to the job and anything not used was put back to the warehouse.  We knew it was not as good but I hope they keep up improving it.  

[michael21]

As an alternative to the workflow you are suggesting, may I suggest that the purchase order be booked as a stock, not a job PO.  Then, when received, the entire PO is recorded into the Tech's truck, which is the reality of this transaction.  When the tech gets to the job and consumes this, or any other product, from his truck, he charges it to the job.  What he doesn't use is left in truck stock.  On another note, a problem, which I actually consider a bug in the software, exists when you add pricebook listed and inventory tracked material to a job.  The system adds it to the job, but then also adds it to the inventory, thus doubling up what you get.  As a result of this bug, we have an iron-clad rule that no pricebook listed and inventory tracked items can ever be put on a job PO.

[JessicaSmith]

Go post this in the ideas section and share the link to your idea. I'll vote for it! There are certain things (mostly accounting and inventory related) that I very much miss from SW21.

[ridstein]

Thank you!  Totally forgot about the "ideas" section.  I'm with you -- there's plenty from SW21 we miss as well!!