Hi,
Actually, if you are setting up a new item and you are using Purchase Orders for Adagio, you do not normally need to set up the recent price with a value.
When you create a PO for an item to order it (to sell or use), the PO price or Cost is updated to the recent cost as soon as you post the PO, if the recent cost value (previously on file) is zero for that item. We put that into Purchase Orders so that you can run the End of Day processing in Order Entry or POA in any order.
Doug was quite correct, that if the recent cost is zero when you process an invoice for an item, it will use $0 as the cost of sales if no items are on hand or the sale goes into negative numbers. However, the above change was implemented to minimize the likelihood of these types of costing errors. The only time it cannot help is if the PO is created with no cost details, and the costs don't get updated until the invoice arrives. Until this feature was available, we did the same as what Doug recommended.
Best,
Brian