Why doesn't our Balance Sheet GL account 1300 Inventory Control match the IC Inventory Valuation Report for the same dates? At fiscal year end we are required to give this number to our accountant and we also provide monthly reports for insurance purposes broken down by location. I thought the Balance Sheet IC number on a particular date (i.e. Jan 31, 2010) would match the IC/Item Valuation for the same date, but it doesn't. Can anyone help?

Research time...When did the month end balance get off, normally all transactions in inventory control are OE, IC, and IR transactions..has any other module posted to the control account?

David

Actually, the balance is off every month.

For example, today, inventory account 1300 shows a balance that is $13,000 higher than the IC/Item Valuation using the date Feb 27, 2010. If I look at the balance of account 1300 balance as of Jan 31, 2010 it is $31,000 higher than the IC/Item Valuation using the date Jan 31, 2010. Account 1300 balance on Dec 31, 2009 is $67,000 lower than IC/Item Valuation using the date Dec 31, 2009.

There must be something I'm not understanding?

1300 has entries as you described from OE (product that was sold or returned), IC (inventory adjustments) & IR (product received or returned to vendor). No other module posts to 1300.

I would have thought that the "actual cost" total given in IC/Item Valuation on a given date would equal what account 1300 says for the same date?

*confused*

The balance in the g/l is alway at the end of the period. The item valuation report, printed on "today" is the up-to-the-minute valuation (assuming dayends have been run etc.) Back dated inventory valuation reports are created by taking the current numbers and "backing out" all the transactions in the IC Item history to arrive at the valuation "as of".

Hi Susan

The way to troubleshoot this is to bring your GL up-to-date every day and compare the balance as of each day with the Item Valuation report as of the same day. The difference should be the same between days, if it isn't it is much easier to figure out what is going wrong if you are looking at only one day's worth of activity.

Your thought that the "actual cost" should equal the balance in account 1300 is correct.

Steve

We have 16,000 entries in GL 1300 this year so far so I don't see anyway to reconcile it. I guess we can do an adjustment at year end to match the valuation after our inventory count, but I only wish I could understand why these variances are there. There's has to be something more to it. The numbers vary by 10s of thousands of dollars up and/or down every day.

Start by using GridView to select the transactions for a day and make sure you can explain them. (This supposes that you are running dayends and posting in the gl every day.)

I don't think that back dating IC Item Valuation is working correctly. The value I got on Saturday, Feb 27 (after month end was completed and everything was posted) is different from the value I'm getting today when dating the report back to Saturday, Feb 27 by $38,000. Seems to me the cost amounts from the receipts we added this morning in IR are now showing up on the IC Item Valuation even though we back dated the Item Valuation report to Feb 27.

If this is true, back dating IC/Item Valuations does not give us even close to an accurate number.

I suppose the transaction history won't be updated until after everything is posted at day end. I'll test it tonight and confirm.

I guess we should run valuation reports at the completion of month end to get the most accurate number rather than using this "backing out" of transaction history method.

We'll do an adjustment at year end to GL account Inventory 1300 and start fresh.

I think that it's possible that the amounts might be off within a reasonable amount because of Credits we issue in OE on the same day. OE gives us a warning about using the "most recent cost" because the actual cost hasn't been posted in the day end yet.

Large amounts are more likely related to the back dating the IC Item Valuation which sounds like something we should avoid doing.

Hi Susan

As I wrote above, let's eliminate the possibility of problems with backdating, and just test whether the difference is constant from day to day. It should not be that hard to troubleshoot one day's worth of activity if the difference is changing every day.

I suspect that there is an improper feed from IC to GL, and that transactions are not going through to the right control account (or are going there when they shouldn't be).