Inventory and Services Record Window

This tab shows you the current quantities on hand for an inventory item, the number of items that are currently on sales order, and the number of items you have ordered from vendors. If you have set up more than one way to measure your inventory on the Units tab, you can change the unit of measure. You can also change the minimum stocking level for an item if you want Sage 50 Accounting to warn you when you need to reorder.

View the item's quantity on hand using a different unit of measure

Add or change the minimum stocking level for this item

This tab only appears for inventory items if you have turned on serialized inventory in your company settings. From here you can allow serial numbers to be used with an inventory item and enter serial numbers for units that you already have in stock. If your company has never carried the item before or if you are replenishing your inventory, serial numbers are assigned to the units in the purchase invoice window.

If you cannot turn on serialization for an item, there are several possible explanations.

Turn on serialization for this item

Add serial numbers to item that are already on-hand

This tab contains the unit of measure for an inventory or service item. When you create an inventory item, you can specify different units of measure for stocking, buying, and selling. You cannot add or change the units of measure for an item once it has been used in a transaction.

Add or change a unit of measure for this item

This tab contains an item's price list information. You can change any or all of an item's prices from here.

If you have set up a foreign currency, you can also enter foreign prices for the item.

Add or change this item's price

Add or change this item's foreign currency selling price

A vendor can be associated with inventory items. Click the button to view the Inventory & Vendors window.

View the Inventory & Vendors window

Sage 50 Accounting records a purchase of inventory as an ASSET on your balance sheet. It will automatically expense the item for your inventory costing method to the income statement when sold.

This tab shows you the linked accounts that track revenues and expenses for an item (if you are adding a service item, neither the Asset nor the Variance fields appear, and the Cost of Goods Sold field is renamed Expense):

• Asset. Required for inventory items to keep track of the cost of this inventory item when you buy or sell it. This account records the current value of items in inventory.
• Revenue. To track amounts you receive when you sell an inventory or service item. (optional for service items).
• Expense. Required for service activities to track the amounts you pay when you buy a service (payments made to a sub-contractor or an employee).
• COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) Use this account to record the cost of an inventory item when originally purchased. It is updated when you sell an inventory or service item.
• Variance. Use this account to track the difference between the average cost and the actual cost of this inventory item when its inventory level drops below zero. (if this option is selected) If you do not want to keep track of this variance, use the same account that you used for Cost of Goods Sold.

What about departments? (Sage 50 Premium Accounting)

If you do not choose a department for the Revenue and Cost of Goods Sold accounts, Sage 50 Accounting automatically uses the vendor or customer department for these accounts. However, for an Asset or Variance account, Customer or Vendor dept is not used.

Add or changed a linked account for this inventory item

Service activities are items that you can bill your customers for using time slips. If this is an activity that is performed by or for a department within your company (such as administration or professional development) and you do not invoice customers for it, but want to keep track of it, check the Internal Service Activity Box. Sage 50 Accounting will keep track of the activity and include it on Time and Billing reports, but it cannot be selected when filling out sales invoices.

Use this tab to control:

• How an activity is measured for billing purposes. If the unit is not hours or minutes but can be measured in hours or minutes, check the Unit Is Related To Time box, then fill in the information about the item.
• If you choose to charge a flat fee for an item, note that Sage 50 Accounting calculates the flat fee by multiplying a number of units by the price of the item. If you have entered the flat rate as the price of the item.
• If you have entered the flat rate as the price on the Pricing tab, you must still enter a number in the Flat Fee field on the Time and Billing tab to have the amount recorded correctly on the time slip. Be sure you have entered a price on the Pricing tab, and that the number in the Flat Fee field multiplied by the price will calculate the flat amount you want to use.
  
• Whether an activity is Billable, Non-Billable, or No Charge. If an activity is non-billable or no charge, you can still enter billing information by selecting Sometimes charge for this activity.
• Whether you bill an activity as a Flat Fee or by Billable Time.
• The Default Payroll Income (if any) for employees performing the activity. Choose a value from the list. The value entered will automatically appear in the Payroll Income field of the time slips window, so you don't have to select it every time.

Change the billing and payroll options for this service activity

Use this tab to specify the components required to build this item from a bill of materials.

Build. The quantity of the item produced from the components listed.

Item Number. The inventory number of the items used to create the final product.

Quantity. The number of the component item required to build the final product.

Additional Costs. Costs other than those of the component items (for example, labour) that you want to track in an expense account.

Create a bill of materials for this inventory item

Add or remove a component from a bill of materials item

Displays the Year-To-Date and Last Year sales statistics for an item.

If the item has multiple units of measure or is stored in multiple locations (Sage 50 Premium Accounting), you can display the statistics for a particular unit by selecting a different unit or location.

At the time that you create an item, you can enter totals from past transactions for Last Year and the current Year-to-Date. This will help to ensure the accuracy of your reports.

This tab controls the tax exemption status of the inventory or service.

It is also where you set the import duty rate if you import the item from a foreign vendor.

Change an item's tax exempt status

Add or change the import duty for an item

This tab contains additional information about the item. If you select the Display this information box, a Note window will open, showing you the information on this tab  every time this item is used in a transaction

Add or change this item's Additional Information text

Turn on or off the Additional Information Notes window for this item

This tab allows you to store information which you may have a need for if you operate an online store or generate catalogues for your customers.

Long Description. Enter a detailed description of the item. You can print the long description when you print the Inventory and Services List.

Picture. You can associate pictures of inventory items with their inventory records. Pictures can be bitmap (*.BMP), JPEG (*.JPG, *.JPEG), or Graphics Interchange Format (*.GIF) files and should measure 120x120.

Click Browse and select the file you want to associate with the inventory record you have open.

Thumbnail. You can store a smaller version of the picture that you associated with this item.

This tab is only available when your company is in History mode. You can add:

Opening Quantity. The number of the item your company has on hand when you create your company file in Sage 50 Accounting.

Opening Value. The total cost to your company of the item's Opening Quantity.

The Opening Value divided by the Opening Quantity is an item's opening cost. This cost is the starting point for a number of reports about your company's profitability. The cost of inventory items will change as you buy and sell items.