Inventory module questions
Which stock valuation method should we choose?
For most distributors and general manufacturers, weighted average is the sensible default. It is simple to explain, it smooths price movement, and it needs almost no ongoing maintenance. Choose FIFO when you hold dated or perishable stock and want reported cost to follow the physical flow, or when your auditor or tax regime expects it. Choose standard cost only if you genuinely want variance analysis, because standard cost commits you to setting standards, posting purchase price and usage variances every period, and revaluing when the standard is reset.
How do we actually get stock accuracy up?
By recording every movement at the moment it happens, and by removing the ways people can move stock without recording it. The software will not fix accuracy on its own. Lock down who can post an adjustment, require a reason code on every one, stop issuing material against a verbal request, and put a cycle count programme in place so errors surface in days instead of at year end. Well run operations hold stock record accuracy above 98 percent at item and location level. Getting there is a process and discipline problem that the system can support but cannot solve for you.
Do we need batch and serial tracking, and can we add it later?
You need it if you are in food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, medical devices, automotive or anything with a shelf life or a recall obligation. Serial suits high value discrete units, batch or lot suits anything produced or bought in runs. The honest point is that traceability has to be designed in at the start, because it cannot be retrofitted onto history. If you switch it on in year three, everything already in stock and every movement before that date has no batch identity, so a recall still turns into a manual reconstruction.
Can cycle counting replace the annual stocktake?
Operationally, yes, and it should. Counting a subset of items continuously, weighted by value and movement using ABC classification, finds and corrects errors far faster than shutting the business for two days once a year. A class items might be counted monthly, B class quarterly, C class once or twice a year, so every item is covered and the high value lines are checked often. Whether it replaces the statutory count is a question for your auditor.
Why does the stock ledger not agree with the general ledger?
Almost always because a movement was posted outside the process. The usual suspects are manual journals written straight to the stock control account, receipts entered without a costed purchase document, adjustments posted to the wrong account, goods in transit sitting in neither location, and backdated entries made after a period was reported.
How does the module handle the same item across several locations?
One item code, one set of item attributes, and a separate stock balance and valuation per location, so you can see the group position and the site position from the same record. Transfers between sites are a document, not an edit. When stock leaves site A it moves into a goods in transit state that belongs to neither site, and it only lands at site B when someone receives it. That state matters, because without it stock vanishes for the days it is on a truck, and the receiving site orders more of something it already owns.
