Setting Up Inventory Valuation and Costing

To make sure that inventory costs are recorded correctly, you must set up various fields and pages before you begin to make item transactions. Typically, businesses choose a specific costing method and apply that to inventory items, for example, to help them track the value of items on stock.

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For an introduction to costing in Business Central, see About Inventory Costing.

The following table describes a sequence of tasks, with links to the topics that describe them.

To	See
Specify a default costing method for the company to govern how incoming cost is used to assess inventory value and the cost of goods sold.	Set Up General Inventory Information
Specify a costing method on individual items if they require a different costing method.	Register New Items
Ensure that the cost is automatically posted to the general ledger whenever an inventory transaction is posted.	Automatic Cost Posting field on the Inventory Setup page
Ensure that expected costs are posted to the general ledger to see from the interim G/L accounts an estimate of the amounts due and the cost of the traded items before they are actually invoiced.	Expected Cost Posting to G/L field on the Inventory Setup page
Set the system up to adjust for any cost changes automatically every time you post inventory transactions.	Adjust Item Costs
Define if the average cost is to be calculated per item only or per item for each stockkeeping unit and for each variant of the item.	Average Cost Calc. Type field on the Inventory Setup page
Select the period of time you would like application to use for calculating the weighted average cost of items that use the average costing method.	Average Cost Period field on the Inventory Setup page
Define inventory periods to control inventory value over time by disallowing transaction posting in closed inventory periods.	Work with Inventory Periods
Ensure that sales returns are applied to the original outbound transaction to preserve inventory value.	Exact Cost Reversing Mandatory field on the Sales & Receivables page
Ensure that purchase returns are applied to the original inbound transaction to preserve inventory value.	Exact Cost Reversing Mandatory field on the Purchases & Payables page
Set up the rounding rules to apply when adjusting or suggesting item prices and when adjusting or suggesting standard costs.	Rounding Method page

Setting Up Inventory Valuation and Costing

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