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Question

Should PO unit cost match AP bill?


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I’m looking for best practices.

If our AP department receives an invoice/bill for product received but the purchase order totals and unit costs do not match what should we do?

Should we be sending an mail to our purchasers and asking them to reopen purchase orders and update the unit costs? I tried that in a test enviroment and the PO updated its costs like I expected, but since the purchase receipt has already been released those costs were not updated and hence when we go to enter the AP bill the old unit costs are the numbers in the AP bill.

I don’t feel like it’s reasonable to ask our AP person to adjust all the unit costs if they differ but I need to develop an SOP for our purchasing departments as well.

On a related note, which “unit cost” does the stock item use for the “Last unit cost” and “Average Unit Cost” equations?

5 replies

nhatnghetinh
Captain II
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  • Captain II
  • 565 replies
  • March 20, 2025

Hi ​@SBaldwin 

We have encountered a few situations similar to what you described and we have solved them by entering "Adjustments" with the "Reason Code" generated to match each situation.

Please test to see if it is suitable for you?

 

 

Note: Quantity is 0 and Ext.Cost you can enter a negative number.

 

 

 

Best Regards,

NNT

 


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  • Author
  • Jr Varsity III
  • 63 replies
  • March 20, 2025
nhatnghetinh wrote:

Hi ​@SBaldwin 

We have encountered a few situations similar to what you described and we have solved them by entering "Adjustments" with the "Reason Code" generated to match each situation.

Please test to see if it is suitable for you?

 

 

Note: Quantity is 0 and Ext.Cost you can enter a negative number.

 

 

 

Best Regards,

NNT

 

Hey there! We have been using that method for some serious inventory valuation issues but this particular example happens enough that I’d really like to set up some preventative measures instead of doing adjustments. But that particular example does work well for adjusting unit cost!


Samvel Petrosov
Jr Varsity II
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@SBaldwin Have you looked in the Purchase Price Variance(PPV) processing?

Allocating the Purchase Price Variance

That should take care of these cost differences that you are having and if you configure Allocation Mode to Inventory Account then you should not even need to process the IN Adjustments mentioned above.

 

Also, I would recommend looking into the Three-Way match validation if your costs between PO and AP Bill are changing or different frequently.

 

 


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  • Author
  • Jr Varsity III
  • 63 replies
  • April 10, 2025

@Samvel Petrosov finally getting a chance to dive into this! From the reading I’m gathering that my stock items need to have “Average” Cost valuation for this to be helpful? All of our stock items have FIFO or Specific cost valuations


Samvel Petrosov
Jr Varsity II
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SBaldwin wrote:

@Samvel Petrosov finally getting a chance to dive into this! From the reading I’m gathering that my stock items need to have “Average” Cost valuation for this to be helpful? All of our stock items have FIFO or Specific cost valuations

I think you should still be able to use the PPV and the Three-Way match.

The differences will really be when you consume inventory. During the receiving phase the behavior is pretty much the same for Average, FIFO and Specific. The only difference is that in case of FIFO and Specific, the cost is associated with the Receipt Nbr for FIFO and Lot/Serial Nbr for Specific.


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