Inventory Examples Inventory From A Financial Accounting

Organizations in the U.S. define inventory to suit their needs within Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP), the rules defined by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) (and others) and enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other federal and state agencies. Inventory management affects organizations' internal operations through their cost accounting methods. Nearly all goods feature printed bar codes -- known as Stock Keeping Units or SKUs -- for their role in managing inventory.

1 Inventory Examples

Non-manufacturing (service) organizations may have inventories of goods for sale and goods (fixtures, furniture, supplies, ...) that they do not intend to sell. Manufacturing organizations usually divide their "goods for sale" inventory into:

2 Inventory from a Financial Accounting Perspective

An organization's inventory can appear a mixed blessing, since it counts as an asset on the balance sheet, but it also ties up money that might serve for other purposes and requires additional expense for its protection. Inventory may also cause significant tax expenses, depending on particular countries' laws regarding depreciation of inventory. (See Thor Power Tools Decision.)

Inventory appears as an asset on an organization's balance sheet because the organization can turn it into cash by selling it. Some organizations hold larger inventories than their operations require in order to inflate their apparent asset value and their perceived profitability.

In addition to the money tied up by acquiring inventory, inventory also brings associated costs for space, for utilities, and for insurance to cover staff to handle and protect it, fire and other disasters, obsolesence, shrinkage (theft and errors), and others. Such holding costs can mount up: between a third and a half of its acquisition value per year. An organization that reduced its inventory by $1,000,000 would add that amount to its net income, an attractive prospect that helps to explain the popularity of programs like Just in time (JIT) inventory.

Businesses that stock too little inventory cannot take advantage of large orders from customers if they cannot deliver. The conflicting objectives of cost control and customer service often pit an organization's financial and operating managers against its sales and marketing departments. Sales people, in particular, often receive commission payments, so unavailable goods may reduce their potential personal income.

3 Inventory from a Standard Cost Accounting Perspective

Standard cost accounting uses ratios called efficiencies that compare the labor and materials actually used to produce a good with those that the same goods would have required under "standard" conditions. As long as similar actual and standard conditions obtain, few problems arise. Unfortunately, standard cost accounting methods developed about 100 years ago, when labor comprised the most important cost in manufactured goods. Standard methods continue to emphasize labor efficiency even though that resource now constitutes a (very) small part of cost in most cases.

Standard cost accounting can hurt managers, workers, and firms in several ways. For example, a policy decision to increase inventory can harm a manufacturing managers' performance evaluation. Increasing inventory requires increased production, which means that processes must operate at higher rates. When (not if) something goes wrong, the process takes longer and uses more than the standard labor time. The manager appears responsible for the excess, even though s/he has no control over the production requirement or the problem.

In adverse economic times, firms use the same efficiencies to downsize, rightsize, or otherwise reduce their labor force. Workers laid off under those circumstances have even less control over excess inventory and cost efficiencies than their managers.

Many financial and cost accountants have agreed for many years on the desirability of replacing standard cost accounting. They have not, however, found a successor.

4 Inventory from a Theory of constraints Cost Accounting Perspective

Eliyahu M. Goldratt developed the Theory of constraints in part to address the cost accounting problems in what he calls the "cost world". He offers a substitute, called Throughput accounting, that uses throughput (money for goods sold to customers) in place of output (goods produced that may sell or may boost inventory) and considers labor as a fixed rather than as a variable cost. He defines inventory simply as everything the organization owns that it plans to sell, including buildings, machinery, and many other things in addition to the categories listed here. The only variable costs in throughput accounting are the operating expenses like materials and components that vary directly with the quantity produced.

Finished goods inventories remain balance sheet assets, but labor efficiency ratios no longer evaluate managers and workers. Instead of an incentive to reduce labor cost, throughput accounting focuses attention on the relationships between throughput (revenue or income) on one hand and controllable operating expenses and changes in inventory on the other. Those relationships direct attention to the constraints or bottlenecks that prevent the system from producing more throughput rather than people who have little or no control over their situations.

5 Moral Inventory

Often in the course of 12 step programs, members say they are taking an inventory. Much like an inventory of goods and services detailed here, it is a balance sheet of attributes. It might list such things as thankfullness , humility, acceptance, trust, forgiveness and restitution. Addicts use these inventories as a moral compass and guide for where they are in recovery.

6 See also

A group of British artists has adopted the name Inventory: see Inventory (artists).

Inventory may also refer to item storage available to computer game characters, especially in role playing games.

Accounting Commercial item transport and distribution

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