In order to calculate costs as accurately as possible you need to be able to determine where each of the received products can be found at any time where. To do this SocrateCloud uses "Attribute Set Instances". As a result, for every material receipt, an instance will be created for each product that enters stock. When shipping the products, if a specific instance is not selected, the system will automatically choose one based on the material policy (e.g. LIFO, or FIFO).
The instance is the identifier of a quantity from the stock. It is granted or created at the first stock entry transaction of a product quantity (stockable product).
The instance will remain unchanged through all the movements that the respective stock entry will undergo (transactional/quantitative).
The instances can also be found in the costs, but these do not necessarily correspond to the stock instances!
The instance can be obtained:
automatically (provided by the system without any user's intervention) - an automatic instance is of numeric form (id). These values are not, by default, visible to the users.
manually (created by an user after a predefined rule) - a manual instance is created by following the rules established when defining the products, through the use of the "Attribute Set Instance"
using instances such as the serial number or the lot number, you can keep a precise log of which products has each of the customers received.
The instances are used by the system to apply the stock discharge rules. Furthermore, these are helpful when tracking stock movements. All the value adjustments that can occur during the existence of a certain instance are kept at instance level (e.g. additional costs).
Material Policy - indicates how stockable products exit stock: FIFO or LIFO
Cost Method - indicates how costs are maintained and calculated:
Standard Cost
FIFO
LIFO
Invoice Medium Price = equivalent to WAC (Weighted Average Cost);
Order Medium Price;
Last Invoice Price;
Last Order Price.
Cost Level - indicates the level at which costs are maintained:
Tenant
Organization
Warehouse - starting with version 13.03
Batch/Lot
Cost Type - classification method used for costs;
Cost Element - cost elements add up to the total cost for each product;
Standard Cost - related to the Standard Cost method;
FIFO - related to the FIFO method;
<other> - with no links to the methods, used to keep the log of subsequent additional costs.
Products with attribute sets without the Lot checkbox will be unloaded according to the costing level and method defined for the Product Category and respectively, the Accounting Schema. If the attribute set has Lot checked, the product will be unloaded using the Batch/Lot costing level, regardless of what is defined at Accounting Schema or Product Category level.