On 9/27/07, Chris Travers <..hidden..> wrote:
On 9/26/07, David Tangye <..hidden..
> wrote:
Yes, but hopefully in a similar way to the parts-asembly situation, or simply a parts price change irrespective of assembly/breakdown. Price changes over time, and how to recalculate prices of current stock is an issue on its own.
My problem at the moment is that I am somewhat unclear on proper accounting procedures in this case. It seems to me that there is never enough information to do it with 100% confidence so all we have are educated guesses which happen to balance out over time. This is one reason why I want to start without the automation and add it only when I can work with the accountants of users who need the feature.
That sounds like a good approach.
Yes, and this might parallel the idea of selling both parts and assemblies, and whether there is any price difference in a part alone compared to in an assembly.
There is a *huge* difference though. You know the cost of an item when it is purchased. You don't know the relative cost of every component of an assembly you purchase to break down. This is a fundamental data flow issue.
This gets back to my opinion about how LSMB should work. I think its best that it not impose rules. IOW, let the user arbitrarily decide on this. Allow the user is make his own business decision about what he is trying to do. Let him enter whatever he wants.
I agree there too. Moreover, I am suggesting that you need to explicitely enter the costs of the components. However if a screen were to provide what is effectively a calculator , so you can enter percentages for the system to generate the absolute numbers, then that sounds like just a small functional add-on to the system. (Plus see next...)
For a percentage system, that would be correct. However percentage systems don't properly handle certain fractions (for example, 1/3 or 1/7) without loss of information. Hence my thinking that a rational number system would be better (
i.e. enter the portion, and we will display but not store the approximate percentage value). I am assuming however that everybody is limited to rational numbers in cost breakdowns.
I suggest that the numbers should be rounded within the precision of the user's monetary system, and as per above he be able to change this to whatever he wants, should he wish to do so. This makes it simple for the system too.
Either way I can see a user recalculating this a few times, using a button in a similar way to how the Update button works for tax at present, so he could fine-tune a breakdown til it looks right, then save/post it.
Again, this brings us to the question of how frequently these may need to be adjusted, etc.
It should not matter. Several fine-tunes, another later: it would work the same: a recalc is needed.
I don't know. For example, see Istvan's issue with drums which cost something from some vendors but are included free from others as part of the spool. This is one of those issues where I cannot think of a good robust way to do this with 100% confidence.
So these are either different products, or different prices per product-supplier. I thought the system already catered for this?