Report inventory costs and reconcile with the general ledger

Path: Business functionality > Finance > Manage inventory costs > Report inventory costs and reconcile with the general ledger · tier official · system finance · narrative reviewed (checked by Opus)

Overview

This section covers the tasks that keep inventory values correct and in agreement with the general ledger. It includes adjusting item costs (manually for items that use FIFO or Average costing, or automatically), posting those costs to the G/L, and checking that inventory accounts match the G/L.

The pages fit together as a cost workflow. Cost adjustment updates item costs and value entries. The Post Inventory Cost to G/L batch job then moves the results to the G/L, and the Inventory - G/L Reconciliation page is used to check them. Inventory periods and the Earliest Allowed Valuation Date field control which periods accept postings, so closed periods are protected. A separate page explains how to schedule the adjustment and posting jobs through job queue entries to reduce application load.

To start, read “Reconcile inventory costs with the general ledger” for the core posting and reconciliation process. Then read “Schedule jobs for adjusting & reconciling inventory cost” to automate it. Use the pages on inventory periods and backdated postings when you close periods.

Key points

• Manual cost adjustment is available for items using FIFO or Average costing. It corrects unit cost and value entries so inventory values and financial KPIs are right.
• The Post Inventory Cost to G/L batch job posts inventory value changes to the general ledger.
• The Inventory - G/L Reconciliation page is used to reconcile inventory accounts with the general ledger. The reconciliation page also covers expected cost posting.
• The Earliest Allowed Valuation Date field blocks cost postings into closed periods. Current invoicing and cost adjustment of existing entries are still allowed.
• Inventory periods can be created, closed, and reopened to control when inventory changes can be posted.
• Automatic cost adjustment and G/L reconciliation can be scheduled as background jobs with job queue entries, which improves performance and reduces application load. The scheduling page also covers assisted setup.

Learn pages

• Manually adjust the costs of items: You can adjust the inventory valuation of an item using the FIFO or Average costing methods when the costs of products change.
• Reconcile inventory costs with the general ledger: At the end of accounting periods a sequence of cost control and auditing tasks must be performed to report a correct and balanced inventory value.
• Restrict backdated cost postings: Set a date floor on the Inventory Setup page so that user postings can no longer write cost into closed periods.
• Schedule jobs for adjusting & reconciling inventory cost: Learn how you can use the job queue to move the tasks for adjusting inventory cost or reconciling it with the general ledger to the background. For example, if your company runs many tasks or processes many transactions.
• Work with inventory periods: You can control the timeframe in which people can post changes to inventory by defining inventory periods.

Business Central pages and reports

The pages, reports and queries this hub’s Learn pages name (ms.search.form, API reference), joined to the code by exact object id (data/index/docs-objects.json); a page shows the table it runs on.

• Page 461 “Inventory Setup” · on Table 313 “Inventory Setup”
• Page 5828 “Inventory Periods” · on Table 5814 “Inventory Period”
• Page 9297 “Inventory - G/L Recon Matrix” · captioned “Inventory - G/L Reconciliation” · on Table 367 “Dimension Code Buffer”

Source: Microsoft Learn (CC BY 4.0). Descriptions are Learn’s own.