Manufacturing

Inventory is not one number for a manufacturer

A retailer's inventory is finished product sitting on a shelf. A manufacturer's inventory is raw materials waiting to be used, partially built units still on the production floor, and completed goods ready to ship, three genuinely different things that behave differently on the balance sheet. Tracking all of it as one undivided inventory figure hides where value is actually sitting and makes it hard to spot a production bottleneck before it becomes a cash flow problem.

Finbryn sets up inventory tracking across the three stages, raw materials, work in process and finished goods, using data from Fishbowl, Katana or whatever production system the manufacturer already runs, reconciled against the general ledger each month rather than adjusted once a year at physical count time.

Landed cost and standard cost variances

Freight and duty on imported materials are real costs of getting inventory ready to use, but they commonly get expensed as general shipping cost instead of being added to the per-unit cost of the inventory itself. That mistake understates the true cost of goods sold and overstates margin on every unit that used imported materials. We build landed cost components into per-unit inventory cost wherever supporting documentation, invoices, customs paperwork, freight bills, makes that possible.

Manufacturers using standard costing set an expected cost per unit and then see actual production cost vary from it, sometimes because of a material price change, sometimes because of a labor efficiency issue. We track those variances monthly and flag them, rather than letting a growing gap between standard and actual cost sit unreviewed until year-end inventory adjustments force the issue.

Working with Finbryn

You keep your QuickBooks Online file. A named pod manages your account, with a recorded handover memo if that pod changes, and books close by business day five with inventory reconciled to bank and production records each month, not just at count time. Manufacturers bringing inventory accounting current after a period of manual tracking typically start with a catch-up project, priced separately from ongoing monthly bookkeeping. Pricing is published on our pricing page.