I have some really dumb newb questions as I try to work in Epicor w/o any help at the moment.
Todays dumb question - where do I enter a vendor cost for a purchased part lol?? I cannot find it anywhere… I am missing something stupid. Only place that I can enter a number is “sales unit price” but that cannot be a cost…or is it? I am not looking for anything other than where do I put my cost to purchase this item from a vendor. Thanks.
Purchase Management>Setup>Supplier Price List
thanks. so you literally cannot enter the cost in the part itself??? is there a valid reason for this? i’ve never seen anything like it.
You do that in costing for the part Erik, yeah? Standard, average, last, FIFO, etc…
Is that what you mean by “the cost” in your sentence “cannot enter *the cost in the part itself”?
If you are just looking to access it from Part entry then you should be able get there from Sites, Detail tab.
Then right click on the Supplier, open with Supplier Price list
Also, You can get to it from Actions from the main Part screen. (Just not sure where that is in Kinetic)
So our raw material supplier prices on volume. If I am putting per-piece cost in, how would I ever get accurate costs lol? This is so much more complicated than I ever expected it to be. I am a mechanical engineer, I own the company. I am not an accountant, estimator, ERP data entry expert… but I am finding that every time I try to take a step forward I am taking 12 steps backward… I am not sure how I am going to use this system, I do not understand it. Yaaaay me.
You can but it isn’t as simple or straightforward as you think it is.
There are lots of costing methods you can use to determine the parts cost. The part in your screenshot is set to Average Cost costing method. In short, Epicor will use a weighted average of the cost of the part for each receipt to determine the cost. If you want to straight up enter in a cost for a part, you need to change the costing method to ‘Sandard’. Even that isn’t as simple as entering in a number for cost. Epicor uses separate values for Material, Labor, and Burden to make up the total ‘cost’ for a part. I am way oversimplifying all of this but you are opening a can of worms.
You can add in Price Breaks on the price list so that when your volume increases the cost per part decreases.
I understand the labor / burden part, have that setup in my manufactured parts. But to assign a cost to something this way makes zero sense to me, it’s an entire level of needing to understand things that I just don’t. So frustrating, every time I dive into this I want to call Epicor and tell them I am not paying for this product anymore. But we’re stuck. I am looking at hiring an consultant, so I can spend another 50 grand to learn it… otherwise I lose every dollar I spent implementing it… this could literally kill my company.
I am also an M.E. Erik so I feel your pain with some of this. The reason I understand this to be is your accounting method you want to use determines the cost. For example, if you use standard cost the cost of the material on the job doesn’t change until you change the cost. The varying costs you see from the vendors are variances to the standard cost. This can be scary as the last company I worked for got in some real trouble with standard cost. They were not doing a good job of updating their costs and were losing money on lots of parts due to steel price increases. I may be slightly wrong on this as I am like you, but this is what I understood. At the end of the day, it all comes down to accounting cost rules your company uses which is what makes them do it this way. Someone else can correct me if I am wrong.
I think the way it works is very understandable and useable.
I just want to convey, I think it is natural to think ‘I want to enter in a cost for a part, so I will just open up Part Entry, find the ‘cost’ field and type in a number.’
When you actually get in and find it is not that simple it can be frustrating.
It’s beyond frustrating.
Keep in mind Erik, that “Costing” in Epicor is accounting costing, not engineering costing. The cost comes from the PO/invoice for what you actually paid for it. Just because you were to put a number on the part master, doesn’t mean the supplier is going to sell if to you for that price. You highlighted reasons why that may be, like volume, lead time, supply and demand etc.
So the cost on parts, is related to the cost on the PO for when the inventory was actually received. And if you are doing average costing, it’s to calculate the true value of your inventory for accounting purposes, not give you an average of what you’ve paid for the part historically.
This site is really good at explaining and teaching accounting basics. I had to work through this myself to even attempt to understand what’s going on. As you’ve found out, a lot of stuff related to costing seems counterintuitive, but it does have a logic at the base of it.
This is actually an epicor thing. This is standard accounting practices. So if you do with another product, you’ll have the same issue. That’s why I can link you to do a totally unrelated website to explain it. It’s actually standard.
Welcome to the deep dark world of costing… I wish it was just a number. Great link Brandon, I use that often.
Cost is not Price. Price is not cost. They are different worlds.
I always conflated the two, but my old boss (the plant controller) drilled this notion into me, and it helped me a lot.
Cost = what the part is worth to your company.
Then there’s the price you pay for it (Supplier Price List).
Then there’s the price you sell it for, if applicable (“Price List” - which, like “Order Entry”, assumes the word “Sales” in front of it)
Your accounting department determines the company’s “costing method” (usually for the whole site, but you can do every part differently). You must abide by their rules.
Some options:
Everything but standard has a lot of gotchas. For example, this messes up any of them (but standard):
At step 3, I think the system values the 1 part at the full value of everything that went into the job. At step 4, the other 8 have no value, so now:
We use standard, so I may need to be corrected on some of the last bits.
Oh also, if you buy direct or make direct
This is true even of parts that you normally buy to stock or normally sell from stock.
That’s a very good point @JasonMcD . This highlights that the costing is for Accountings version of inventory costing. And if it doesn’t hit inventory, you don’t update costing information.
And you and everyone else made very good points.
For me the aha was price <> cost. It’s simple enough to become a mantra.
Thanks for all the answers… Epicor seems designed for multi-departmental companies. We have 2 users. It’s too big for us, we do not understand it. I have to come to terms with that. I made a very poor decision in purchasing this software.
I should just be using Quickbooks Enterprise.
My decision to go with epicor is going to damage my company, possibly put me out of business. Sadly that’s my reality.
Oh man, I see the original post where you talked about regrets, so we don’t really need to rehash all that.
But I’ll just echo what everyone else has said, I do believe that you can make it work for you - I mean, I think you, Erik, can do it.
You should reread that post. Lots of encouragement and educational guidance in there.
And I knew NONE of this stuff 6 years ago. And we are doing great. It can be done.
Finding a good teacher helps. We rarely have that luxury though.
