Migration of one Costing Method to Another

If you have been using the Stock module for a while and want to change the Costing Method, this is possible but you must make sure the following steps are followed to ensure a successful migration:

Pre-requisites: 

1. Stock Close Out must be done first and Stock Period must be closed for the month you have just finished processing. The stock item rates on a previous period (which is updated at Close Out) is always used as the starting point for the new period stock transactions.

2. Change the Control Parameter Stock Cost method to the new desired method at the beginning of the new month before processing new stock transactions.

 In summary, the unit costs and quantities for the last period must be reviewed, and updated if necessary, so that they can be used as the starting position for the new period. There is a utility to export this list and a data import to import this revised file. Once these steps are done, you are ready to start processing stock transactions and the system will be using the new method to calculate Stock issues and any other related transactions.

The process should be as follows:

1.  Export stock item list to verify starting position:
   Use the Utility Stock By Period Export to export the list of stock items to facilitate the reviewing of quantities on hand, and unit cost per period/location/item.
   This will export the data for the last closed period only.
   If you are not confident about the quantities on-hand, you may want to perform a Stocktake to verify/adjust quantities. This is an optional step and is up to you. If a stocktake is to be done, the last Closed Stock period must be reopened, Stocktake done, and the Stock Close Out performed again. This will ensure that the exported list to be revised includes the right quantities (coming from the Stocktake adjustments). Also, if you are happy with the Cost Rates exported from the system, you don’t need to update them. The file exported can be used as the import file with no changes if you don’t see the need to update the values.
   
   

2. Import Period Initialisation:

   1. Review export file (quantities and unit cost on each item per location) from the previous step.

   2. Use Stock By Period Reinitialisation data import to re-initialise and update the last closed stock period, which will be used as the starting point for the new Stock period that is about to start with the new stock method.
      The format of the file exported on step #1 is compatible with this import, so the file can be easily imported.

   3. You must change the Control Parameter Stock Cost method before the import is done to get the correct stock item cost rate value in the StockByPeriod table.

   4. Notes:
      This import is designed to overwrite the rates on the last closed stock period, Stock item by Period by Location, with the imported values.
      The user must define what Year/Period this will be overwriting, which must be the last processed period. This is a parameter in the import.
      The import executes the utility wbUpdateAllStockCosts to update Average/Last stock values on ALL items. As you may have noticed, each Stock item keeps an up-to-date rate for each of the costing methods, regardless of the costing method being used.
      
      

3. Optional step:
   Manually run utility wbRepriceTransactions to recost unexported Stock issues in case any have been created for the new period using the old Stock Cost rate from before importing the new rate with Stock By Period Reinitialisation data import.