We are starting to charge customers NREs and one time setup/tooling fees, however, we have had some issues with the best way to do this.
Currently our sales team has set them up as miscellaneous header on a line, which is driving up the price of the part and affecting gross margin at the part level which we do not want to happen. We are also unable to track these charges to ensure that they have been billed.
Accounting proposed that a non-inventory part be created for these charges and added to the sales order and shipped so that it pulls through for AR billing. This affects the overall customer gross margin since these parts would pull in with 100% margin. Is there a way to keep these non-inventory parts off of the gross margin report?
Also, when we setup separate lines on the sales order, how would the lines be marked as shipped to bring them into invoicing. What is the best way to easily facilitate invoicing with minimal involvement since there is physically nothing to ship on an NRE/Tooling.
There has been some push back so we are looking for best practices, how does your organization handle these types of charges?