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Production Detail Report

  • 27 June 2022
  • 8 replies
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K

Shouldn’t the difference between the Standard Cost and Actual Cost be the amount of MFG-Variance in the WIP/Reconciliation Report. I have ran several Production Detail Reports and then ran the WIP/Reconciliation Report just for each individual job. I can not figure out the MFG Variance is being calculated on the WIP/Reconciliation report.

 

I read through another post that Monty had commented on that there were some BAQ’s he had written but I have not been able to figure out where those are and if they are still on this site.

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Best answer by glenn.owers 28 June 2022, 14:58

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M

I am on FIFO Costing and assume you are on standard costing.  I run into timing issues:  labor is not completed before the receipt into inventory is done, not all the materials are issued prior to receipt, etc.  Another thing that probably would affect standard costing as well as other methods, is if the quantity completed is overstated on the operation vs the production quantity.  The system does not know it is overstated and could be holding some cost back in the job.  Have you run the WIP Report for the job to see if any cost remains in the job?  I am not sure if what you are looking at are all closed jobs or not.  At the end, I would think that your variance would match unless maybe the standard cost was updated after the job was created but before the receipt into inventory was completed. 

G
Userlevel 3

One other thing, which I have noticed, as we are using the Standard Cost Method, is the job holds the standard costs at the time the job is released or started.  So if you change your Standard Cost between the time the job is started and the time it is completed, you cannot simply look at the job costs vs.  standard.

What we have begun to use to validate the Manufacturing Variance is the Part Transaction History.   I have a BAQ which reads the Part Tran History table, selecting the MFG-VAR transactions within a date range.

I break the transaction date into Year and Month. and use the Group By feature of BAQ, to group the data by Company, Year, Month, Part No., Job No., summarizing the Labour, Labour Burden, Material, Material Burden, SubContract fields.  As the Part Tran table is used to post to the G/L, we are finding this is much easier to track done the reason for the variance.

 

Glenn Owers Sr. Business Analyst Safran Electronics & Defense Canada Peterborough, ON Canada Version: 2021.2..23
K

I appreciate everyones input. This is starting to get me to where I want to be. My two main problems are that one, I am very new to Epicor and two, this is my first go round with a job shop. 

 

So I printed out the WIP report just for one job and I see how the MFG Variance is calculated but I don't really understand the rows I guess. For example, this job had $28,879.35 of material in the To date row but only 28,222.98 to Inventory/to job row. I see exactly where the 28,879.35 comes from but I have no idea where/or why the To Inventory/To Job is different.  Maybe I am just missing the forest for the trees. Sorry If this is a stupid question.

G
Userlevel 3

@kstinnett I’ve worked with Epicor for over 8 years, and I still have difficulty validating some of the G/L amounts to the way Epicor performs its calculations.  Recently I have been working in the Manufacturing Variance relm, so I know a bit more about what is going on here, then I really want too.

I believe the To Inventory will be your Finished Good fully rolled up standard cost, multiplied by the Production or Completed quantity.  You could have a G/L control that is placing the difference to a Variance account.

When I really want to deep dive into the Inventory / WIP report, I tend to look at a specific job, check the box to display the Offset Accounts (so you see all of the G/L transactions and the accounts being touched, and I also select to see the Both Posted and UnPosted transactions checkbox.

The Capture COS process, is the process that updates the G/L with the all of the Inventory and Labor transactions.  If you don’t run this process regularly, then you will have transactions which have not been posted to the G/L, and maybe “hidden” when you are trying to balance the dollars and data.  We run the Capture COS process each night to keep the G/L updated and make it a little easier for investigations.

Glenn Owers Sr. Business Analyst Safran Electronics & Defense Canada Peterborough, ON Canada Version: 2021.2..23
K

Thanks you so much Glen. The company I am working with is in need of some serious process updates. Could you please expand on you Capture process each night. I think that is a great idea but after it is captured and processed what do you do to verify that everything that is posting has posted correctly.

I don’t want to start that process without having something in place for verification.

G
Userlevel 3

The Capture Cost process {Capture COS/WIP Activity} resides on several menus within Epicor:

  • Service Management → Project Mgmt. → General Ops
  • Production Mgmt. → Job Mgmt. → General Ops
  • Material Mgmt. → Inventory Mgmt. → General Ops
  • Financial Mgmt → General Ledger → General Ops

This process reads the transactions from the Part Tran History table to gather the Inventory transactions, which have the Inventory flag set to TRUE.  This process also captures all Approved Labour transactions from Time & Expense Entry and MES activity.  You can set the process up to run automatically based on a schedule, or run it manually.  You will need a date range for the process, and it will not post to fiscal periods which are closed or where a fiscal periods earliest apply date for Inventory has been set. 

The audit for the Capture COS/WIP Activity is the Inventory/WIP Reconciliation Report.  This report displays all transactions that impact the General Ledger (except Journal Entries).  When running this report, I always select the Offset Accounts and Posted & UnPosted transactions.  That is the best way to trace transactions and to highlight if you have some transactions that missed being posted to the G/L.

If you notice issues with amounts going to incorrect accounts, you will need to review the G/L Controls, as you can set transactions to automatically post to specific G/L accounts, which is part of the Set-up of your General Ledger.

Hope this information gets you started.  Feel free to keep the questions coming, as I’ll provide as much help as I can.

Glenn Owers Sr. Business Analyst Safran Electronics & Defense Canada Peterborough, ON Canada Version: 2021.2..23
K

Thanks again. That will get me started. I greatly appreciate all the insight.

A
Userlevel 1

Glenn has you on the right track.  I will add that the Epicor Job Costing Manual will also be well worth the read.  It is quite long, and dry, but you’ll have a lot of your questions answered there.

It sounds to me like there may be a few Costing related configurations that aren’t set up correctly for what you’re trying to do.

Anthony

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