IT-intensive companies work with scores of technology devices and tools to successfully complete various projects. Their teams regularly check out high-ticket IT Assets for different project sites or office branches. Similarly, many universities loan expensive IT equipment to students, faculty, or researchers for course projects and seminars. Losing track of these items can come as a heavy blow to their already strained budgets.
In both these scenarios, knowing the total cost of items being issued helps IT Admins plan vigilance and monitoring processes accordingly. They can also tailor lease agreements according to the value of items going out. Consequently, employees in the custody of the equipment use it more consciously for the duration of the checkout.
Use the Cost of Carts feature in AssetSonar to get better control over your checkouts and expedite financial recovery from damages or losses if and when they happen.
Note: Tracking Cost Of Carts is an Advanced Feature.
Contents
- Enabling the Add On
- Choosing a method for cost calculation
- Viewing the Total Cost of Carts
- Generating the Total Cost of Carts report
- Viewing Cost of Carts in Cart printouts
1. Enabling the Add On
First, enable the Add On by going to Settings → Add Ons → Tracking Cost of Carts. Hit ‘Enabled’ and save the settings.
2. Choosing a method for cost calculation
You can select how the cost of items in your Carts is calculated after you’ve enabled the Add On. This setting can be accessed from Settings → Company Settings → Valuation and Costing Methods for Items.
- Assets: Select between the cost price of the Asset or its depreciated value (given that the Depreciation Add On is enabled).
- Asset Stock and Inventory: Select between the FIFO method, the Average Cost method, or the Default Add Stock Price.
Note: The FIFO method of stock valuation for Asset Stock and Inventory items is based on the assumption that goods purchased and added to the system first will be checked out first. Let’s say, you bought Macbook chargers (Asset Stock) twice in the month of June:
- On June 1, 10 units of Macbook chargers were bought at $20 per piece. This is Batch 1.
- On June 15, 10 units of Macbook chargers were bought at $25 per piece. This is Batch 2.
You checked out the chargers twice in the month of August. Here’s how the cost will be calculated:
- On August 1, 5 units of Macbook chargers were checked out. These will go out from Batch 1 since it was purchased first.
- Total cost = 5 * $20 = $100.
- On August 10, 15 units of Macbook chargers were sold. The first 5 units will be the remaining units from Batch 1. The next 10 will be from Batch 2. Total cost = (5 * $20) + (5 * $25) = $225.
3. Viewing the Total Cost of Carts
After you’ve enabled the Add On, click on the ‘Cart’ icon at the top-right of your AssetSonar dashboard to navigate to the Carts module.
From the Cart Transactions tab, open a Cart to view its details page.
Now, scroll down to the Cart contents and click on the ‘Customize’ icon in the columns tab. If you are unable to see it, scroll the contents table sideways; the Customize icon will be next to the last column.
Click on it to customize the column view by selecting the relevant Asset columns to display. While you cannot remove the default columns, you can add new ones. In the dialog box that appears, hit the ‘Add Column’ button.
Add the Line Item Cost and Unit Price columns, and set these final columns as the company default by checking ‘Set this as company default’. Finally, hit ‘Save this view’.
You can now see the cost of items and the total cost of a Cart on the Cart Details page. Note that the Line item cost is calculated by multiplying the unit price with the number of units.
Line Item Cost = Unit price * Number of units
4. Generating the Total Cost of Carts report
You can also generate a Cost of Carts report by using Custom Reports in AssetSonar. Go to Reports → Create Custom Report.
Here, in Step 1, select Carts as the primary module. Next, select Cart Line Items as the related module and run the report.
You can now see the total cost of all your Carts. Additionally, like all Custom Reports in AssetSonar, you can apply filters to this report and add or remove columns as you like. Here’s ours!
5. Viewing Cost of Carts in Cart printouts
With the Tracking Cost of Carts Add On enabled, you can also customize Cart printouts to include the cost of Carts. Go to More → Printout Templates → Cart. Click on the ‘Start Designing Template’ button to create a new template that includes Line Item Cost. You can also edit an existing custom template to include the cost of Carts but we’ll be creating a new one for this demo.
This will prompt a new template to open. We need to add the Line Item Cost element to this template. In the Cart Line Items section, click on the ‘+Add’ button.
Choose Line Item Cost from the list of elements.
That’s it! You can now preview your template to see how the total cost of Carts appears in the printout. To print a Cart, go to Cart → Cart # → More → Print Cart.
Here’s how a Cart printout will look like with the total Cost of Carts.
Read more: Carts in AssetSonar: ITAM for Jobs and Events
About AssetSonar
AssetSonar is the leading ITAM solution used by IT-intensive organizations and businesses all over the globe. It gives you the freedom to customize user permissions and roles as per your needs. Sign up today for a free 15-day trial.
For more assistance, drop us an email at support@ezo.io. Visit our Knowledge Base and blog for updates and other tutorials.
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