Construction companies work with scores of heavy machinery and tools to successfully complete projects. This means that teams regularly check out high-ticket assets to take with them to various sites. On the other hand, universities loan expensive equipment to students and losing track of these can come as a heavy blow to their already meager budgets.
In both these scenarios, knowing the total cost of items being issued helps supervisors plan vigilance and monitoring accordingly. It also means that they can tailor rental agreements according to the value of items going out. Consequently, you’re able to ensure that individuals renting out equipment use it more consciously for the duration of the rental.
Use the total cost of Carts in EZOfficeInventory to expedite item recovery from damages or losses and get better control over your checkouts.
1. Enabling the Tracking Cost of Carts Add On
Please note that Tracking Cost Of Carts is an Advanced Feature.
To begin tracking the cost of your Carts, head to Settings → Add Ons → Tracking Cost of Carts. Enable the feature and save the changes!
2. Choosing the method for cost calculation
You can choose how the cost of items in your Carts is calculated once you enable the Tracking Cost of Carts Add On.
- Assets: Choose between the cost price of the Asset or its depreciated value (provided that the Depreciation Add On is enabled).
- Inventory: Choose between the FIFO method or the Default Add Stock Price.
- Asset Stock: You can currently only use the Default Add Stock Price.
Note: The FIFO method of stock valuation is based on the assumption that goods purchased first will be sold first. For example:
You bought Inventory A twice in the month of June:
- On June 1, 10 units of Inventory A bought at $10 per piece. This is Batch 1.
- On June 15, 10 units of Inventory A bought at $20 per piece. This is Batch 2.
You sold Inventory A twice in the month of August. Here’s how the cost will be calculated:
- On August 1, 5 units sold for Inventory A. These will go out from Batch 1 since it was purchased first.
- Total cost = 5 * $10 = $50.
- On August 10, 15 units sold for Inventory A. The first 5 units will be the remaining units from Batch 1. The next 10 will be from Batch 2. Total cost = (5 * $10) + (5 * $20) = $150.
3. Viewing the Total Cost of Cart in the Cart Details Page
Once you’ve enabled the Add On, click on the Cart icon at the top of your EZOfficeInventory Dashboard to navigate to Carts.
Here, open a Cart to view its Details Page.
On the Cart Details Page, scroll down to the Cart contents and click on the pen icon in the columns tab. If you are unable to see it, scroll the contents table sideways; the pen icon will be next to the last column.
Click on it to customize the view by selecting the relevant Asset columns to display. While you cannot remove the default columns, you can add new ones. Click on ‘Add Column’.
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 will now be able to see the cost of items and the total cost of a Cart in the Cart Details Page. Remember 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. Comments and Mentions
Users can now add comments with mentions at the end of the Cart Details page to notify other users of a certain action. To enable the settings, Go to Company settings → Add Ons → Mentions
Once you enable the settings, you will be able to mention other users by typing @username.
Note: Mentions is applicable to all Assets, Asset Stock and Inventory.
The user will be notified of the mention by clicking on the bell icon on the dashboard. Click on ‘Mentions’ from the dropdown and you will be directed to the mentions listing page for further details.
5. Generating the Total Cost of Carts Report
You can also generate a Cost Of Carts Report by using Custom Reports in EZOfficeInventory. Go to Reports –> Custom Report.
Here, select Carts as the primary module in Step 1. Next, select Cart Line Items as the related module and run the report.
You’ll now be able to see the total cost of all your Carts. Additionally, like all Custom Reports in EZOfficeInventory, you can apply filters to this report and add or remove columns as you like. Here’s ours!
6. Viewing the Total Cost of Carts in Cart Printouts
With Tracking Cost Of Carts 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.
Questions? Suggestions? Reach out!
We love to hear from you. Shoot us any questions or queries at support@ezo.io and we’ll get back to you before you can say ‘total cost of Carts’!
