Chris I think there's one other big difference in how they are handled from the accounting point of view...
Inventory value is efficiently tracked in various raw material and work in progress, and cost of good sold accounts. The accounting is essentially automatic since these transactions are so common. Rental inventory is often manually tracked in the capital expenditures and equipment sales leaving a profit or loss from sales of capital equipment. I see you're in the situation of very frequently selling rental equipment... Although there hasn't been a previous demand, I actually see value in automating this procedure. I'm wondering if the datamodel wouldn't be better to track company equipment as a special type of inventory, with connections to a calendar for rental and asset usage. This would be somewhat similar to how a person, or company is represented as a party. The inventory accounting system is already setup to utilize special accounts for various inventory items. On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 06:14 -0700, Chris Howe wrote: > > --- David E Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > > I think there are quite a few more differences than > > that... The > > information about a rental versus sale and return of > > inventory is > > very different and I really wouldn't want to see a > > bunch of rental > > specific fields added to the InventoryItem, which is > > already complex. > > > > I really highly recommend looking into the existing > > rental stuff more > > and identify the specific places where the > > functionality is similar > > to and different from what you need. I might be > > making a bad > > assumption, but I've seen a lot of people go through > > this and it's > > easy to try to make what you are familiar with fit > > into a new need > > rather than going through the time and effort > > required to research a > > new part of the existing functionality. > > > > -David > > Taking another close look at the rental stuff and the > inventory stuff this is what I'm seeing: > 1) Product availability for the rental items is not > calculated for the inventory sections of the order > screen. > 2) You can find availability for those items by > looking at it's calendar which is based on > FixedAsset.productionCapacity (production capacity is > a manufucturing use of fixed assets, not a rental use) > > 3) the entity InventoryItem (correctly) has no > relationship to the accounting entities. So its name > is not reflecting the accounting "ideology" of > separation of fixed assets, supplies and inventory. > Inventory items are simply items that are in a > facility. Could just as easily be called Item based > on it's current implementation. > > 4)FixedAssets is setup in a way that doesn't allow the > Facility entities to control it (by having the foreign > key in the FixedAsset entitiy). This keeps you from > being able to transfer a fixed asset in the same > manner that you transfer items for sale. > > From my POV, the only reason why the approach was > taken to not consider FixedAssets InventoryItems is > because of the shortcut taken with the > FixedAssetProduct entity. It should have instead been > FixedAssetItem entity and then you're selling / > renting, etc only items which in reality is what > you're doing anyway as InventoryItem is already linked > to the Product entity. Linking FixedAsset and > InventoryItem allows you to specify the location the > fixed asset as well as specifiy what productId is > representing it for sale/rent
