Variance on a lot average costed item

Epicor ERP 10
1

I have 11 years experience in Vantage/E10 and a lifetime of experience as a cost accountant. This is not my first rodeo.
In those 11 years on Epicor I have never not been able to reconcile a job variance to the penny. Well, there is a first time for everything I guess.
Specifically I have a job on Lot Average with a lot size of 1, for a unique part number that is never duplicated. This is a make to stock job. The job generated a variance at closing. In the past, the only variance on lot costed items came from two issues. One is when material or labor is issued to the job after the job is received to stock. The total variance = items issues after receipt to stock by re-opening the job. The other is when the job is over-completed, i.e. the job is to make 1 but the final op gets a completion of 2 and then 1 received to stock. The variance is generally 1/2 of the total job cost.
The job in question has generated a variance that I cannot calculate the origin of. All materials and labor were issued to the job prior to job completion, as verified through change logs and PartTran down to the second. The were some intermediate ops with over-completions, but not the final ops, and I’ve calculated potential value of those over completions and they don’t tie to anything near what I’m looking for. I have $40K of variance on a $1.3M job with $1.5K in screwy labor. I am absolutely stumped and have dug deep in to every material issued, every labor transaction, used Production Detail Report and InvWIP and multiple BAQ’s.
so, what have I missed???

2

Any chance something was issued to the job at one cost and returned at a different cost?

3

Thanks for the suggestion, but no. Most of the material were issued in Dec - Feb. WIP was reconciled at the end of Feb and this job was in balance to the GL, and I can take all the transactions from both Prod Detail report and InvWIP and tie it out to end of Feb balance. In March, there were only 10 additional transactions and no returns. I’ve verified Trans Date against Sys Date to verify nothing was cross period. I’ve run a WIP report for every day of March and every day it ties out to the transactions, until the last day. One transaction was done, the the job was completed and received to stock, and a variance created. I cannot get any sum of any transactions to tie to the amount that was received to stock. I just can’t figure out how E10 came up with that number. Its not due to the one and only transaction done that date as I have verified it occurred prior to job completion and the dollars don’t make sense that way either.

4

We are currently implementing Kinetic and are looking at using lot tracking and Lot Avg costing for custom built large assemblies that would be made to stock and then the specific lot would be shipped against a specific order. I modeled this method, and it appears to work well bringing the specific cost for the specific lot properly to the customer order, but I am very concerned about this method after finding your thread. We would also have $1M+ projects with hundreds of manufactured and purchased component parts.

Did you find an answer to your problem? I surely don’t want to go down this path if the Lot Avg costs are unreliable and can’t be reconciled. I look forward to your response of what I hope was a happy ending. Thanks.

5

variances can happen if you haven’t captured all the costs before you do the shipment. So, as long as you issue all the material, charge all the labor, Receive all the outside processing work, and as long as there are no post-receipt changes in AP, you should not see a variance. BUT… consider if you have a job with materials, labor, and outside processing, and you SHIP before everything is done, then the extra things that get charged after the shipment will become a variance because there is no place for the costs to go other than a variance.

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6

Hi Tim,
Can you clarify what some examples of “post-receipt changes in AP” might be? I am having a similar issue but the material hasn’t shipped and I am getting an unexplainable variance.

7

example of post receipt changes include:

  1. you create a PO for 100 @ $2 each
  2. you receive 100 (@ $2 each)… this is due to being short shipped
  3. AP enters the invoice, and the supplier invoiced you for 100 at $1.99. This is due to a change in cost that was not properly entered into the PO… now there is a variance that happens in AP that is not associated with the average cost.
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