Empty good inventory valuation

Article02/09/20242 min read

Empty goods are in most cases part of a full good. You sell, purchase, produce or assemble these full goods as individual items and they have their own inventory value. The empty good itself will in general not be sold. There is a difference between empty goods that are part of a production, or assembly process, and empty goods that are part of traded items:

Production and assembly:

  • The empty goods are purchased. You get the ownership of the goods.
  • The valuation of the item is done according to the Business Central standard.

Trade:

  • The full good (bottle of beer, crate of beer, beer in keg.) is purchased. You are not the owner of the empty good. Still, you might want to register the value of the empties, for instance for insurance reasons.
  • The valuation of the empty good is possible in Empty Goods Management. The valuation is optional and is only executed when the Empty Goods Code is set up with an Inventory Unit Value.

Example of trade items, beer in keg:

  1. The full good is purchased. The empty good is included. The keg of beer is part of your inventory and has an inventory value. The keg itself is owned by the producer. He might charge a deposit for it.

    • Empty Good Management registers an empty goods ledger entry with a quantity of +1. The inventory value is the value from the empty goods Code.
    • The inventory value is posted to the Empty Goods Value Account against the Empty Goods Value Balancing Account (General Posting Setup).
  2. When the full good item is sold, it is no longer part of your inventory.

    • Empty Good Management registers an empty goods ledger entry with a quantity of -1.
    • The inventory value is posted to the Empty Goods Value Balancing Account against the Empty Goods Value Account.
Note

Inventory valuation on empty goods is only applicable to trade items, where you don’t have the ownership of the empty goods.