About non-stock item support

Non-stock items may be "products" that consist of no physical entity and thus cannot be stocked in warehouses (as with labour, services, or charges) or physical entities for which you do not need to track quantities in a warehouse because very small quantities are required.

Many stores sell items that can’t be found on their shelves, such as product warranties, or services such as product assembly, installation, or customisation. Some items are obviously non-stock, such as labour rates and services, but the decision about whether to consider other items (such as gift-wrapping) stock or non-stock depends on the company's inventory policies and other conditions.

In the system, non-stock items are handled differently from stock items kept in warehouses. For stock items, the Inventory workspace maintains all cost, quantity, sales, and cost-of-goods-sold information. Since non-stock items do not require tracking of quantities, the Inventory workspace maintains only standard costs and base price information for them.

You can use non-stock items in

  • Supplier ledger
  • Customer ledger
  • Project

even if the Logistics functionality is not enabled in your system.

However, you will not be able to define the item classes nor the posting classes for them, and it will not be possible to update their prices and costs in bulk.

Visma.net ERP supports the following types of non-stock items:

Non-stock item A general type of non-stock item generally bought for internal needs or for using in sales but not for selling separately.
Labour or
Labour class		 A non-stock item mostly used as a source of general ledger accounts for recording sales of labour.
Service A non-stock item to designate service fees.
Charge A non-stock item that represents specific type of charges.
Expense A non-stock item that represents specific type of expense.

You can create item classes for non-stock items to provide default settings for each type of non-stock items used in your business.
With such classes defined, users specify an item class when they use the Non-stock items (IN202000) window to define a new non-stock item, and the system fills in many values, thus saving time and increasing accuracy.

Information about non-stock items and their properties is maintained using the Non-stock items (IN202000) window available in the Customer ledger, Supplier ledger, and Inventory workspaces. The list below describes some of the settings you can provide for a non-stock item using this window:

Item ID Every non-stock item is assigned an unique identifier based on the INVENTORY segmented key.
For details on identifier configuration possibilities, see: About stock and non-stock items.
For material non-stock items, you can specify a default warehouse and select whether the items require shipping and receipts on purchase.
Units and conversion rules

For each non-stock item, you can select the units of measure (UoMs) used as base, sales, and purchase units for the item.
You can specify conversion rules for them and for other UoMs used for the item.
You select UoMs from the list of those available for the item class or type new UoMs manually.
Note that every conversion rule is specified with respect to the UoM chosen as the item's base unit.
Packaging options If the non-stock item requires shipping, specify the weight of the base unit and the UoM used to measure the weight.
General ledger accounts and subaccounts

Purchases and sales of non-stock items do not affect companies' assets, so the general ledger accounts and subaccounts used for non-stock items are limited to

  • sales accounts,
  • expense accounts, and
  • accounts required for posting transactions related to kit assembly (if the item is a kit or a kit component).

Corresponding subaccounts are used to detail records within each account.

If receipt is required for a non-stock item, a price variance account and a purchase accrual account are required to record purchases of this non-stock item.
When the receipt is matched to the invoice, any price variance for the non-stock item is recorded to the specified price variance account.

You can create posting classes to provide default sales/expense accounts and subaccounts for non-stock items.
If a non-stock item has not been assigned to a posting class, the default expense subaccount is generated according to the rule specified in the Customer ledger preferences (AR101000) window.
Valuation method Only the standard cost method applies to non-stockitems.
Price information For non-stock items of all types, you can specify price classes and assign prices that become effective on specific dates.

Non-stock items of the Labour type are processed in the system differently from non-stock items of other types.

They are used in the Projects and Time and expenses workspaces as a source of accounts to be used in contract and project invoicing. For more information, see Non-stock items (IN202000)

Non-stock items do not affect company's inventory balance.
However, to make it possible to enter the non-stock item cost and use it in the non-stock item price calculation, Visma.net ERP enables you to maintain standard costs for non-stock items.

The standard costs are determined outside of the system by cost experts, and the values should include some of the indirect and direct costs allocated.

Standard costs are defined with respect to the base unit of the non-stock item.

By using the Price/cost information tab of the Non-stock items (IN202000) window you can:

  • Specify the standard cost for a non-stock item as pending cost.

  • Specify a date when the cost will become effective.

  • Update standard costs for non-stock items by using the Update cost action.

The system displays only the last cost and current cost. The historical costs that were effective before the last cost are not stored in the database.

If you want to make similar changes to many or all non-stock (and possibly stock) items, use the Update standard costs (IN502000) window.
By using the window, you can enter new costs and compare current and pending costs side-by-side for all items that you select.
If you are satisfied with the changes, you can update the current standard costs with the pending standard costs for all items or only selected ones.

For non-stock items, you can define and maintain a default sales price for each item in the Non-stock items (IN202000) window, or you can implement different pricing strategies in the Sales prices (AR202000) window. For more information, see:About default prices and About Sales prices.

Related concepts

About default prices

Related tasks

Create non-stock items

Maintain default prices for non-stock items

Specify standard costs for non-stock items

Related windows

Non-stock items (IN202000)

Item classes (IN201000)