Job work and stock at third parties

# Job work and stock at third parties

Use job work when someone else does part of the making: a tailor stitches your cloth, a workshop plates your parts. It also covers the other way round, when a customer gives you their material to work on.

Open Job work under Purchases. Each job has a number, the other party, and a list of what moved.

Send your material to a contractor

1. Choose New job. For What are you doing, pick Send my material to a contractor.
2. Choose the Contractor, the date, and Take material from (your location).
3. Add the items and quantities, with batch or serial numbers if they are tracked.
4. Save, then choose Print challan. Send the printed challan with the goods.

The material moves to a place called At the contractor's name. It keeps its cost and stays in your stock value, because it is still yours. Nothing is posted to the books. See Stock at third parties on the same screen, and the report of that name, for everything held outside.

Receive the finished goods

1. Open the job and choose Receive goods.
2. Choose Goods that came back and How many.
3. Type Your charge for the work. This is the contractor's fee. Leave it empty if there is none.
4. Under Fee is owed to, choose the contractor.
5. Say how much Material used up, and where to Put them in.

The finished goods come into stock at the material used plus the fee. The fee is credited to Job work charges owed, not straight to payables. It stays there until you enter the contractor's own bill, and then that bill clears it.

Return unused material

Choose Return unused material to bring back what the contractor did not use. It moves from their place back to yours at its own cost. There is no entry.

A customer's material

Choose New job and, for What are you doing, pick Receive a customer’s material to work on. When the material arrives it is held at zero value: it belongs to the customer, so it does not count in your stock value or your books. When the work is done, Give goods back to the customer. Choose Mark finished once everything is given back. Your charge for the work is an ordinary invoice to the customer.

Worked example

You send 50 metres of cloth costing 20 a metre (1,000) to a tailor. The cloth moves to At the tailor, still worth 1,000. The tailor makes 10 shirts, uses 48 metres, and charges 40 for the work. You receive the 10 shirts:

• Material used: 48 x 20 = 960
• Fee: 40
• Shirts come in at 1,000, 100 each
• 2 metres (40) are still at the tailor. Return them, or leave them for the next job.
• Job work charges owed holds 40 until you enter the tailor's bill for 40.

What to watch for

• Enter the contractor's bill as soon as it arrives. Until you do, the fee shows under Job work charges owed, not under what you owe vendors.
• Material held by a contractor is counted in stock value. Look at the ageing report, which counts customer material too, so take that into account.
• The challan has no field for when material is due back yet. Write that on the printout.
• Close a job only when the goods are back and unused material is returned. Pop Books will not close a job while material is still at the contractor: return it, or write it off with a stock adjustment, then close.
• Count and compare material at the contractor from time to time.