Item list report by last date used

Rebecca, 

using just the Reckon product you have,  you'd need to use a transaction based report (which contains the date that an item was sold), as opposed to an ITEM report,  which only deals with overall status of what an item entails (rather than when it is used)..

You could run a report called:  SALES BY ITEM DETAIL,     and let me suggest a strategy that might help.

First,  consider whether there is a target OLD date that you believe represents a time in the past, when you think is 'so long ago it is too long ago to be considered active'.   Let's say that is 18 mths ago as an example.   

MODIFY the parameters of the SALES BY ITEM DETAIL report as follows:
a)   Date range to be from 18mths ago thru to today   (therefore showing only 18mths of transactions .
b)  then SORT BY 'DATE' (ascending).    This will sort the  transactions into chronological sequence.

Cast your eye down the report and you can observe a couple of points.

1.  If an item is NOT ON THE REPORT, then it represents an ITEM that by your definition of time,  it should be marked as inactive.
2.  Look at the last transaction entry of each item, in conjunction with just how many transactions are in fact shown FOR THAT ITEM,   and make a subjective decision based on the number of sales you made, and how long ago (in the parameter of time, like 18mths potential)  and consider whether it is still a big seller or not, and then determine if you want it to be inactive..


Another way,  is to consider the report called: SALES BY ITEM SUMMARY,  and again,  consider the DATE RANGE.    This is a shorter report but you only get to consider the QTY field.   You  can't determine from this report whether you sold QTY 120 to one customer compared to 120 single sales to 120 customers.   AND,  you can't determine from a BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE whether you risk losing a good customer who buys lots of different items from YOU,  purely because you also provide the service of selling some unusually item.    Don't lose sight of that marketing/sales perspective when dropping inventory items off your price list too fast!

For a more technical research of the DATA<  you can EXPORT these reports to EXCEL or LibreCALC, and do some data manipulation to check for LIKE/COMMON line items from the DETAIL report and do some fancy data compression to leave just the last (most recent) dated ITEM to achieve what you asked for in this forum question in the first place.   You dump the data to a spreadsheet.  Then you copy that for  a fallback position.  Then you compare adjacent ROWS for the same item code,  and progressively put a YES/NO against duplicates or not.  When you come to the last of many ITEM#1 and see the next line being the start of an ITEM#2,  than you mark the LAST OCCURRENCE of ITEM#1  with a NO.   Otherwise all the duplicates are marked with a YES.   Then resort the whole SHEET so that the "NO" entries fall beside each other, and delete all the 'YES' lines.  The result is a SHEET that shows ITEM#, and latest date SOLD.

But frankly,  from a business point of view,  the eye-balling of the NUMBER of transactions as opposed to just the QTY of an item sold,  is a more meaningful exercise to really understand how volatile/useful your stock really is.  (Hence the SALES BY ITEM DETAIL report)


Gary Pope
m: 0408994799
e:  gaz@alchester.com.au
An Accredited Partner- Consultant (VIC. Aust)
http://www.alchester.com.au/reckon-ac…
“Working with Accountants/Bookkeepers PPs/APs, as an
     independent IT Professional and retired FCPA Accountant”