INVENTORIES

Inventories

AS 2 (Revised) defines inventories as assets held

• for sale in the ordinary course of business, or

• in the process of production for such sale, or

• for consumption in the production of goods or services for sale, including maintenance supplies and consumables other than machinery spares, servicing equipment and standby equipment meeting the definition of Property, plant and equipment.

Inventories encompass goods purchased and held for resale, for example merchandise (goods) purchased by a retailer and held for resale, or land and other property held for resale. Inventories also include finished goods produced, or work in progress being produced, by the enterprise and include materials, maintenance supplies, consumables and loose tools awaiting use in the production process. Inventories do not include spare parts, servicing equipment and standby equipment which meet the definition of property, plant and equipment as per AS 10 (Revised), Property, Plant and Equipment. Such items are accounted for in accordance with Accounting Standard (AS) (Revised) 10, Property, Plant and Equipment.

Following are excluded from the scope of AS 2 (Revised):

(a) Work in progress arising under construction contracts, i.e. cost of part construction, including directly related service contracts, being covered under AS 7, Accounting for Construction Contracts; Inventory held for use in construction, e.g. cement lying at the site should however be covered by AS 2 (Revised).

(b) Work in progress arising in the ordinary course of business of service providers i.e. cost of providing a part of service. For example, for a shipping company, fuel and stores not consumed at the end of accounting period is inventory but not costs for voyage-in-progress. Work-in-progress may arise for different other services

e.g. software development, consultancy, medical services, merchant banking and so on.

(c) Shares, debentures and other financial instruments held as stock-in-trade. It should be noted that these are excluded from the scope of AS 13 (Revised) as well. The current Indian practice is however to value them at lower of cost and fair value.

(d) Producers’ inventories of livestock, agricultural and forest products, and mineral oils, ores and gases to the extent that they are measured at net realisable value in accordance with well established practices in those industries, e.g. where sale is assured under a forward contract or a government guarantee or where a homogenous market exists and there is negligible risk of failure to sell.

The types of inventories are related to the nature of business. The inventories of a trading concern consist primarily of products purchased for resale in their existing form. It may also have an inventory of supplies such as wrapping paper, cartons, and stationery. The inventories of manufacturing concern consist of several types of inventories: raw material (which will become part of the goods to be produced), parts and factory supplies, work-in-process (partially completed products in the factory) and, of course, finished products.

• At the year end every business entity needs to ascertain the closing balance of Inventory which comprise of Inventory of raw material, work-in-progress, finished goods and miscellaneous items. The cost of closing inventory, e.g. cost of closing stock of raw materials, closing work-in-progress and closing finished stock, is a part of costs incurred in the current accounting period that is carried over to next accounting period.
•  Likewise, the cost of opening inventory is a part of costs incurred in the previous accounting period that is brought forward to current accounting period. 
• Since inventories are assets, and assets are resources expected to generate future economic benefits to the enterprise, the costs to be included in inventory costs, are costs that are expected to generate future economic benefits to the enterprise.
•  Such costs must be costs of acquisition and costs incurred in bringing the assets to their present (i) location of the inventory, e.g. freight incurred to carry the materials to factory and (ii) conditions of the inventory, e.g. costs incurred to convert the materials into finished stock. 
• The costs incurred to maintain the inventory, e.g. storage costs, do not generate any extra economic benefits for the enterprise and therefore should not be included in inventory costs unless those costs are necessary in production process prior to a further production stage.
• The valuation of inventory is crucial because of its direct impact in measuring profit/ loss for an accounting period. Higher the value of closing inventory lower is the cost of goods sold and hence higher is the profit.
•  The principle of prudence demands that no profit should be anticipated while all foreseeable losses should be recognised. Thus, if net realisable value of inventory is less than inventory cost, inventory is valued at net realisable value to reduce the reported profit in anticipation of loss.
•  On the other hand, if net realisable value of inventory is more than inventory cost, the anticipated profit is ignored and the inventory is valued at cost. In short, inventory is valued at lower of cost and net realisable value. The standard specifies (i) what the cost of inventory should consist of and (ii) how the net realisable value is determined. 
• Failure of an item of inventory to recover its costs is unusual. If net realisable value of an item of inventory is less than its cost, the fall in profit in consequence of writing down of inventory to net realisable is an unusual loss and should be shown as a separate line item in the Profit & Loss statement to help the users of financial statements to make a more informed analysis of the enterprise performance. 
• By their very nature, abnormal gains or losses are not expected to recur regularly. For a meaningful analysis of an enterprise’s performance, the users of financial statements need to know the amount of such gains/losses included in current profit/loss. 
• For this reason, instead of taking abnormal gains and losses in inventory costs, these are shown in the Profit and Loss statement in such way that their impact on current profit/ loss can be perceived. 
• Part I of Schedule III to the Companies Act, 2013 prescribes that valuation method should be disclosed for inventory held by companies.