As a manufacturer of slide and tilt trays, its impractical for to use Inventory as it's an all or nothing affair.
A single tilt tray takes between 6-8 weeks to build, and we can have up 20 trays at various stages of fabrication on the go at any one time.
We use Item codes for all our Purchases, but cut lengths of steel and plate, fittings, oil, workshop consumables, repair of plant and equipment etc don't lend themselves to inventory.
There are however serialized items like winches, hydraulic rams and radio remote systems that are allocated to individual trays and have to be pre-ordered from our Suppliers as they too have build times of weeks to months.
At present we place large orders to those suppliers for items that can't be filled in a single despatch, and these are 'drip fed' over time as they are manufactured and despatched. Trying to keep track of these backorders without inventory is a nightmare.
MEX Computerised Maintenance systems has a Stores function that allows the user to select which Items are inventoried and which are not.
It would be great if we saw a feature similar to this made available in MYOB. It would make a massive difference to streamlining our Purchase Ordering and would sharpen our build times when we've had to put a build on hold while waiting for parts.
"Select which Items to Inventory"