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Asked by: Vida Piazza
business and finance debt factoring and invoice discountingWhen LIFO is used with the periodic inventory system?
Similarly one may ask, when would you use a periodic inventory system?
Under the periodic inventory system, all purchases made between physical inventory counts are recorded in a purchases account. When a physical inventory count is done, the balance in the purchases account is then shifted into the inventory account, which in turn is adjusted to match the cost of the ending inventory.
Accordingly, what is calculated only at the end of a period in the periodic inventory method?
Under periodic inventory system inventory account is not updated for each purchase and each sale. All purchases are debited to purchases account. The ending inventory is determined at the end of the period by a physical count and subtracted from the cost of goods available for sale to compute the cost of goods sold.
An advantage of the periodic inventory system is that there is no need to have separate accounting for raw materials, work in progress, and finished goods inventory. All that is recorded are purchases.