Table of Contents
Purpose
This article provides steps to add Debris and Dump Fees to your Item Catalog and how to manage them in Aspire.
Dumping debris from your jobs can happen in many ways. Some of the most common ways for landscape companies are:
Debris is brought back to the office dumpster and disposed of. A trash removal service comes onsite and picks up the dumpster, which incurs a monthly fee.
Debris is taken to an offsite dump yard and your company pays a service fee.
Setting Up A Debris and Dump Fee in Administration
First, set up the Debris and Dump Fee to have record of the fee, this will help you manage them inside of Aspire.
Click on your Profile Icon in the blue side menu. Then, select Administration.
Creating the Catalog Item Category
Click on the Application tab, and select Lists. On the drop down, click Catalog Item Category.
Click the blue New icon to create your new Item Category.
Create and save a Catalog Item Category called Debris/Dump Fee.
Your new Catalog Item Category is then added to your List.
Create Your New Material Item
Now that the Debris/Dump Fee Item Category has been created, a new Material Item can be created for Debris/Dump Fee.
💡 Aspire recommends Debris and Dump Fees are created with a Material Item type. The reason why we recommend this is because Material Items can be allocated from inventory within the Aspire's Mobile Application. Items assigned with an item type of Other are not available to be allocated from Aspire Mobile.
In Administration, click Estimating. Click on Item Catalog.
Select New Material from the drop down.
Name your new material Item Debris/Dump Fees.
Choose the Category Debris/Dump Fees from the drop down menu.
Check the boxes for Inventory Item and Allocate from Mobile.
Add a Purchase Unit Cost to help estimate cost for each dump fee that should be charged to a job.
Set the Purchase Unit and Allocation Unit.
Examples of recommended units may include:
CY (cubic yards) = 1 CY(cubic yards)
EA (each) = 1 EA (each)
Ton = 1 Ton
When you are done with entering these fields, click Save on the New Material Item window.
Now that the Material Item for your Dump Fee is created, you can now create purchase receipts and tie them to your work tickets.
Create Dump Fee Purchase Receipts for Work Tickets
When a vendor bill is received from your waste disposal or landfill company for Dump Fees, you might want to offset these charges. Sometimes, companies will pass them along to their customer as part of their Service fees on a job.
You can do this process by creating a Purchase Receipt and then, tie the Purchase Receipt to a Work Ticket associated with your customer's Opportunity in Aspire.
Click Purchasing in the blue side menu.
Click Purchase Receipts and under the New icon, select Add Purchase Receipt.
A New Purchase Receipt screen appears.
Add your Purchase Items. Search the name of your Material Item in the drop down, which in this example is Debris/Dump Fees.
Select the associated Work Ticket number(s) from the Magnifying Glass icon.
When you are entering the vendor's invoice into the Purchase Receipt, the quantity should be at least 1 for each Work Ticket.
🧠 For accuracy, the total cost of the invoice could be divided by the quantity to get the actual item cost.
Ensure the cost of the Purchase Receipt equals the amount of the Vendor bill your company has received.
A good example of this is below:
If Debris/Dump Fees Item cost is $25 and the vendor bill is $900, enter the Purchase Receipt as:
Qty – 36,
Est. Unit Price – $25.00
Ext. Price – $900
If you have the permissions, approve the Purchase Receipt and send to your Accounting System.
Allocating Dump Fees From Inventory
📌 Note: Aspire Recommended Best Practice
In Aspire, you can allocate Dump Fees to Work Tickets through Time Entry or Aspire Mobile, Work Tickets, or the Purchasing Assistant module. Doing this can create a negative inventory item.
You will need to adjust your Inventory Allocations Quantity on Hand to fix the negative inventory item.
To adjust the Inventory Balance for the Dump Fee back to 0, type 0 in Quantity on Hand, and save with the Quantity on Hand icon.
Adjusting inventory allocation quantities for your dump fee inventory will create an Inventory Quantity Change on the End of Month Report in the Inventory tab.
Reviewing Inventory Adjustments in Reports
Reviewing inventory adjustments is part of your End of Month (EOM) process. Since quantity adjustments were done in the last section, you will want to manage them in the Inventory tab of the End of Month report so you can then create a journal entry in your Accounting System.
Go to the EOM Report in the Reports module from the blue side menu.
Set your date range as Last Month.
Select the Inventory Tab.
Under the Inventory Quantity Changes header, click on the dollar amount for Inv Holding: Inventory Adjustment.
Group the results by Category.
With this information you should be able to successfully create a journal entry in your Accounting System to account for the Debris/Dump Fees as both a Debit to Inventory Holding Material and as a Credit to Cost of Goods (COGs) Material.
Creating a Journal Entry for EOM and Dump Fees
To review journal entries for EOM inventory, please click through to read the EOM task #39 on the End of Month Checklist.
Adding a New Inventory Cost When Dump Fees Change
If the cost of the Dump Fees increase or decrease, then you would need to add a new Inventory Cost on your Material item in the Item Catalog.
How is Inventory Cost Calculated?
📌 Note: When Inventory Cost is added, Aspire will determine the Inventory Value in Purchasing on the Allocations tab of the Inventory Location screen based on Allocation Date.
Inventory Value is: Quantity x Unit Cost = Total Inventory Cost Adjustment
Here is an example to understand Inventory Value:
You change the cost of a $1 item to $1.50, and you have 10 units in Inventory. Aspire gives you the opportunity to increase your Inventory Cost by 10 units x 50 cents, which would be a $5 adjustment.
Add the New Inventory Cost in Aspire for Dump Fees
The addition of Inventory Cost entries is done within the Material Item in the Estimating tab of Administration.
Click Add Inventory Cost (Grey plus sign icon) next to the Allocation Item Cost field on the Material item: Debris/Dump Fees.
The grey plus icon is only available for Inventory items.
The first time this screen is displayed for any given inventory item, it will have no entries.
Enter the Effective Date, the Price List, and Purchase Unit Cost and Save.
Inventory cost entries may contain a location-specific Price List. This is Branch specific.
Things to Know About Inventory Cost
🧠 Once an Inventory Cost entry has been saved, the next time you go to the Inventory Cost screen, the effective date is read-only – it cannot be modified.
When you add a new Inventory Cost to Aspire, the effective date of the cost is the day it's added.
🧠 When you save the Inventory Cost entries on the Inventory Cost screen, Aspire updates the values in the Allocation Item Cost and Purchase Unit Cost fields of the Item list as needed.
🧠 When the Item Catalog cost is adjusted, you will have a Cost Adjustment on the EOM Report in the Inventory tab. The Catalog Cost Adjustment brings your balance sheet Inventory in line with your Item Catalog cost.