This seems to be a rollicking source of fun for the whole community. And everyone seems to have their own special personal way of making it happen.
In my case, it is caused by a retro-active correction to a purchase order where I had an item that auto-filled to the wrong item ID. The correct item was supplied, but the wrong item got the stock added in.
Way back in 2016, I bought a bunch of stuff from a supplier, including something which we shall call DINGUS. We had not sold DINGUSes before, so they are a new product. However, we have been selling the yellow ones, DINGUS-Y for some time already.
I did not create a PO at the time. As a novice retailer, I created a spreadsheet, sent that to the vendor, got pricing in Euros, calc'd the freight, worked out the viability, maybe adjusted the order and dickered the prices (I must be a right PITA to deal with as a vendor) until I felt we have a good solution, at which point I sent the vendor the dough to lock it in.
When the order confirmation came back, I created the PO from that.
The flaw in this procedure becomes evident with this tale. When entering the PO for the already-ordered stuff, I accepted the proffered auto-fill of DINGUS-Y instead of realising that I needed to create a new item for DINGUS. Subsequent stocktakes, working off the printed list from AE, somehow managed to avoid the problem of the box of unlisted product, but did manage to discover that somehow nine of the DINGUS-Y had gone missing (which is odd, because there were 10 in the box of DINGUSes, but I digress...)
Anyhow, I am doing another stocktake, and the mystery box of DINGUSes, unopened, unlisted and unsold, finally penetrated the protective animal layers to my inner neat-freak and I discovered the data entry error in the PO.
Easy-peasy, you say. Create the item definition (already done) and change the PO to the correct material number, then save. The DINGUS-Y population should drop, the DINGUS population should become 10, and everything has sprung into place.
However, when I try to save the corrected PO, I get:
This purchase of item DINGUS-Y would value your inventory at less than $0.00.
The Item entry for DINGUS-Y says:
Quantity on hand = 12
Current value = $53.67
Average cost = $4.4725
I want to take 10 of them away, which should be $44.72 at the average cost, from the current value $53.67, that should be more than zilch, right? I'm dumber than a box of hammers, but even I can see that.
So why does saving the corrected PO give me this intransigent message?
This purchase of item DINGUS-Y would value your inventory at less than $0.00.
As always, your thoughts on this matter will be lovingly cherished.
Russ