May 2020 CPI Release Highlights

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released May 2020 Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) today. The All commodities index was unchanged over the last month & has increased 0.1% over the last 12 months on a seasonally unadjusted basis. All items less food and energy decreased 0.1% from April – May 2020 & rose 1.2% between […]

Why Heavy Duty Truck Dealerships are Great LIFO Candidates

Defining Good LIFO Candidates When weighing the costs & benefits of using the LIFO method, the following factors are key in determining if a company is a good LIFO candidate Inflation rate – When working with companies to determine if they’re a good LIFO candidate, we look for a historical average annual inflation greater than […]

April 2020 PPI Release Highlights

The BLS released April 2020 PPI today. The All commodities index dropped 3.0% from March – April 2020 & decreased 2.1% between April ’19 – April 2020. Commodities Affected by COVID-19 & the Related Supply/Demand Volatility For the foreseeable future, our monthly BLS PPI release blogs will highlight price changes for commodities experiencing above average […]

April 2020 CPI Release Highlights

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released April 2020 Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) today. The All commodities index decreased 0.7% over the last month & has increased 0.3% over the last year on a seasonally unadjusted basis. All items less food and energy decreased 0.5% from March – April 2020 & rose 1.4% between April […]

March 2020 CPI Release Highlights

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released March 2020 Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) today. The All commodities index decreased 0.2% over the last month & has increased 1.5% over the last year on a seasonally unadjusted basis. All items less food and energy were unchanged from February – March 2020 & rose 2.1% between March […]

March 2020 PPI Release Highlights

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released March 2020 Producer Price Indexes (PPI) today. All commodities saw a decrease of 3.5% over the last month and a decrease of 1.4% over the last year. Building paper & building board mill products increased by 11.4% over the last month & rose by 10.8% over the last […]

February 2020 CPI Release Highlights

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released February 2020 Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) today. The All commodities index increased by 0.3% over the last month & has increased 2.3% over the last year on a seasonally unadjusted basis. All items less food and energy increased by 0.5% between January 2020 – February 2020 & rose […]

January 2020 CPI Release Highlights

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released January 2020 Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) today. The All commodities index increased by 0.4% over the last month & has increased 2.5% over the last year on a seasonally unadjusted basis. All items less food and energy increased by .04% between December ’19 – January 2020 & rose […]

Clarifying How LIFO Reserve Changes are Calculated

For companies on LIFO, the LIFO reserve represents the difference between their ending inventory balance at FIFO or average cost (commonly referred to as “current year cost) vs. LIFO cost (for dollar-value LIFO calculations, a non-LIFO costing method must be used to track inventory costs throughout the year in order to determine the “pre-LIFO” ending […]

Understanding Price Changes for Producer Price Indexes, Imports & Exports

When providing LIFO Election Benefit Analysis results to companies looking to determine the potential benefits of LIFO, we use Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to determine the historical inflation the most predominant items within a businesses’ product mix. When a company’s internal price changes are significantly different […]

The Industries Providing The Best LIFO Benefits For The 2019 Year End

What’s Changed Since our Top 50 List was Published in October? In October, we released a Top 50 LIFO candidates list that used inflation rates for the 9 months ended September 2019. As of last Wednesday, December 2019 Producer Price Indexes (PPI) were published and the books have now been closed on inflation rates for […]

December 2019 PPI Release Highlights

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released November 2019 Producer Price Indexes (PPI) today. All commodities saw an increase of 0.1% over the last month and decrease of 0.9% over the last year. Crude petroleum (domestic production) increased by 3.4%  over the last month & rose by 12.7% over the last year. Dental equipment and supplies […]