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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released December 2019 Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) today. The All commodities index decreased by 0.1% over the last month & has increased 2.3% over the last year on a seasonally unadjusted basis. All items less food and energy decreased by 0.1% between November – December ’19 & rose 2.3% […]
Imagine a company with $5 million of inventory that’s taking proposals from several CPA firms to properly manage it. The company is not on LIFO, their current CPA firm never performed a benefit analysis or even offered the idea of LIFO to them and the only thing the client’s CFO recalls about LIFO is […]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released November 2019 Producer Price Indexes (PPI) today. The All commodities index increased by 0.3% over the last month & has decreased by 1.6% over the last year on a seasonally unadjusted basis. Dairy products increased by 1.5% over the last month & rose by 7.4% over the last […]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released November 2019 Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) today. The All commodities index decreased by 0.1% over the last month & has increased 2.1% over the last year on a seasonally unadjusted basis. All items less food and energy was unchanged between October – November ’19 & rose 2.3% between […]
Companies using the IPIC LIFO method must choose between using final or preliminary Producer Price Indexes. The most important differences between these two options is availability & timing. The BLS releases preliminary indexes around the 15th of the month for the previous month based on price surveys returned from companies and then follows up with […]
Most accounting systems track inventory costs using FIFO or moving average cost. The same can be said for companies on LIFO, but adjustments are obviously required to convert FIFO or average cost to LIFO. The most widely-used and accepted approach to make a link-chain LIFO calculation is what one could call a single index method. […]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released October 2019 Producer Price Indexes (PPI) today. The All commodities index increased by 0.2% over the last month & has decreased by 3.0% over the last year on a seasonally unadjusted basis. Farm products increased by 6.0% over the last month & rose by 4.1% over the last […]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released October 2019 Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) today. The All commodities index increased by 0.2% over the last month & has increased 1.8% over the last year on a seasonally unadjusted basis. Candy and chewing gum increased by 3% from September to October ’19 and rose by 4.9% from […]
