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Create and manage Never Diminishing Products (NDPs)

Steps to create, convert and use products that don't hold stock, such as service charges, freight and fees.

Written by Heather Worthington

Never Diminishing Products (NDPs) are products in Unleashed that don't hold physical stock, so you don't need to manage any inventory for them. You can set up default descriptions, costs and sell prices that fill in automatically on future transactions, without affecting your Stock on Hand (SOH) quantities or values.

NDPs are commonly used for service charges, freight costs, shipping fees, taxes and other expenses that affect the cost or charge on your transactions but don't represent physical inventory.

Create a Never Diminishing Product

You can create an NDP in a few steps. The product saves without any requirement for inventory or Stock on Hand.

  1. Click Inventory, then click Products.

  2. Click Add Product.

  3. Enter a Product Code and Description for the service or charge you're adding.

  4. In the Details tab, under Type, turn on the Never Diminishing option.

  5. Click Save.

📌 Note: Once saved as Never Diminishing, the product will not have Inventory or Transaction tabs available, and there will be no option to allocate Batch or Serial tracking.

Convert an existing product to a Never Diminishing Product

You can convert a product that has held or managed Stock on Hand in Unleashed to an NDP. The product must meet all of these requirements:

  • The product has no Stock on Hand in any warehouse.

  • The product isn't allocated to any open transactions, for example, incomplete Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Stock Adjustments, Assemblies or Warehouse Transfers.

  • The product isn't saved as an Assembled product and doesn't have its own Bill of Materials (BOM).

To convert the product to an NDP:

  1. Open the product record, then confirm it has no Stock on Hand.

  2. Click the References tab, then confirm the product has no open transactions. If it does, complete or delete the transactions, or remove the product from them.

  3. Click the Production tab, then confirm the product doesn't have its own BOM. If it does, make the BOM obsolete.

  4. Click the Details tab, then under Type, turn on the Never Diminishing toggle.

  5. Click Save.

Once you save the product as Never Diminishing, the Inventory and Transaction tabs are no longer available in the product record. Its transaction history is still available in the References tab. All historic transactions from when the product held and moved Stock on Hand still appear in reports such as the Transaction Enquiry.

⚠️Important: If you leave the Never Diminishing column blank in a bulk product upload, it overwrites your existing data and removes the Never Diminishing status. Stock on Hand requirements then apply to the product, which can stop you from completing Sales Orders if there isn't enough stock.

Use Never Diminishing Products in transactions

You can include NDPs in these transactions:

  • Sales Orders.

  • Quotes.

  • Purchase Orders.

  • Bill of Materials (as a component).

  • Assemblies (as a component).

⚠️Important: You can't add NDPs to a Sales Shipment. They only apply to the Invoice of a Sales Order. This is because NDPs don't represent physical stock, so only tangible inventory items appear in shipment records.

Set default sale and purchase prices and costs

You can set default sell and purchase prices for an NDP in the Purchase and Sale tabs; or leave them blank if the prices change on each transaction.

In the Sale tab, enter a value in the Cost field to set the default cost your business needs to account for when you add the NDP to a transaction. Unleashed uses this cost to calculate sales margins and profit when you include the NDP in Sales Orders or Assemblies. NDPs also have a Nominal Cost field, which you can optionally use for additional cost tracking.

NDPs in Assemblies

You can include NDPs as component products in your production processes to account for charges incurred during assembly or disassembly. These charges affect the overall stock value of your inventory.

  • The Cost in the NDP's Sale tab fills in the component's Unit Cost value. You can change this on each BOM. An information icon appears on the component line if the BOM's Unit Cost differs from the NDP's Cost.

  • If you're integrated with an accounting provider, the Expense Account on the component line fills in from the NDP record. You can change this on each BOM.

  • The Total Cost from the NDP's component line exports as a stock journal that increases your Stock on Hand value and debits your Expense account.

📌Note: The assembled product can't be Never Diminishing if you want to create a BOM or Assembly for it. However, you can include NDPs as components in the BOM.

Tutorial Video: Adding Non-Stock Costs to a BOM

Track sales margins and costs

Setting a cost for an NDP makes your stock value and sales margins more accurate. Unleashed uses the NDP's cost to calculate:

  • The default Unit Cost when the NDP is a component in a Bill of Materials or Assembly.

  • The assembled stock's total cost.

  • The profit and margin of the product when you sell it on a Sales Order.

The margin is calculated as (Sell Price - Current Cost) / Sell Price.

The margin locks in on the order as soon as you complete the Sales Order. If you update the Cost in the NDP while a Sales Order is open, the margin updates to include the new Cost.

Find Never Diminishing Products

You can add a column to the product grid to see which products are NDPs.

  1. Click Inventory, then click Products.

  2. Click View Products.

  3. Click Show Toolbar above the grid columns, then click Hidden Columns.

  4. Drag and drop Never Diminishing into the grid layout.

A tick icon in the Never Diminishing column means the product is an NDP. A blank column means the product holds Stock on Hand and isn't an NDP.

🤓Tip: Drag the Never Diminishing header above the grid column headers to group your products by whether they're NDPs.

Identify Never Diminising Products from the View Products page with the Never Diminishing column.

Account for Never Diminishing Products

If you've integrated Unleashed with an accounting provider such as Xero, QuickBooks or Access Financials, you can set accounting codes for an NDP in the Details tab:

  • Purchase Account: Receives the NDP's cost or purchase price when you use it in a Purchase Order.

  • Expense Account: Receives the NDP's cost value when you use it in an Assembly or Sales Order. You must select this account if you add NDPs to a Bill of Materials, Assembly or Disassembly.

  • Sales Account: Receives the NDP's sell price when an NDP is invoiced.

Assigning specific account codes to NDPs keeps your accounting Profit and Loss statements accurate.

For example, when you export NDPs as part of invoices, they don't create shipment or stock movement journals. Instead, Unleashed creates a journal entry for the Expense and Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) associated with the NDP. This relies on you setting up the NDP's Expense Account correctly in Unleashed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can't I convert my product into a Never Diminishing Product?

A product can only become Never Diminishing if it has no Stock on Hand and isn't on any open transactions. A product on an open Sales Order, Purchase Order, Stock Adjustment or Assembly can't be converted. Open statuses include Parked, Placed and Receipted.

To check for open transactions, click the References tab in the product record. It lists all open (incomplete) transactions the product is included on, and you can edit each one. Once the product has no open transactions, follow the steps in the section above to convert it.

How do I fix the QuickBooks error 'Purchase account must be set for never diminishing product'?

This error occurs when an NDP does not have a Purchase Account assigned in Unleashed. To resolve it:

  1. Click Inventory, then click Products.

  2. Click View Products.

  3. Find and open the product causing the error.

  4. Click the Details tab.

  5. Select a value in the Purchase Account field. This dropdown is specific to NDPs.

  6. Click Save.

  7. Run the export or sync to QuickBooks again.

Why are orders with NDPs partially fulfilled in Shopify?

Orders that contain NDPs alongside regular stock items can be partially fulfilled in Shopify and similar platforms. This happens because these platforms track shipments for physical inventory only, so they can't auto-fulfil NDPs or include them in shipment transactions.

To complete the order, manually fulfil the NDPs in your order management system.

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