Said It Here

How to handle LIFO/FIFO inventory changes every quarter

Because item costing is fixed upon creation, you cannot simply convert an existing item record when switching between LIFO and FIFO. You must instead inactivate all existing item records and create new ones, which makes it incredibly difficult to maintain consistent reporting structures, inventory accounting, and order-to-cash tracking.

Overview
People affected2 accounts across 2 forums
Workarounds found3 items attempted
Community agreement168 total upvotes

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

Found another way around this?

Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.

  1. 1
    Pushing back on leadership to prove the business value of the switch
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  2. 2
    Inactivating all existing item records and manually creating new ones
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  3. 3
    Switching to Standard Costing instead
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In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/Accounting1 person · March 2026

“What about when they do LIFO/FIFO changes every freaking quarter??”source ↗

SellTheSizzle--007 · r/Accounting · 163 upvotes
r/Netsuite1 person · November 2026

“I'm also aware based on research already that Item costing is fixed once an item is created, and that you cannot convert an Item record from one to the other once it exists, so at minimum, this would require inactivating \_all\_ of our existing Item records and creating new ones.”source ↗

“My request for consulting is for any companies that have experience with this or done this already and can help with both a pro/con for leadership as to how involved this will be, and a technical review/quote for how this would be implemented while maintaining reporting structure, inventory accounting, and order to cash tracking including fulfillment and anything else I can't think of.”source ↗

Zxurian · r/Netsuite · 7 upvotes

Where this came up

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