19.9. Inventory on Tickets and Projects: Drawing Parts from Stock

Most hardware does not leave the shelf on a formal sales order. It leaves on a ticket — a failed SSD swapped on a break-fix call, an access point installed during a project rollout, a UPS dropped in at a client site. When a technician records that part, AlgaPSA draws it straight from stock, so the shelf, the bill, and the client's asset record all stay honest without a second system.

Recording a material from stock

Recording a part on a ticket: the material line lives alongside the ticket conversation, priced and marked Pending until it is billed, with a running unbilled total so hardware never slips through.

On a ticket or project, add the part in the materials section. For any product that tracks inventory, the picker shows live availability so the technician is never guessing:

• On-hand and available quantities, per location.
• A status cue — normal, amber when the product is at or below its reorder point, red when it is out.
• For serialized products, a unit picker to choose the exact serial (and MAC) going to the client.

Recording the material consumes the stock: on-hand drops, the movement lands in the permanent ledger with who and why, and the line becomes billable on the ticket or project.

Stock is protected

The consumption path is stricter than sales-order fulfillment on purpose. If a non-serialized tracked product does not have enough on hand, AlgaPSA blocks the entry and tells you the available quantity, rather than letting the count go negative. A technician cannot accidentally bill and consume ten patch cables when six are on the shelf. When the shelf is genuinely wrong, correct it with a receipt or an adjustment first (see Transfers, Adjustments, and Cycle Counts), then record the part.

Serialized parts become the client's asset

When a serialized unit is set to create an asset on delivery, installing it on service work does the same thing a sales-order delivery does: AlgaPSA registers the unit as the client's managed Asset, with the serial as the asset tag and the MAC and warranty carried over. The firewall the technician just installed is now tracked equipment at that client, traceable back to the ticket that put it there.

Cost, billing, and margin

Each consumed material captures its cost at the moment it is used — the unit's own cost for serialized gear, the moving average for bulk. That captured cost is the COGS behind the line, so hardware billed through a ticket shows up in the Margin report alongside sales-order hardware. On the internal view of the resulting invoice, the line carries its cost and margin; the client's copy and portal never show it.

Corrections and what does not consume

• Removing a material that has not been billed yet returns the stock — the consumption is reversed in the ledger, not quietly forgotten.
• Recurring contract billing does not touch stock. Only an explicitly recorded material draws from inventory, so a monthly managed-services charge never silently depletes the shelf.

If a hardware ticket closes with no material recorded, that gap is exactly what the Ghost Usage report is built to catch — see Inventory Reporting.