Material Variance Calculation in X3

I am working within the WIPCOST (Manufacturing Module) table and trying to determine
the calculation of material variance. I put in my Work Order number in the MFGNUM
field. The TXNTYP is 9 for Material Variance. Then the AMOUNT is what is booking to
my Material Variance account. I noticed two other fields within this tables that give me
two numbers whose sum equal my variance. CSTELM(0) and CSTELM(1) when added
together give me my AMOUNT. These are labeled as "ELEMENTS OF COST." Does
anyone know how these numbers are being generated? We are trying to see why we
are having so much material variance, but cannot figure out the system is calculated
these ELEMENTS OF COST numbers.

Joshua H 11 months ago

In my experience, manufacturing cost analysis is hard enough, and I can't imagine trying
to do this from the tables (I've tried).

Sage X3 does a great job of presenting all of the analytical information you need from
the user interface.

May I suggest:
1. Navigate to Manufacturing > Planning > Work Order
2. Locate the target Work Order record
3. From the Work Order record, find "WIP Cost Inquiry" in your right window (V7+) or
under "Options" in your toolbar (pre-V7)
4. This set of inquiry screens should tell you a lot of what you need to know, but there
are other functions for this as well
5. From WIP Cost Inquiry, navigate to tab "Materials"
6. Your Elements of Cost values should be in column 'Amount'
7. Detailed cost information can be accessed from WIP Cost Inquiry > Materials by
selecting Material Cost Detail on the line level of the inquiry screen.

These numbers are generated as a result of production tracking activity, and calculated
based on stock quantity x stock unit value (based on the valuation method for the
respective item).

Stock Valuation Method is defined on the Cost tab of the Product-Site record.

I hope this helps. I will need additional information related to the Stock Valuation Method
for Parent and Material products before I can provide any further information.
CSTELM(0) and CSTELM(1) are cost elements in Production cost table

Good luck!

Thanks for all the info! We are still stuck with the calculation of the CSTELM(0) field in
the "WIPCOST" Table for TXNTYP "16". This "operation reject" amount though we
cannot tie anything back to. We tried looking at the code behind the WIP cost finalization
screen but we could not find anything calculating that CSTELM field. We looked for
anything that had [F:MWI]TXNTYP=16, but nothing was showed up. Any experience
with this?

"Operation reject" refers to the operations associated with the routing code used during
work order creation and subsequent production tracking, more specifically the Operation
Tracking during which usage of machine and labor resources are recorded.
During entry of the Operation tracking, there is a field titled "Actual Rejected Qty." The
same information is visible from the WIP Cost Inquiry screen on tabs "Labor" and
"Machine," respectively.
I suspect a user(s) are populating the "Actual rejected qty" during the entry of Production
Tracking for Operations.

oshua, thanks again for the response. I guess I am still a little confused here. Ultimately
we are trying to find out how the amount in CSTELM(0) is being calculated. You
might have answered above, so I apologize in advance. Also, we are ancient and still
using v5 so please excuse the old client snippet below. I have provided the screen and
the actual cell where we are trying to see where that is coming from, being calculated
from, or basically how it is getting populated. Any help on this would be greatly
appreciated!!