Work in process

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Work in process or in-process inventory consists of the unfinished products in a production process. They are not yet complete but either being fabricated or waiting in a queue or storage. The concept is used in production and supply chain management.

Production management aims to minimize work in process. Work in process requires storage space, represents capital investment and presents a risk of expiration of the goods. A queue to a production step shows that the step is probably under-capacity with respect to other steps.

Just-in-time (JIT) production is an effort to reduce work in process. Barcode and RFID tracking can be used to identify workpieces to a computer to locate and count them.

Work-In-Process in construction accounting identifies the value of construction projects which are currently being worked on by the construction firm. In order to properly account for each project, FOUR values are needed for each project at the end of any given month (or period):

        1) the Sales Price (excluding sales tax) for the project, 
        2) the total Cost Estimate for the project, 
        3) the Costs-To-Date, 
        4) the Billed-To-Date.  

By taking the Costs-To-Date divided by the Cost Estimate, the "percentage complete" for the project is calculated. For example:

        * Assume a project is estimated to cost $70,000 by the time the work is complete
        * Assume at the end of December, $35,000 has been spent to date for the project
        * $35,000 divided by $70,000 is 50%, therefore, the project can be considered 50% complete at December 31.

Calculation of the Percentage complete is a valuable tool in determining how much the client should be billed - it is important that Billings, and even collection of these billings, are greater than the costs expended to do the work. This ensures that the client is directly funding the construction work, and that the contracting firm minimizes borrowing on behalf of the client. Using the example above, suppose the following:

        A)  the Sales Price of the project is $100,000
        B)  $100,000 times 50% (the level of completion) = $50,000
        Therefore, for the period ending December 31, the client should be invoiced at least $50,000 in order 
        to properly fund the work.