Finish, sell, close
A has been collecting cost in . Three events turn that running balance into a settled set of books: the job finishes into inventory, the goods are sold out of inventory, and the job is closed. Each is a distinct posting, and the order matters.
Finish into inventory
When the last operation is done, Carbon completes the job. It any material still owed, catches up any labor that hasn't posted yet, and then receives the finished goods into inventory — a debit to inventory, a credit to work-in-process, tagged Job Receipt. The job moves to "Completed".
The receipt is valued at the job's actual accumulated WIP cost — whatever really went in. Carbon does not receive finished goods at standard and book a variance; the finished unit's cost is simply the sum of what the job spent.
Finished goods are valued at what the job actually cost.
Completion moves the whole WIP balance into inventory one-for-one — equal debit and credit — so there's no variance at finish time. The item's costing method only decides how that cost is carried forward onto the part, not the value it's received at.
Make-to-order still goes through stock
It's tempting to think a make-to-order job ships straight to the customer. It doesn't. A make-to-order job is marked by its link to a line, but its costing is identical to a stock job: it receives into inventory first, and the sales order then ships from inventory. The job and the shipment are separate postings.
A make-to-order job receives to stock, then ships from stock.
There is no path that ships finished goods directly off a job. Whether a job was raised for stock or for a specific order, it completes into inventory the same way — which keeps cost in one place and makes the sale a clean, separate event.
Sell it
When the order ships, the cost of those goods comes out of inventory, not out of WIP. Posting the reads the inventory cost layers, prices what left, and posts a debit to and a credit to inventory, tagged Sales Shipment. This is the same shipment posting the quote-to-cash flow covers — here we're just watching the cost side of it.
By the time a unit is sold, its WIP is long gone — relieved at completion. COGS is always drawn from the inventory layer, so the sale's margin reflects the real landed cost of that specific stock.
Close the job
Completion zeroes WIP into finished goods one-for-one, so in the clean case a finished job's WIP balance is already nil. But rounding, late material, or a late event can leave a few cents stranded against the job's work-in-process account. Closing the job sweeps it.
Closing sums whatever remains in WIP for the job and, if it's more than a rounding sliver, posts it to a production-variance account — a debit to Production Variance, a credit to work-in-process — tagged Job Close. The job moves to "Closed", and its WIP is provably zero. This is the one place a job's variance lands.
Closing settles the residual to Production Variance.
There's no standard-cost variance booked along the way — finish is at actual, and the only variance Carbon posts for a job is whatever WIP is left over at close. A closed job has zero work-in-process and a complete trail from material in to variance out.
That's the cost of a job, start to finish: cost flows into WIP as it's worked, out to inventory when it finishes, on to COGS when it sells, and any remainder swept to variance when it closes — every move a real ledger posting, gated on whether the shop is keeping books at all. The same ledger carries the machines that did the work — which is where this flow turns next.