Inventory Tracking without cost or sales

When you purchase inventory it becomes an Asset of the business. When you make a sale from your purchased inventory it becomes a cost of goods sold expense for your business. Your inventory is tracked with "accounting", thus your inventory needs to be part of your accounting.

Of course you can track inventory without running it through AP or AR, and it doesn't have to affect costs or sales.

Let's take these separately: AP is only Enter Bill for something I did not yet pay for. You can list Inventory on the purchase as Check Expense or Credit Card Charge. This is how you show you bought something, with Quantity and Cost.

AR is part of Unpaid Sales. Inventory is not by definition Sales; it is by definition Stuff on hand. So, for instance, a machine shop or fabrication shop might need to track tool bits, saw blades and materials as Inventory for inhouse management, which is never what is sold. Perhaps you sell Trailers, and build them Custom.

So, you list Bar stock, square tubing, cut off blades, etc as inventory on Purchases. When you then Build that trailer to sell, you "Adjust inventory" to remove the Tubing and Bar Stock from on hand. You also Adjust inventory for removing new saw blades as they get placed in the machines.

And you would sell that trailer, as your revenue item. You would never sell inventory, in this type of operation.

I have a client that builds and tests rocket engines. They manage a lot of inventory, all for In House purposes. They sell Engineering Services.