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Because it comes from a standard cost set at some point in the past and rarely revisited. Materials move, wastage varies, and labour is applied as a rate that was true for a different mix of work.
So the margin on a product line can be wrong for a year without anything in the accounts looking unusual.
A bill of materials defines what a unit consumes, and a work order records what it actually consumed. Materials issued, labour posted from Nest's attendance, and overhead applied by your own rule all land against the order.
Finished goods therefore carry real cost, and the variance against standard is visible per order rather than as an annual adjustment.
It is not an MRP or production scheduling system. It does not plan runs or sequence a line — it costs what the line did.
And it will not tell you why variance happened. It localises it to an order and a component, which is where the question can be answered.
Batch and serial tracking follow material through to the finished unit, which matters for recall and for warranty as much as for costing.
GST reports, fixed assets and depreciation all read the same ledger, so the cost of a machine and the cost of what it makes are on one set of books.
Products, not integrations. Each one reads the same record, so a join is a permission rather than a sync job with a mapping screen behind it.
Yes, from Nest, so posted labour reflects hours actually worked.
Yes, per work order, rather than as an annual adjustment.
No. It costs production; planning it belongs elsewhere.
Half an hour on your own numbers is usually enough to say whether Books is the right place to start.