Yes, Kits can be used for multiple use cases. They are primarily used for delivery orders or managing multi-level BOMs where the components need to be compressed under a phantom BOM. However, kits can also be used for receipts. There are a few caveats to using kits in receipts, especially with the costs of components. The following workflow explains the steps to use kits in Purchase Orders and how the costs flow through the components.

Configuration

1. To ensure that we can add a kit to a PO, we need to make sure that we create the kit as a Bill of Material first. To do this, navigate to Manufacturing – Products – Bills of Materials. 
   
   
   
   
2. Create a new BOM. Ensure the BOM type is set to “Kit”. For example, I have created a BOM kit with 3 components – Comp 1, Comp 2 and Comp 3 under the name of “Finished product” (see screenshot below for BOM form view).
   
   
   
   
3. Make sure that all the components are set to the correct Type (storable or consumable).
4. Check the product categories of the components and set it to the correct costing method/inventory valuation. In this example, we will use FIFO.
   
   

Workflow

1. Create a Purchase Order and add the ‘finished product’ to the PO. Similar to SOs, you only add a single line for the order and Odoo will split the product into its components on the transfer level (as shown below).
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Set a cost on the PO. This will be the price of purchasing ALL the components. In this example, I set the purchase price to be $1000, as shown above.
3. Receive the components on the receipt (add lot/serial number and set location if required).
4. Create the bill and process payment. Close out the PO.
   
   

Cost Distribution

Odoo automatically distributes the cost equally between all components. There is no configuration in Odoo where we can specify the split (like landed costs). We might see this in future versions, but as of v16, Odoo will do an equal split based on the number of line items in the transfer. In our example, all the components have a cost of $330.

The finished product does not display any cost because it isn’t received into inventory, but rather just used as a placeholder.

Limitations

1. As shown above in the screenshots, if the cost is divisible by the number of components, you will see some rounding issues in the cost that flows down to the components. In our example, if we were to divide $1000 by 3 components, it should ideally show the cost of components to be $333.33. But the cost of each component is only $330, which if added, is $10 short of the total purchase price. This can cause discrepancies in journal entries.
2. If the finished product is set as a storable product, when you create a bill for the product, stock (interim) received is debited for $1000 and AP is credited for $1000. When you receive the components, the stock valuation account is debited for $990, and stock (interim) received is credited for only $990. This means that there is a debit of $10 still open in the interim account (which might need to be manually closed).
3. If the finished product is set as a consumable, the stock interim received account will never close out because when you bill the consumable finished product, it debits the Expense account and hence does not clear out the credit of $990 in the interim account that was created by the receipts of the components. 
   
   

Conclusion

Kits can be used to reduce the line items on the PO and have the products split into components on the transfer level. However, there is a risk of running some costing discrepancies while using kits for receipts. To avoid this, it is generally recommended to use kits in POs usually only when the purchase price is perfectly divisible by the number of components. This is tedious and the user will have to constantly check for this before processing POs. Hence, it is always recommended to use kits mainly only for the purpose of delivery orders and MOs. Receiving components should be done directly (by adding the components on the PO rather than a kit), to avoid any issues with accounting. However, it isn't wrong to do so, as long as you are aware of the implications.