I’m a little confused by what you’re trying to do here. Adding parts to a work order and adjusting the quantity will subtract from (or add to) the inventory, but the first part of your question makes it sound like you don’t want them tracked in the parts inventory to begin with.

You can add additional parts into your work order without having them added to your parts inventory by selecting the “other costs” option under the “time and cost tracking” section of the work order. once you have selected the ‘other costs’ option, choose “add cost.” from there you can add a description, cost for the item/expense, category for the item/expense and ever a photo.

Some more clarity here may be needed, if you have the part on a WO that is in inventory once you close the WO it will pull the item from stock, you should not have to go use the restock option to adjust it down. If you are applying a negative number to a part on a WO it will add stock once the WO is closed.

I ran into this very issue, early on. I work on fire trucks. Every fire truck is different from the next one. I occasionally need one-off parts on a purchase order. There is an ability to issue a purchase order for a non-inventory (“one-off”) part and then assign that part to a work order. I just use the part number in the description so that it can be easily found when the work order is generated. I believe this keeps that part out of your inventory.