For whoever owns stock

Items & Purchases

Your catalogue, your stock, and every movement in and out of it.

10 min read · 9 screenshots

Everything here sits under OPERATIONS → Items & Purchases, which opens three screens: Inventory Center (the overview), Item List (the catalogue), and Purchase & Adjustment List (the log of everything that has ever moved stock). A fourth screen, Item Detail, opens from inside the first two and is where most questions actually get answered.

The one idea to hold on to. An item's selling price and its cost are separate things, kept in separate places on purpose. The selling price lives on the item. Cost arrives with each purchase. Nothing you do on a purchase or adjustment screen will change what you charge customers — and that is deliberate, not an oversight.

1. Inventory Center

The first stop — what you hold, what it's worth, and what is moving.

Inventory Center showing a date range selector and four cards: total products, low stock, out of stock and total stock value, plus two Top 5 Fastest Movers charts by units sold and by sales value, above an inventory list — Inventory Center — four headline figures, two fastest-mover charts, and the inventory list beneath.

Card	What it tells you
Total Products	How many items are in your catalogue.
Low Stock	Items at or below their reorder level — your buying list.
Out Of Stock	Items at zero or below.
Total Stock Value	What the stock on hand is worth at cost.

The two Top 5 Fastest Movers charts answer different questions and are worth reading together. By Units Sold shows what leaves the shelf most often; by Sales Value shows what actually brings in money. An item can top one chart and be absent from the other — that gap is usually where a pricing or stocking decision is hiding.

The Date Range selector at the top applies to the fastest-movers charts only. The four cards always describe stock as it stands right now.

2. Item List

Items List with columns for item name, item type, purchase rate, sales rate, quantity, reminder level and a manage gear button, plus Create Item, Upload from Excel and Export to Excel buttons and a search box — Item List — the full catalogue, with the three ways of getting items into it along the top.

Column	Meaning
Item Name	Your internal name. Click it to open Item Detail.
Item Type	PRODUCT (has stock) or SERVICE (does not). Services always show quantity 0 — that is correct, not a fault.
Purchase Rate	Cost price.
Sales Rate	What you charge.
Quantity	Stock on hand.
Reminder Lvl	The reorder point — see section 8.
Manage	The row's actions.

Item row gear menu open showing Stock Details, Edit Item and Delete Item — Each row's gear menu: **Stock Details**, **Edit Item**, **Delete Item**.

Deleting an item is not the same as hiding it. An item with history behind it is woven into past invoices and stock movements. If a product is simply discontinued, leave it in place — it costs you nothing and keeps your old records readable.

2.1 Negative quantities

A negative figure in the Quantity column means the system has recorded more going out than ever came in. It is almost never a counting error at the till — it is stock that was sold before it was ever entered as received, or purchases that never synced. Fix it with a stock adjustment (section 6) once you have counted the shelf, and treat a large negative as a sign that the item's purchase history is incomplete.

3. Creating items

Create Item opens a form that lets you queue several products before saving any of them.

Create New Items dialog with fields for item name, item type, purchase rate, sales rate, quantity available and reminder level, an optional item image, an Add To List button, an empty list table and a Save button — Create New Items — fill the row, **Add To List**, repeat, then **Save** once.

Item Name and Item Type (Product or Service).
Purchase Rate — what it costs you. Sales Rate — what you charge.
Quantity Avail — opening stock. Use it only for what is on the shelf the day you create the item; everything arriving afterwards should come in as a purchase so the cost is recorded.
Reminder Lvl — the reorder point.
Item Image (optional) — worth adding. The photo shows as a thumbnail in the New Sale item picker, so staff can confirm they've grabbed the right product at a glance.
Add To List, repeat for as many items as you're entering, then Save.

4. Item Detail — the stock passbook

Click any item name to open it. This screen answers "why does it say I have this many?"

Item Detail for plates showing five cards for current stock, reorder level, sales price, stock value and retail value, a Stock History table with date, activity, change and running balance, and a Stock Level Trend chart — Item Detail — the five figures, the movement history, and the trend.

4.1 The five cards

Card	Meaning
Current Stock	Units on hand.
Reorder Level	Minimum before restock.
Sales Price	Per unit, as charged.
Stock Value	What you're holding, at cost.
Retail Value	The same stock at selling price, with the margin percentage.

4.2 Stock History

Every purchase, sale, adjustment and transfer for this item, each with the change it made and the running balance afterwards. Rows run newest first, so the balance on the top row is today's figure.

This is the tool for a disputed stock number. Work down the column until the balance stops matching what you believe, and the row where it diverges is the movement to investigate. A Received PURCHASE +100 against a Sold SALES −5 reads at a glance.

4.3 Trend, sales and the rest

Lower half of Item Detail showing the stock level trend chart with a dashed reorder level line, a Sales and Orders panel with total sold and sales value, and View Sales Records, View Purchases and Print buttons — The trend chart carries a dashed reorder line, so periods below it are visible at a glance.

Stock Level Trend — stock over time, with the reorder level drawn as a dashed line. Stretches below that line are stock-outs you may not have noticed.
Sales & Orders — total units sold and total sales value for this item.
View Sales Records / View Purchases — drill into the transactions behind those figures.
Print — a printable copy of the item's position.

5. Purchase & Adjustment List

Every entry that has ever moved stock, other than sales.

Purchase List with date from and date to filters, Purchase and Adjustment, Upload Adjustments and Export to Excel buttons, and a table with vendor, product name, date, entry type badges reading PURCHASES or STOCK ADJUSTMENT (ADD), quantity and amount — Purchase & Adjustment List — the **Entry Type** badge tells you which kind of movement each row was.

Date From / Date To narrow the list to a period.
Purchase & Adjustment opens the entry form (section 6).
Upload Adjustments goes to the bulk route — see the Upload & Scan guide.
Export to Excel takes the list out.
Entry Type is badged PURCHASES, STOCK ADJUSTMENT (ADD) or STOCK ADJUSTMENT (REMOVE).

A row with no vendor and a zero amount is an adjustment; a row with a vendor and a value is a purchase. That distinction is the subject of section 7.

6. Recording a purchase or an adjustment

Purchase & Adjustment opens one form that handles both.

Purchase/Stock Adjustment dialog with fields for item, date, type, available quantity, selling price marked as set on the item and not changed by this entry, purchase rate, quantity, vendors, payment type, amount and paid amount — One form, three movement types — and a selling-price box that deliberately does nothing.

Field	Notes
Item	Search and pick the product.
Date	Defaults to today. Backdate it to when the stock actually moved, not when you got round to entering it.
Type	The movement type — see below.
Available Qty.	Read-only: what you hold right now, shown so you can sanity-check before changing it.
Selling Price	Shown for reference and labelled Set on the item — not changed by this entry. To change what you charge, edit the item or use the Prices upload.
Purchase Rate	The unit cost of this delivery. This is what feeds your average cost.
Quantity	How many units moved.
Vendors	Who you bought from. Purchases only.
Payment Type / Amount / Paid Amount	What the delivery cost and how much of it you have actually paid. Anything unpaid becomes an outstanding vendor balance and feeds the dashboard's You Owe Vendors figure.

Movement type dropdown open showing PURCHASE, STOCK ADJUSTMENT - REMOVE and STOCK ADJUSTMENT - ADD — Three movement types. Choosing correctly is the whole point of the screen.

Type	Use it for
PURCHASE	Stock bought from a vendor. Records the vendor, the cost and what you paid.
STOCK ADJUSTMENT - ADD	Stock appearing for a reason that isn't a purchase — a recount that found more, a correction, stock returned by a customer.
STOCK ADJUSTMENT - REMOVE	Stock leaving for a reason that isn't a sale — damage, expiry, theft, a recount that found less.

7. Purchases vs adjustments — and why it matters to your costs

Both move the quantity. Only one of them tells the truth about money.

	Purchase	Adjustment
Changes stock	Yes	Yes
Records a vendor	Yes	No
Records what you paid	Yes	No
Creates a payable if unpaid	Yes	No
Feeds your average cost	Yes, at the rate you entered	At whatever cost is on the entry — zero if you leave it blank

The costing trap. Putting bought stock in as an adjustment with no cost tells the system you acquired those units for nothing. That pulls the item's weighted average cost down, which inflates the profit on every subsequent sale and understates your stock value. It is a quiet error — nothing looks wrong on screen — and it compounds each time. If money changed hands, record it as a purchase.

The reverse mistake is milder but still worth avoiding: recording a recount or a breakage as a purchase invents a vendor liability you don't owe.

8. Reorder levels and low stock

The Reminder Level (called Reorder Level on Item Detail) is the figure that drives your Low Stock alerts — on the Inventory Center card, on the dashboard, and as the dashed line on the item's trend chart.

Set it to cover the time it takes to restock, not to zero. If a product takes a week to arrive and you sell five a week, a reorder level of five means you run out exactly as the new stock arrives; ten gives you a week of cover. Items left at zero never alert, which is why a store can have seventy items out of stock and no warnings.

9. Doing it in bulk

Everything in this guide has a bulk equivalent, covered fully in the Upload & Scan guide:

One at a time	In bulk
Create Item	Upload Data → Items, or Upload from Excel on the Item List
Purchase & Adjustment (type = PURCHASE)	Upload Data → Purchases
Purchase & Adjustment (type = ADD / REMOVE)	Upload Data → Stock Adjustments, or Upload Adjustments on this screen
Editing an item's price	Upload Data → Prices
Typing from a paper delivery note or stock count	Upload Data → Scan A Report

10. Quick reference

I want to…	Do this
See what needs reordering	Inventory Center → Low Stock
Know what my stock is worth	Inventory Center → Total Stock Value
Find out why a stock figure is wrong	Item List → click the item → Stock History
Add a product	Item List → Create Item
Record a delivery from a supplier	Purchase & Adjustment List → Purchase & Adjustment → type PURCHASE
Write off damage or expiry	…same form → STOCK ADJUSTMENT - REMOVE
Correct stock after a count	…same form → ADD or REMOVE for the difference
Change a selling price	Edit the item (or Upload Data → Prices) — not the purchase form
See everything that moved stock this month	Purchase & Adjustment List → set Date From / Date To
See what I owe suppliers	Vendors & Transactions, fed by the unpaid part of each purchase

If something looks wrong

Quantity is negative. More has gone out than was recorded coming in. Count the shelf, then post an adjustment — and check whether purchases for that item were ever entered.
A service shows quantity 0. Correct. Services don't carry stock.
Profit looks too good. Check whether stock was brought in as zero-cost adjustments instead of purchases.
Stock value looks too low. Same cause.
An item never appears in Low Stock. Its reorder level is probably 0.
A price changed unexpectedly. It did not come from a purchase entry — that form cannot change selling price. Look at item edits and the Prices upload.
Stock History and current stock disagree. The last row's running balance is the authority; if it doesn't match the card, raise it with support rather than adjusting over the top.

PreviousSales & Customers NextUpload & Scan

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