Inventory items and stock adjustments

In one sentence

Create each product as an SKU with its opening quantity, then move stock only through Adjust stock, and the system raises low-stock alerts against your reorder level.

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1. Creating an SKU

Books → Inventory & Costing → Product SKU, then click New item.

图 01-inv-items

1

Opening stock is set once at creation; later changes go through adjustments

图 02-inv-form

Field	Notes
SKU	The item code, uppercased automatically. A structured scheme helps, e.g. BEV-COLA-330
Name	Full product name
Category	Your own grouping, useful for filtering and stocktakes
Unit cost	Purchase cost per unit, entered in dollars
Selling price	Price per unit to the customer, entered in dollars
Opening stock qty	How many you hold when the record is created
Reorder level	The threshold at which you should restock; alerts are based on it

Opening stock can only be set at creation

When editing an existing item, the opening stock field is disabled. After creation every change in quantity must go through Adjust stock, so each movement carries a reason and can be traced. Typing a new number to "tidy up" the balance is deliberately not possible.

The item list also shows a gross margin column, computed as:

Gross margin = (selling price − unit cost) ÷ selling price

For a cost of $8.00 and a price of $12.00 the margin is 33.3%. The column makes it easy to compare pricing across the range.

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2. Adjusting stock

Purchases, issues, stocktake differences and write-offs all use the same entry point. On either the Product SKU or Stock & Costing page, click Adjust stock on the row.

Field	Notes
Quantity change	Positive to receive, negative to issue. Receiving 100 is 100; issuing 85 is -85. Zero is rejected
Reason	Required. Say why the stock moved — "Goods received PO-2026-018", "Stocktake shortfall", "Customer return"

Do not write "adjustment" in the reason

Six months later the word "adjustment" tells you nothing. Record the document number or the cause, so that stocktake differences can actually be explained.

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3. The stock dashboard and alerts

Books → Inventory & Costing → Stock & Costing.

图 03-inv-stock

Three cards sit at the top:

Card	Meaning
SKUs in stock	How many products still hold stock
Stock value at cost	Total on-hand quantity × unit cost — the cash tied up in inventory
Low-stock alerts	How many SKUs have fallen to their reorder level

The detail table flags two levels:

Alert	Condition
Low stock	On-hand quantity ≤ reorder level
Critical	On-hand quantity ≤ half the reorder level

Flagged rows are colour-coded, so a glance tells you what to reorder. The whole alert system is driven by that single reorder level figure — set it carelessly and the alerts mean nothing. Base it on average consumption over the replenishment lead time, and set it higher for items that take longer to arrive.

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Next: Payroll and CPF →