Inventory Management

Everything here is about one number: what BigLedger believes is on your shelf. It is not typed in anywhere — it is the running total of a stock ledger the server appends to when a document that moves stock is finalised. These guides cover setting that up, moving stock around, and keeping the shelf and the ledger in agreement.

Start here

Stock Management Guide

Set up items, locations, GL codes and opening balances so your first receipt lands where you expect

Stock Transfer Procedures

Move stock between branches, and find it in the queue in the middle

If you are new to the module, read Inventory core concepts first — it is six ideas, and they explain almost everything surprising that follows.

The one thing to get right before anything else

A document line moves stock only if its item is linked to an inventory item. Not a service item, not an unlinked item — a basic or alias inventory item. If that link is missing, the document finalises, the journal posts, and the balance never changes, with no error anywhere.

The second thing: decide which document books a receipt, once, for the whole tenant.

If your flow is	The stock arrives on
Purchase Order → Purchase GRN → Purchase Invoice	the purchase invoice — the GRN moves nothing
Purchase Order → Purchase GRN Stock In → Purchase Invoice	the GRN Stock In — the invoice books only the money

Use one pair or the other. A GRN Stock In and a stock-booking purchase invoice for the same goods counts every unit twice, and nothing warns you.

The daily shape

Goods arrive. Whichever receiving document your tenant uses books them in. A plain GRN records the receipt and moves nothing.
Goods go out. The sales invoice or the cash bill takes the stock out. A delivery order records the despatch and moves nothing.
Stock moves between branches on a two-step transfer — Transfer Out, then Transfer In, with a queue in between and the quantity parked at the company’s stock-in-transit location. See Stock Transfer Procedures.
Somebody counts in a stock take session. The count measures the gap and changes nothing.
Somebody corrects it with a Stock Adjustment, which moves the quantity and posts the only journal this module produces.

Traps worth knowing before you meet them

What you will see	Why	What to do
Available is higher than the physical balance	Available is the balance plus a signed adjustment for open documents. Goods received but not yet invoiced push it up	Correct, not a bug. The Stock Availability Details screen names the documents behind it
A stock take does not change anything	It never does. It produces a report; there is no post-variance button	Raise a Stock Adjustment from the report, as a named step in the procedure
A finalised document never reaches the balance	The item is not linked to an inventory item, or is not a basic / alias item	Fix the link in Doc Item Maintenance and re-post
Stock in a location nobody uses	A line with no location falls through to the branch’s default location	Correct the branch default, then move the quantity with a transfer or adjustment
A finalised adjustment moved the quantity but not the value	Posting is a background job after FINAL; with `STOCK_ADJUSTMENT` / `STOCK_BALANCE` unmapped it fails silently	Map the defaults, then Resolve the document in the Financial Report applet’s Trace Document
A transfer that never arrives	The Transfer In was never raised. The goods are counted at neither branch — they sit at the company’s `L-STOCK-IN-TRANSIT…` location	Watch the transfer applet’s Details listing weekly
A kitted item’s cost collapses	Stock Conversion writes no value, so an input line enters at zero and dilutes the moving average	Correct with Reset Moving Average, and expect it
Nobody can approve a write-off	There is no approval on any inventory document	Control it with the finalise permission instead
Trade-ins missing from the stock reports	Trade-in units are kept in their own tables entirely	Use the Non Stock and Trade In applet’s own listing

Count rolling, not annually. The stock take session carries a tolerance band for movements during the count, and there is an Android companion app with an offline mode, because it was built for a shop that does not stop. A weekly count of the fast-moving categories finds a discrepancy while somebody still remembers the week. An annual count finds twelve months of them at once and explains none.

Reading the numbers

Two enquiry screens and twelve reports.

Question	Where
What is on hand right now?	Stock Balance
What can I still promise this customer?	Stock Availability, then its Details screen
What happened to this item?	Stock Movement Report
What did we hold at the year end?	Historical Stock Balance
What is not selling?	Stock Aging Report
What expires soon?	Batch and Expiry Date Report
What is the closing value by category?	Stock Value By Level Report
What is still in transit?	The Stock Transfer applet’s Queue and Details listings

The full list, with what each one reads and the two that will never agree, is on Inventory reports.

There is no costing method to choose. Moving average, weighted average, FIFO and LIFO are all maintained as columns on every balance row; each screen decides which one it shows. Most show the moving average — including the stock take variance report, which is why a FIFO tenant never sees FIFO cost there.