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How Stock Movements Work

Stock is a ledger of movements. Every receipt, issue, transfer, adjustment, count and scrap is a row, rows are never edited or deleted, and on-hand quantity is always worked out from them. The Stock console is where you record movements, look them up and correct them with a reversing movement.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → ERP - Operations:

  • Stock — the console: enquiry, movements, recording, reservations, lots, stocktake, replenishment, quality, Stock vs GL and set-up
  • Stock Movements — the movement ledger, read only
  • Stock Balances — the balance cache, read only and rebuildable
  • Stock Locations — where stock can be

Admin Panel → Inventory & Production:

  • Stock — the same console for storemen and planners who are not architects

Who can use it

ERP: Inventory, ERP: Reporting, ERP: Finance and ERP: Administration can open the console. Recording anything needs ERP: Inventory (or ERP: Administration) and write access to the company; everyone else can enquire. The Stock Movements, Stock Cost Layers, Stock Genealogy and Stock Balances datastores are read only in the generic editor, so a movement can only be made through the console or a document, where the stock rules, cost layers and ledger postings apply.

Recording a movement

  1. Open Stock, choose the Company and go to Record a movement.
  2. Choose the Type: Receipt (stock arriving from outside), Issue (stock leaving to outside), Transfer (between two of the company's locations), Adjust (a gain or a loss at one location), Scrap, Produce or Consume (outside a work order).
  3. Enter the Item and Quantity, and choose From and/or To. The form shows only the location boxes the type needs.
  4. For stock coming in, enter the Unit cost and Currency; blank uses the item's current cost.
  5. For a tracked item, enter the Lot or Serial. On an issue of a lot-tracked item a blank lot is picked first-expiry-first-out. Expiry (new lots) defaults from the item's shelf life.
  6. Set the Date (blank is now) and a Narrative saying why.
  7. Click Record movement. Tick Record as planned (post later) to hold it as a planned movement instead.

The message gives the stock entry number, any lots picked, and whether it posted to the general ledger.

Looking things up

  • Enquiry: enter an item and click Look up for On hand, Reserved, Available to promise, Value and Average unit cost, by location and by lot.
  • Movements: the ledger, newest first, filtered by State (Posted, Reserved, Planned, Cancelled), Type, lot and dates. Each row has Trace; planned rows have Post and Cancel.

Correcting a movement

You never edit a movement. On the Movements tab, click Reverse on the posted row, give a Reason (required) and click Reverse it. A mirror movement is recorded against the original, and its cost layers and ledger journal are reversed too. Both stay visible. Movements made by a work order are reversed in Production, and movements posted by a document (a goods receipt or delivery) are reversed by reversing or cancelling that document; the row tells you which.

The balance cache

On-hand figures are cached so screens load quickly. If the cache ever disagrees with the ledger, the Enquiry tab says so and shows a Cache disagrees pill. Click Rebuild the balance cache: it recomputes from the movements, is safe at any time and loses nothing.

What goes wrong

  • "Only Q of 'X' is at LOC.": stock cannot go negative unless the location allows it.
  • "Lot L of 'X' expired on D and cannot be issued" or "is in quarantine": scrap it, move it, or disposition its non-conformance.
  • "Item 'X' is not in the item master": once a company has items, every movement must use one (see the item master).
  • "Cannot reverse: … has already been issued or consumed": reverse the later movements first, or post an adjustment.
  • " Not posted to the general ledger: …" on the message: the movement is recorded but its journal is not; see posting stock to the ledger.

Worked example

A storeman receives 200 boxes of gloves at 3.10 into UK-MAIN with lot G-2210, then transfers 50 to the van stock location. A week later a count shows one box was booked to the wrong lot. Rather than edit anything, they reverse the original receipt with the reason "wrong lot keyed", which is refused because 50 have already moved on. They instead post an Adjust loss on G-2210 and an Adjust gain on the correct lot, each with a narrative, and the history shows exactly what happened.

Recommendations

  • Always write a narrative; it is the only record of why.
  • Correct with a reversal or an adjustment, never by editing data.
  • Load opening stock as dated receipts with realistic costs, not zero.
  • Rebuild the cache freely if a figure looks wrong; it is safe.