Inventory that counts itself: stock ledger explained
How to set up tracked items, record receipts and shipments, use batches and serial numbers, and read the stock ledger — so your stock numbers are always defensible.
Most inventory systems drift. Someone records a shipment but forgets the return; a purchase lands in the wrong bin; a spreadsheet gets its own copy of the truth. Six months later nobody trusts the numbers, and the yearly physical count becomes an argument.
Roznamcha Digital takes a different approach: there is exactly one stock ledger, and every document writes to it as a movement. This post shows you how to set it up and read it.
Turn tracking on, per item
Inventory features live under the Inventory section of the sidebar. First enable the options you need in Inventory Settings — stock tracking, and optionally batches and serial numbers. Then, on each Item you want counted, check Track Item (and Has Batch / Has Serial Number if you use them).
From that point on, any transaction involving the item — purchase receipt, shipment, stock movement — updates the ledger automatically. You never type a stock quantity into an invoice; the documents do the counting.
Four movement types cover everything
Manual corrections and internal transfers are handled by Stock Movements (Inventory > Stock Movement, then the blue + button). Pick a movement type first — it decides which location fields you fill:
- Material Issue — stock leaves a location (damage, sampling, own use). From is set, To is not.
- Material Receipt — stock enters a location without a purchase invoice. To is set, From is not.
- Material Transfer — stock moves between two of your locations. Both are set, quantity unchanged overall.
- Manufacture — raw materials go out and finished goods come in, in one document.
Buying and selling need no manual movements at all: a Purchase Receipt brings stock in, and a Shipment takes it out — both linked to their invoices so the paperwork and the stock ledger always agree.
Batches and serial numbers
If you deal in medicines, food, paint, or anything with expiry dates, enable Batches in Inventory Settings and mark the item Has Batch. Every receipt, shipment and movement row then asks which batch it touches, and you can trace any batch back to its supplier and forward to its customers — the paperwork a recall or a FBR audit actually requires.
High-value items with individual units (electronics, appliances) work the same way with Has Serial Number: each unit gets its own number, tracked from purchase receipt to sale.
Reading the ledger
Two reports answer every stock question, and because both read the same movement rows they can never disagree with each other:
- Stock Ledger — the movement history for an item or location: what came in, what went out, when, and through which document.
- Stock Balance — the quantity on hand right now, derived from that history rather than stored separately.
That derivation is the point. A stored running-total column is faster on paper but fails silently — one bad update corrupts every number after it. Derived balances are self-auditing: click any quantity and see the exact documents that produced it. Cancel or amend a document and everything recomputes from that point forward.
The result: no quarter-end stock reconciliation spreadsheet, and numbers you can defend in front of an auditor or a business partner.