Record when you last counted stock

Your cost of goods is only as good as your last stock count. Recording the date tells anyone reading your numbers, including your accountant, how recently the ledger was checked against what is physically there.

1. Go to Ledger › Setup and click Edit on the book.
2. Under How you track the cost of stock, fill in Stock last counted with the day you actually counted.
3. Optionally add What the count covered, for example "main warehouse only", if the count was not of everything.
4. Save.

The date then appears in three places: the header of your Profit & Loss whenever the report shows cost of goods, the Ecommerce › Overview figure, and the cover sheet of your accountant handover pack.

When it starts warning you

HQ shows the date plainly for about a month, then in a muted tone up to a quarter. Past a quarter, or if you have never recorded a count, the Ecommerce overview stops presenting its headline as a settled figure and shows the age of the count instead. The number itself never changes and is never hidden: what changes is the claim, because a cost of goods nobody has checked against real stock is a number worth reading carefully.

The fix is the same in every case. Count your stock, then come back and record the date.

If you track stock by counting it rather than by Shopify product costs, a posted count does the opposite job as well. It is what puts cost of goods on the Ecommerce overview at all, because your cost of goods comes from that count. Record those in Ledger › Accounting › Stock counts, with the value, rather than here.

Those books get more than a change of tone. Once the last posted count passes a quarter, Books Health raises a card telling you it is time to count again, and a book that turned stock counts on and never recorded one is told that too. The date you type on this screen is a note for your reader, so it never raises or clears that card on its own: only a posted count with a value does.

If you want the count to reach your books

This screen records a date. If you also know what the stock was worth, record the count in Ledger › Accounting › Stock counts instead: that one posts an adjusting entry, brings your stock value to what you counted, and moves the difference to cost of goods. It fills in this date for you when it posts, so there is no need to type it twice. See "Count your stock and post the adjustment".

Recording the date alone is still worth doing if you count but would rather your accountant handle the valuation.

This is not the cost of goods start date

Turning on cost of goods tracking also stamps a start date, which controls which payouts book cost of goods entries. That one affects your ledger. The stock count date does not: it is your statement about the physical world, and moving it posts nothing and changes no figure. A book can easily have an old start date and a count from this morning, and both are true at once.

Stock you have paid for that has not arrived

A count counts the shelf. Goods still on their way to you are not on it, and that matters more than it sounds.

When you enter the supplier bill, its cost goes straight to your cost of goods. That is the ordinary way to run stock: buy it, expense it, and let the count correct at the end. But goods on the water have not been sold yet, so at the moment you count, their cost is sitting in this period's costs when it belongs on your balance sheet.

So the count asks a second question: paid for, not arrived. Enter what it is worth and HQ moves that cost out of your cost of goods and into your goods in transit account, where it waits until the shipment lands.

Leave it blank if you would rather not track it. Blank means you have not said, and nothing moves. A book that never fills this in records counts exactly as it always did. Entering zero is different: it says there is nothing on the water, and it releases anything the last count was holding.

It is a value, not a change. Say what is in transit right now, the same way you say what the shelf is worth right now. If you told the last count $3,000 and this one is still $3,000, nothing moves. If it has grown to $5,000, only the extra $2,000 moves. You never have to work out the difference yourself.

Before you can use it, mark the account that holds it: Chart of accounts, find your goods in transit account, and switch In transit on. An account is either stock on hand or goods in transit, never both.

If you leave this alone entirely, your accountant will usually sort it out once a year at year end, which is what happens today. Recording it at each count just means your figures are right in between.

Work out what is in transit from your bills

You do not have to remember the figure. On a count that is not posted yet, click Goods in transit: work it out in Ledger › Accounting › Stock counts. HQ lists two things from the twelve months before the count date:

• Product purchases. Every bill and receipt whose cost went to cost of goods or stock, with the supplier, the date, the amount, what you wrote on it and how many days before the count it was. Tick each one that had not arrived on the count date. If only part of a shipment was still on its way, change the amount to the part that was.
• Deposits paid on open proformas. These are listed so you can chase the final invoice, and they cannot be ticked. A deposit is already on your balance sheet, so there is nothing to move. Counting it here would put it on twice.

Any purchase you leave unticked is treated as arrived. HQ never guesses what has landed: only you know what was on the shelf. At your first count nothing is ticked. At each count after that, anything you ticked last time starts ticked again, so you only need to untick what has arrived since and tick what is new.

The panel also shows what your goods in transit account holds on the count date, and what you have ticked. Some stock on the water may not come from any bill on the list: an opening balance, an entry made by hand, or a shipment more than twelve months old. Type that in Other goods in transit not on this list. The box starts empty, because only you know what it is.

The figure is what you ticked plus that other amount. Posting the count brings your goods in transit account to exactly that figure, and the panel shows how much that moves into or out of cost of goods.

If the figure is lower than what the account already holds, the difference leaves goods in transit and becomes cost of goods. HQ names the amount and asks you to confirm it before Use this total will go ahead.

If something you ticked at your last count is no longer on the list, it is shown with the reason: the bill was cancelled, deleted or reduced, is more than twelve months old, or is no longer on a product account. It cannot be ticked, and it is not part of the figure.

When part of the amount comes from a bill your last count ticked that has since been cancelled, deleted or reduced, HQ says so, and that confirming that part is right because nothing is on its way for it. For a cancelled bill, anything you paid on it is a credit with the supplier. For a deleted one, any payment on it is back among your unmatched bank lines. For a reduced one, the reduction is no longer stock. HQ only says this when your last count's figure was built from its ticks. For the rest, confirm only if that stock has arrived. If it is still on its way, add it to Other goods in transit instead.

HQ keeps the other amount you typed with the count, exactly as you typed it. When you reopen the count it is filled back in, and it only changes when you change it. A tick on this count whose bill is later cancelled, reduced or moved off a product account is shown with the reason too.

Save ticks keeps your answer on this count without changing its figure. Use this total saves them and puts the figure in Paid for, not arrived. It replaces any figure you typed there yourself. Nothing posts until you post the count itself, and once it is posted its ticks can no longer change.