Getting started

One purchase order, end to end · about 15 minutes

This walks through the whole thing once, with real numbers, so you can see where each figure comes from. Do it on live data if you like. Nothing here is irreversible except receiving stock, and that is the same action you would take anyway.

1. Set your costing method

Open Settings first, because it decides the arithmetic in every step below.

• Costing method. Weighted average blends new stock with what is already on the shelf. Last cost overwrites with the newest invoice figure. If you are unsure, leave it on weighted average. It is what most accountants expect.
• Landed cost allocation. By value gives the expensive lines the bigger share of freight. By weight gives it to the heavy ones. Pick by weight only if your products have weights set in Shopify, because a line with no weight takes no share.

The app home page always tells you which methods are live, so you never have to remember.

2. Add the supplier

Suppliers → New supplier. A name is enough to start. The contact email is optional and only used to save you looking it up later.

3. Create the purchase order

Purchase orders → Create purchase order. Choose the supplier and the location the stock will physically arrive at.

• Reference #: your own PO number. Worth filling in: it is what shows up later in the cost history, so a cost can be traced back to the delivery that caused it.
• Landed cost (freight/duty): the total off the freight invoice. Put the whole figure in; the app does the dividing.
• Line items: search by title or SKU, then set quantity and the unit cost your supplier charged.

Say you enter freight of 640, then 60 units at 14.20 and 20 units at 31.00. Create the order and the Landed/unit column fills in: +6.17 and +13.48. Those are not the same number, because the 640 is split by each line’s share of the 1,472 of goods, not evenly between lines.

4. Mark it as ordered

A draft can still be edited. Mark as ordered locks the quantities and costs so the figures you receive against are the ones you agreed.

5. Receive the delivery

When the boxes arrive, open the order and hit Receive items. Each row shows what the cost is about to become, before you commit:

• Stock is what you already hold at that location.
• Receive now defaults to the full ordered quantity. Change it for a part delivery.
• Unit cost shows the transition, for example 24.61 → 22.78. That is the new weighted average: existing stock blended with the arriving units at their landed cost.
• Margin updates live against your retail price, so you can see the real one before you commit.

There is a scan field at the top. A barcode scanner types the SKU and presses Enter, which jumps to that line.

Press Receive. The quantities and the corrected costs are written to Shopify, and you can confirm it yourself under Products → the variant → Inventory.

6. Print the labels

Straight from the received order, hit Print labels. Set how many of each line you want, press Update, then print. You get Code 128 barcodes with the SKU underneath, laid out for a label sheet, so the box can be labelled where it is opened.

7. Count a location

Stocktakes → New stocktake. Pick a location and start counting.

• Scan or type a SKU and the line appears with the quantity the system expects.
• Enter what is actually on the shelf.
• Save counts produces a diff report: expected, counted, and the variance.
• Apply adjustments posts every correction in one action.

Nothing reaches your Shopify inventory until you apply. You can save a count, walk away, and come back to it.

8. Read the result

Inventory value is where it all lands: units on hand, value at cost, value at retail, and the gross margin between them. Underneath, Cost changes lists every cost the app has moved, with the before figure, the after figure and the purchase order responsible.

Once a day the app also records what each location was worth. That history starts on install day and cannot be backfilled, so the sooner it starts the sooner it is useful.

9. Close the month

Month-end close opens on the last full calendar month. It shows what the stock was worth at the start, what it was worth at the end, and the movement between them — each figure read off the snapshot taken on the day, at the cost of the day, rather than recalculated from whatever the costs happen to be now. Underneath it are the two things an accountant asks for next: when the last delivery of the period landed, and which orders were still in transit across the cut off.

The roll-forward is the tie-out. Opening, plus what you received, less what left the shelf, plus whatever the counts corrected, should land on the closing figure — and whatever it doesn’t explain is shown as its own line instead of being folded into the total. That line is usually a cost that moved mid-month, and seeing it is the point.

Then you close the period. After that its figures stop moving, whatever anyone does to a cost afterwards. You can reopen it if a late invoice turns up, and the reopening is recorded with your reason attached, so a filed number that changed is visible instead of just different.

Download the close pack for the working paper, or the journal in your ledger’s shape. Set your account codes in Settings first, otherwise the file prints SET-ACCOUNT where a code should be — deliberately, because a guessed code posts real money into the wrong account.

10. Write down what you can’t sell

Stock that can’t fetch what it cost is carried at what it can fetch, item by item. Find the variant on Write-downs, enter what you expect to get for it after the costs of selling it, and give a reason. The closing valuation drops by exactly that. If the value comes back, reverse it and the reversal is recorded as its own event — so the month that took the loss still shows the loss, which is how the standards want it and how an auditor will read it.

If a number looks wrong

Send the purchase order or stocktake to support@stockkeep.app and I will check the arithmetic myself. A costing app that is wrong without saying so is worse than none, so those come first.