Tracking and managing inventory is at the heart of what Retail POS does. By recording inventory movements accurately, you can manage stock quantities and track the Cost of goods sold to optimize your business.

When setting up your store and adding inventory to your products for the first time, it is important to have an accurate Supply price set whenever an inventory movement is triggered. This allows us to accurately calculate the Average cost of your products, which is part of the Cost of goods sold calculation.

Inventory movements are triggered by:

1. Adding inventory to your products
2. Selling products
3. Inventory counts
4. Purchase orders / Just received

Adding inventory before going live

We strongly recommend:

1. Create your product(s) and input the correct supply price, but do not add inventory. This can be done one-by-one via Add product; in bulk using CSV, XLSX, or XLS; or imported from your e-Commerce platform.
   • Please note most e-Commerce platforms do not include a Supplier price so you will have to add this into Retail POS after importing your products.
2. When you're ready to go live and start selling, take stock of your products to gather accurate inventory quantities. Edit your products and add inventory quantities to reflect your available inventory; this can be done one-by-one via the Add product page or in bulk using CSV, XLSX, or XLS.
3. Get selling!

Once you have begun selling with Retail POS, you must add inventory using a Purchase order to capture updated Supply prices (refer to the Adding inventory after going live section below). 

If you have already begun your setup process and have not followed our recommended approach above, don’t worry! Here are some different scenarios that will ensure you are still set up correctly:

1. Product(s) created, Supply price has changed, no inventory has been added

As inventory has not been assigned to the product, the Average cost has yet to be formulated and the Supply price can be changed without issue.

You can correct the Supply price and add inventory at the same time using the Add product page or via CSV, XLSX, or XLS.

Once inventory has been added for the first time, you must use a Purchase order.

2. Product(s) created, Supply price is correct/has changed, inventory already added

Once inventory has been added to a product, you must add additional inventory using a Purchase order, regardless of whether the Supply price has changed or not.

Refer to the Adding inventory after going live section below.

Adding inventory after going live

When inventory has already been added to a product and the Average cost is set, there is only one method you should use to add inventory going forward: using a Purchase order.

You must use the Purchase order to record any Supply price changes and to add inventory to your products. This will allow the Average cost to be correctly formulated as the Supply price changes; it also records when inventory is added and by whom. 

The Add product page/CSV XLSX or XLS does not account for Supply price changes and adding inventory and/or changing the Supply price using these methods once inventory has already been added will have no effect on Average cost, causing the figure to be incorrect when calculating Cost of goods sold.

Additional information

How to add a standard product
How to bulk import products
Understanding your product catalog fields
What is average cost?
How to order stock