Stock Movement (In - Out)

Stock Movement (In - Out) is what actually moved over a period: what came in, what went out, and the balance either side of it, one row per item.

An item page tells you what the stock is now. This tells you how the period changed it.

Open it from Add Report — see generating a report.

What it asks for

• Date Range — required. The period to measure.
• Item / Category — one item, or a whole category. Left empty it covers everything.
• Show Column — which of the columns below to carry.

The report is dated on transaction dates — when the stock physically moved, not when the job behind it was scheduled. That is the right basis for a stock question: what left the shelf, left it on the day it left.

What comes back

Column	What it holds
Name and Model No.	The item.
Opening Stock	What it stood at when the period began.
Inward (+)	Everything that came in — your own additions, and delivered purchase orders.
Outward (−)	Everything that went out — jobs and invoices taking stock as they save.
Adjustments	Corrections that are neither a delivery nor a consumption, such as a stocktake putting the count right.
Closing Stock	What it stands at now.

Every column sorts. The footer states the arithmetic: closing = opening + inward − outward, with opening calculated live from every transaction before the range, so an edit to an old movement never leaves the report inconsistent with itself.

Reading it

The rows worth attention are the ones where Inward and Outward are both small but the balance moved a lot — that is an adjustment doing the work, which means the count was wrong and somebody corrected it. A category showing that pattern month after month is a stores problem rather than a data problem.

Outward against a slow month is the other one to look at. A part going out steadily is a part to keep in stock; a part that has not moved in two quarters is money on a shelf.

Negative figures

A negative Opening Stock or a negative closing balance means more has been recorded going out than ever came in.

It is not a rounding fault and it does not correct itself. It happens when stock is consumed on jobs that was never entered as received — the parts are real, the delivery was never recorded — or when an item was set up with work already logged against it.

Put it right with Add/Remove Stock on the item and a description saying what the correction was for, so the movement is explained in the item’s history rather than appearing as an unexplained jump — see managing stock.

Related

• Stock transaction history — the same movements for one item, one transaction at a time, with what each was for.
• How inventory works — the three ways stock changes, and the one path that bypasses stock entirely.
• Managing stock — adding, removing and correcting quantities.