What actually moves stock

Before you start, open these. They are both under Stock in the menu: Stock Items and Inventory Transactions.

Can’t find one? It may be turned off for your business, or your account may not be allowed to open it. Ask the person who set up your FeePrime. They can fix both.

Here is the single most useful thing to know about stock in FeePrime.

Stock only ever moves through a stock movement. Nothing else moves it. Not an order. Not an invoice. Not a sales order.

Documents do not move stock. They cause a movement to be created

This surprises people, and it is what makes the whole thing explainable.

   shipment approved / packed  --> creates a movement --> stock moves
   standalone invoice          --> creates a movement --> stock moves
   standalone bill             --> creates a movement --> stock moves
   stock transfer dispatched   --> creates a movement --> stock moves
   you record one by hand      --> the movement IS the move

Every movement, whatever caused it, ends up as a row you can find, read and audit.

So when a number is wrong, there is exactly one place to look. The movements for that item, at that place. There is no hidden second mechanism.

Why “standalone”

An invoice attached to a sales order does not create its own movement.

The sales order’s shipment already moved the goods. Moving them again would count the sale twice.

A standalone invoice is different. That is one with no sales order behind it. Nothing else has moved that stock, so the invoice does it.

Same on the buying side. A bill attached to a purchase order is skipped, because the delivery already brought the goods in. A standalone bill brings them in itself.

The rule underneath is this. Each movement happens exactly once, at whichever document is the first to know it really happened.

Some movements you create, some you never do

A few types are made for you and are not offered in the form. The shipment movement, and the two halves of a transfer, dispatch and receive.

They come from the documents that caused them. So there is nothing to remember, and no way to create a duplicate by hand.

The ones you do create yourself: receiving from a supplier, production runs, stock takes, wastage, opening balances, and customer returns.

Product lines move stock too

A line on a document does not have to be a stock item to move stock.

A product carries the code of the stock item behind it. So selling a product moves that stock.

That is why the link between a product and its stock item mattered back in the Products course. Without it, a product sells perfectly and your stock never changes.

The way to think about it

Stock is not a number that somebody keeps up to date.

It is the sum of every movement in and out of a place.

So if a number looks wrong, the question is never “who typed the wrong number”. It is “which movement is missing, or duplicated, or at the wrong place”.

Try it

On staging.feeprime.com, open an item’s movements and add up the ins and outs by hand.

Matching the balance yourself once turns the number from something you trust into something you understand.