Receiving answers "how many arrived". Costing answers "what did each one cost".
They are two jobs, done by two people, often days apart. Warehouse staff record the count and the stock is real immediately. Costing waits for the supplier's invoice, and the delivery never waits for it.
This page covers:
- What costing actually changes
- Before you start
- Cost the receiving
- The three choices on every line
- After it is costed
What costing actually changes
Costing changes value, never quantity.
Every product carries one unit cost. That number is what stock valuation, margin and profit reports are built from. Costing a receiving is the only moment that number moves, and it only moves after you explicitly choose to move it, line by line. Nothing is ever updated silently in the background.
Two figures do the work:
- Landed cost is what this delivery cost per unit. It is the agreed line price, plus this line's share of any delivery or handling charge on the order, divided by the units received.
- Moving average cost blends the landed cost with what you already held. Hold 100 units at MYR 4.00, receive 100 more at MYR 6.00, and the average becomes MYR 5.00 across all 200.
The moving average is the recommended answer in most cases, because your shelf genuinely holds a mix of old and new stock.
Before you start
Wait for the invoice. Costing without prices produces nothing useful.
Check three things first:
- The receiving reads Received. That means the stock is already on the books and only the pricing is outstanding.
- The quantities look right. They are locked here, on purpose — the person who counted the boxes owns those numbers.
- The supplier's prices match the order. If they do not, fix the order's prices before costing, not after.
Invoice paperwork — number, dates, total, attachments — can still be added or corrected on the receiving at any point. Only quantities are locked.
Cost the receiving
- Open the receiving from the receivings list. Filter by the Received status if the list is long.
- Click Apply costs & close.
- A panel opens with one card per product. Each card shows the units received, the price used, any delivery charge allocated to that line, and the resulting landed cost.
- Pick an action on each card. See the next section for what each one means.
- Use Apply all MAC to set every card to the moving average at once, then adjust the odd one out.
- Click the confirm button at the bottom. It names the counts, for example how many costs will be updated and how many skipped.
If the delivery was priced in another currency, a note at the top says so. The figures are converted to your base currency using the rate for the day the goods were received, and that rate is locked to the receiving so it cannot drift later.
Lines with no price at all cannot be costed. They are marked, forced to keep the current cost, and left alone.
The three choices on every line
| Choice | What it writes | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Apply MAC | The blended moving average | The normal case — you are adding to stock you already hold |
| Replace with landed cost | This delivery's landed cost, discarding the old average | The first time you ever buy this item, or when the old cost is known to be wrong |
| Keep current | Nothing changes | The price is unrepresentative, such as a sample or an emergency top-up |
The first receipt of a product has no prior stock to average with, so the app pre-selects Replace and says why on the card. Every other line starts on Apply MAC.
Whatever you pick is recorded against the line: the landed cost, the average that was calculated, the stock held beforehand, and your decision. Months later the number is explainable.
After it is costed
The receiving moves to Costed. That is the end of its life.
- Stock quantity does not change. It moved when the delivery was recorded.
- Stock value does change, because the unit cost behind it changed.
- The supplier bill can now be raised in your accounting system.
- The costing decisions stay attached to the receiving as an audit trail.
If a quantity turns out to be wrong after costing, do not record a correcting delivery on top. Ask an administrator to reverse the receiving. That writes the opposite movements, restores the previous unit cost, and lets the delivery be recorded again properly.
If Apply costs & close is not on the page, your account can record deliveries but not price them. Send the receiving reference to whoever owns supplier pricing rather than editing the order to compensate.
Explore
Recording the delivery in the first place. The step before this one, done by whoever unpacked the boxes. Learn more →
The phone version of receiving. Warehouse staff submit counts from the floor, and stock posts there and then. Learn more →
What a unit costs, and why. The longer explanation of moving average cost and what it is used for. Learn more →