About product inventory adjustments

Learn about product inventory adjustments and how they calculate your real-time inventory and stock costs.

In this article:

What is a product inventory adjustment?

An adjustment is created whenever a product's stock level changes. This provides a fully auditable history of all stock changes for every product in your inventory and is how Craftybase calculates your real-time stock levels and costs.


Adjustments can be either automatically or manually created.

Automatic adjustments

Situations where an adjustment will be automatically created are:

  • Manufacture adjustments: When a manufacture is added for a product, an adjustment will be automatically added to increase your stock by the used amount;
  • Order adjustments: When an order is added for a product, an adjustment will be automatically added to decrease your stock by the fulfilled amount;
  • Stocktake adjustments: When a stocktake is performed for a product, an adjustment will be automatically added for any difference between expected and actual stock;
  • Starting adjustments: When a product is created, a starting adjustment will also represent the starting stock quantity and cost on the account start date.

Manual adjustments

It is also possible to add manual adjustments where required. This should only be done if the stock cannot be accounted for via the methods above. For example, if I had an unexpected breakage of a quantity of product, adding an adjustment to remove the stock from my inventory would be the best way to handle this situation.

It's important to note that stock should not be added to the system using inventory adjustments unless there is a valid and specific reason to do so—as the stock is unaccounted for, it will remain uncosted and could contribute to lowered inventory valuation and COGS.

In this section, we will cover:


Adding a manual adjustment for a product

To create a stock adjustment for a product:

  1. Navigate to your product page
  2. Click the Adjustments tab.
  3. On the page that appears, click the Add Adjustment button.
  4. Complete the details for the adjustment required on the form that appears.

Changing a manual adjustment for a product

To edit an existing adjustment for a product:

  1. Navigate to your product page
  2. Click the Adjustments tab.
  3. On the page that appears, hover over the vertical ellipsis (⋮) next to the adjustment, then click the Edit Adjustment option in the menu that appears
  4. On the form, modify the details for the adjustment being made
  5. Click the Save button.

Removing a manual adjustment for a product

To delete an existing adjustment for a product:

  1. Navigate to your product page
  2. Click the Adjustments tab.
  3. On the page that appears, hover over the vertical ellipsis (⋮) next to the adjustment, then click the Remove Adjustment option in the menu that appears
  4. Review and confirm that you wish to remove the adjustment by clicking on the Yes, Remove button on the page that appears.

Starting adjustments

An important type of product adjustment is a Starting Adjustment. This is a one-off adjustment to handle any finished stock you had on hand and their cost on your account start date.

It is automatically added when a product is created or imported.

In this section, we will cover:


Adding a starting adjustment for a new product

To add a starting adjustment for a product:

  1. Follow the instructions to add a new product
  2. On the add product form, complete the Starting Adjustment and Average Unit Cost fields under the Starting Adjustment heading.

The information you provide in this section will be used to automatically create your starting adjustment for the product.

Changing a starting adjustment for an existing product

It is possible to change starting adjustments manually or via CSV import.

To change a starting adjustment manually:

1. Navigate to your Product list and select the product you wish to edit

2. Select the Adjustments tab

  1. On the page that appears, scroll or page to find the "Starting" adjustment
  2. Hover over the vertical ellipsis (⋮) next to the adjustment, then click the Edit Adjustment option in the menu that appears

4. Enter the unit price and quantity in the form that appears

5. Click Save Inventory Adjustment to confirm your changes


To change starting adjustments in bulk via CSV:

  1. Follow the directions in the help article here

Deleting a starting adjustment

Starting adjustments are important for the system to understand the units and costs of stock brought into the system. If you do not have a starting adjustment, follow the instructions above for changing a starting adjustment and ensure that you set both Unit Price and Quantity to 0.

Viewing product adjustment histories

It's important to regularly check your adjustment history to identify any discrepancies or possible data entry issues.


Viewing the adjustment history for a product

To view a list of all adjustments (both automatically created and manually created) for a product:

  1. From the Products list page, click on the name of the product.

  2. On the page that appears, click the Adjustments tab.


Viewing the adjustment history for all products

All inventory adjustments for products can be found on your Product Adjustments page. On this page, you can view, paginate and export your adjustments for further analysis.

To find your product adjustments page:

  1. Hover over the ⋮ menu option in the top navigation bar.

  2. Click on the Adjustments option in the menu that appears.


  3. On the following page, click Product Adjustments.

Adjustment Categories

When creating a product adjustment in Craftybase, you'll have the option to assign a category. Categories help you track why inventory is being manually increased or decreased outside of your usual workflows like orders and manufactures.

These categories are useful for:

  • Identifying trends in non-sale inventory usage (e.g., frequent breakage, donations)
  • Keeping organized records for internal audits
  • Supporting year-end reporting and analysis

One default category available is Personal Use, which is used to indicate when products are removed from inventory for non-business purposes (this affects your Schedule C report). You can also create custom categories.

Exporting your adjustment history

Our Export feature allows you to export some or all of your product adjustment history. This can be useful if you are attempting to reconcile or find costing or stock discrepancies.

To export your product adjustments:

  1. Navigate to your Product Adjustments list

  2. Click the Export icon on the footer of the page

  3. Once the file has been generated, it will be available for download in your Notifications area.
  4. Click on the Download export link to download the file.

Your Product Adjustments export file contains the following fields:

Date The date the inventory adjustment was made.
Reason The reason for the adjustment was made
Product The name of the product being adjusted.
Variation The specific variation of the product.
Quantity The total quantity adjusted
Unit Cost The cost per unit for the adjusted product or variation.
Category The category assigned to the product adjustment

Troubleshooting guide

Sometimes, you'll find that your adjustments are not costing as you expect them to. When this occurs, please refer to our article on troubleshooting common product adjustment issues for detailed guidance on how to best resolve.


FAQ

Below are some common questions and answers about product adjustments:

  • No FAQ questions yet - we're working on it!
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