Stock Adjustment

Last updated: June 20, 2026

A stock adjustment changes stock outside the normal flow of buying and selling: correcting a count, or moving goods between locations and groups. It is the manual hand into the stock ledger, the inventory counterpart of a journal entry, and like a journal it posts a movement rather than overwriting a balance.

What you will learn
  • The two kinds of adjustment
  • How the stock ledger works
  • How a correction becomes a gain or loss
  • The adjustment lifecycle
Goods Receive+ inDelivery– outAdjustment / Movement+ / –Stock ledgersigned entriesCurrent balanceon hand nowDocuments post movements; the balance is their running sum
Every document posts a signed movement; the balance is the running sum simplified mockup

Two kinds of adjustment

  • Quantity – correct a discrepancy between the system and a physical count. The difference posts as a gain or a loss.
  • Movement – transfer stock from one location or group to another, naming a source and a destination. Nothing is created or destroyed; it simply moves.

How it behaves

The stock ledger

This is the concept that ties inventory together. You never edit a stock balance directly. Instead, every posted document, a goods receive, a delivery, an adjustment, writes a signed entry to the stock ledger, and the quantity on hand is the running sum of those entries. It is double-entry thinking applied to goods: the balance is always explained by the movements behind it, exactly as a ledger account is explained by its postings.

Corrections become gains and losses

When a count says 98 and the system says 100, the adjustment posts the difference of minus two, and the value of those two units shows up as an inventory loss. Stock and its value stay in step because the same movement carries both quantity and cost.

Lifecycle

An adjustment runs Draft, an optional Verify (where adjustment review is enabled), then Posted, with Cancel available. Once posted it is locked to edits, and cancelling reverses the movement rather than deleting it, keeping the ledger honest.

Worked example

A stock-take finds 98 of an item the system shows as 100. You raise a quantity adjustment for minus two; the ledger records the movement and the two units' cost posts as a loss. Separately, you move twenty units from the main warehouse to the branch with a movement adjustment, source main, destination branch, and Finder reflects both at once.

Edge cases and good practice

  • Quantity versus movement. Use quantity to correct a count, movement to relocate stock; do not fix a miscount by inventing a transfer.
  • Cannot edit a posted adjustment. Reverse and re-enter if you got it wrong.
  • Investigate large corrections; a big adjustment usually means a process gap upstream, not just a typo.

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