Stock, cost of sales and production journals in Xero and QuickBooks
For your accountant: with journals on, each day’s stock movements post to Xero or QuickBooks as one journal. What posts, to which accounts, how it is valued, and how to reconcile it.
Where it is
- Integrations → Xero — The journals card: accounts, draft or posted, start date, preview, history
- Integrations → QuickBooks — The same card for a QuickBooks company
- Inventory → Stock — Stock value by product, the figure the journals move
Off by default. Switch it on (Integrations → Xero or QuickBooks → Stock, cost of sales and production journals) and BuildTrack keeps the stock side of your books the way Cin7 Core and NetSuite do: once a day, yesterday's movements go across as one journal, one line per account. Invoices, bills and payments carry on exactly as before.
What posts, and where
Every stock movement is valued at cost and lands between Inventory on hand and one other account:
| Movement | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Stock received against a purchase order | Inventory on hand | Goods received not invoiced |
| Stock returned to a supplier | Goods received not invoiced | Inventory on hand |
| Stock sold (left on an invoice or a job) | Cost of goods sold | Inventory on hand |
| Stock restocked from a customer return | Inventory on hand | Cost of goods sold |
| Counts, write-offs, manual adjustments | Stock adjustments (or Inventory, when a count adds stock) | Inventory on hand (or Stock adjustments) |
| Material issued to a production order (Manufacturing) | Work in progress | Inventory on hand |
| Labour, overhead, machine time and outside work on an order | Work in progress | Labour applied / Overhead applied / Machine time applied / Outside work applied |
| Finished goods received from an order | Inventory on hand | Work in progress |
| A build posted to a vehicle (Vehicle Sales) | Vehicle stock | Work in progress |
Transfers between warehouses and kit builds move value within stock, so they post nothing. Stock changes written by a supplier feed are left out unless you tick them in (they are usually the supplier's stock, not yours).
Goods received not invoiced is the clearing account: receipts credit it, and you code each supplier's bill to it, so it returns to zero once the bill is in. The same goes for Outside work applied and the outside processor's bill. Labour applied, Overhead applied and Machine time applied are contra expenses: wages stay where payroll puts them, and these show the part that went into stock.
How it is valued
- A receipt or a finished-goods output is valued at the cost on its own cost record (the landed cost that moved the average).
- Everything else is valued at the product's average cost as it stood at that moment, so a sale on Tuesday uses Tuesday's average even if a receipt on Wednesday changed it.
- Journals start from the From date you set, usually go-live. Opening stock before it is your conversion balance, entered by hand.
When it posts
The morning after each business day, in your time zone. A day with nothing to post is recorded as skipped. In Xero a journal arrives as a draft unless you choose Posted, so your accountant approves it; QuickBooks journal entries are posted directly. Preview any day on the card before turning it on, and post or retry any day from there. Every day's outcome, lines and amounts are listed under Recent days.
Reconciling
The sum of the Inventory on hand lines between two dates should equal the change in stock value on Inventory → Stock over the same dates, less transfers and kit builds (which net to zero) and any day that failed. A failed day names what it needs (usually an account that was not chosen); fix it and press Retry, and the sweep tries it again each morning for a month.