Inventory tracks the materials you stock — mulch, plants, pipe, fittings — from the purchase order that brings them in to the job that uses them up. Stock arrives by receiving an inventory purchase order, sits on hand at a weighted average cost, and leaves when you stage it to a project's resource requirements. Along the way GO keeps the general ledger in step: receipts post to your Inventory Asset account automatically.
Where to find it
From the left sidebar choose Purchasing & Payables, then the Inventory tab. The stock you'll see there comes in through the Purchase Orders tab and goes out through the Resource Requirements tab — inventory is the middle of that story, so this article touches all three.
Making an item an inventory item
Inventory starts on the resource, not the inventory screen. Open the item in Resources and set:
Inventory Item — Yes. This is the switch: only flagged items appear on the Inventory tab, and only their receipts create stock.
Reorder Point and Reorder Quantity — the grid highlights an item in red when on-hand falls to the reorder point. Leave these at zero and an out-of-stock item still shows red (0 ≤ 0), so set real values.
Unit of Measure and Category — these become the UOM and Category columns on the grid (defaults: ea and General).
Before your first receipt
Receipt posting is hard-blocked until two GL accounts are set in Business Unit Settings → Procurement: AP Accrual and Inventory Asset. The card shows a "n/7 Configured" badge — configure all seven (PPV, tax, and freight accounts included) so nothing surprises you at invoice matching either. The receipt date must also fall in an open Fiscal Period.
How stock arrives — receiving an inventory PO
Create the PO as usual. The moment any line references an inventory-flagged catalog item, GO sets the whole PO's type to Inventory automatically — you never pick it. You'll see the type as a badge in the Purchase Orders grid. If you stock in more than one place, pick the Warehouse on the PO header now — that's where the stock lands (see Warehouses).
Receive it. On the Purchase Orders tab, right-click the PO → Receive. In the receive dialog, set the Receipt Date, enter quantities in the Rcv Now column, and click Post Receipt. (Select several POs and right-click → Receive All to receive everything remaining at once.)
GO does the rest. On-hand quantities increase, the item's average cost is recalculated as a weighted moving average of its landed cost — the line total plus that line's share of the receipt's tax and freight — and a balanced GL entry posts: debit Inventory Asset for the landed cost, credit AP Accrual.
Received the wrong thing? The receive dialog lists prior receipts with an Undo Receipt control. One rule: if any of that stock has already been staged to a job, GO refuses until you return it — Unstage it first, then undo.
Reading the Inventory grid
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| On Hand | Current stocked quantity. An item stocked in more than one place shows one row per place. |
| Location | Where that row's stock sits. A dash means the stock isn't tied to a location. |
| Reorder Pt / Reorder Qty | Red and bold when on-hand has fallen to the reorder point — your restock signal. |
| Std Cost | The item's standard cost from the catalog. Click it to change it — see Changing standard cost below. |
| Avg Cost | The weighted average landed cost of what's actually on the shelf. |
| Ext Value | On-hand × average cost — what the row is worth. |
| Method | standard (the item carries a catalog cost) or average. |
| Last Receipt | When stock last arrived. |
Note the grid lists every inventory-flagged catalog item, including items with zero stock — it's your stocked-item catalog with quantities, not just what's on the shelf.
Changing standard cost
Click an item's Std Cost to open Change Standard Cost. The dialog shows the current standard cost and the quantity on hand, you type the new figure, and click Update Standard Cost.
What this does — and doesn't do — is worth being clear about. Standard cost is a planning figure. It seeds the budget on new resource requirements going forward. It does not revalue what you already own: on-hand stock stays valued at its weighted average cost, the Ext Value column doesn't move, and no GL entry is posted. Change it as often as your pricing changes — your ledger and your inventory valuation are untouched.
Warehouses
A warehouse is a stock location that receives purchase orders. Set them up in Business Unit Settings → Warehouses (in the sidebar, under the Organization group — the tab appears if you hold the warehouses view permission).
Add Warehouse — the button at the top right, or right-click anywhere in the grid.
Edit, Deactivate / Activate, and Delete — right-click a warehouse row. Deactivated warehouses drop out of the list until you switch on Show inactive, which brings them back dimmed.
You pick the warehouse on the purchase order header, next to Deliver To — choose one and everything you receive on that PO is booked into its inventory. Note the two are alternatives, not both: setting a Warehouse means the PO ships to that warehouse rather than to the Deliver To location, so the warehouse wins for the whole PO. Leave it on No warehouse and the PO delivers to the location as before. Once the PO reaches a workflow state that locks its header, a padlock appears on the field and the warehouse can no longer be changed.
How stock leaves — staging to a job
Consumption happens on the Resource Requirements tab. Each requirement row shows an Inv Qty column — green when there's enough on hand to cover the need, red when there isn't — and a Fulfillment column (Direct means buy-for-job; Inventory means pull from stock).
Use Inventory — select requirement rows and click Use Inventory (or right-click → Fulfill from Inventory). Eligible rows must be inventory-fulfillment, in a fulfillable status, with enough total stock. On-hand drops, the requirement moves to Staged, and the toast tells you how many staged and how many were skipped.
Unstage — select staged rows and click Unstage to return the material to stock and put the requirement back to active.
Good to know
Inventory value moves in the GL at receipt and invoice-match, not at staging. Using or unstaging inventory adjusts quantities and the audit trail, but the Inventory Asset account is relieved through invoice matching and purchase price variance — so don't expect a journal entry per staging.
Tax and freight spread evenly across a receipt's lines, not proportionally to line value — worth knowing when you sanity-check a landed cost.
"Use Inventory" pulls across every warehouse and location, draining the largest stock first, and unstaging returns to the first matching stock row. You now choose a warehouse on the PO and received stock is keyed to it — but consumption isn't confined to one warehouse, so a job can be staged from stock sitting anywhere.
There's no adjustment, transfer, or physical-count screen yet. Stock changes only through receipts, receipt undos, staging, and unstaging. If a count is off, the correction path is an undo/re-receive on the relevant PO.
Inventory valuation is reportable. Analytics exposes an inventory valuation source — on-hand, average cost, value, and below-reorder flags — for reports and dashboards.
Permissions: receiving needs the receive purchase orders permission, undoing a receipt needs unapprove receipt, and staging/unstaging and standard-cost changes ride on update purchase orders. Warehouses have their own set — warehouses view to see the settings tab at all, and warehouses create, warehouses update, warehouses delete for the actions on it.