Adding inventory items and opening stock
Create the materials you buy, set their unit and cost, and record what you already have on the shelf.
An inventory item is anything you buy and hold: paper, ink, laminate, boxes, thread. It is the foundation layer — paper tracking, ink tracking, product recipes and purchase orders all point back at items.
Creating an item
Go to Inventory Items and press + Add Item. The fields that matter:
| Field | What to put |
|---|---|
| SKU | Filled in for you from the category. Overwrite it if you have your own coding. |
| Name | What your staff call it — “Card Stock 250gsm”, not “CS250”. |
| Unit | How you buy it: ream, bottle, pack, roll, sheet. Free text. |
| Category | Optional grouping. It also drives the SKU prefix. |
| Supplier | Optional default supplier, used when raising a purchase order. |
| Opening Stock | How many units you hold right now. |
| Cost per Unit | What you pay for one unit. |
| Reorder Level | The level at which the item counts as low stock. |
Getting the cost right
Cost per Unit is the most consequential number on this form. It flows into paper cost per piece, ink cost per millilitre, every product's unit cost, every job's cost record, and the cost-of-goods line in your Financial Report.
Use what you actually pay, including delivery if you normally think of it that way. Be consistent — a mix of ex-delivery and inclusive prices makes margins impossible to compare.
Opening stock
Any opening stock above zero is written to the ledger as an opening balance movement rather than silently set. Your stock history therefore starts with a dated, attributable entry, and every later change can be traced from it in Stock Movements.
Adjusting stock later
Once an item exists, its level changes through purchase receipts, production, waste and manual adjustments. To correct a count after a stock-take, open the item and use its adjust action, with a note saying why.
Stock can never go negative
An adjustment or movement that would push an item below zero is refused with “Insufficient stock”. If you genuinely have less than PrintERP thinks, adjust down to the real figure rather than trying to consume past zero.
Note
On the Free plan an item's stock is capped at 10 units, and you may hold 10 items in total. Both limits lift on paid plans — see Plans and limits.
Common questions
Should finished goods be inventory items?
Usually no. Things you sell belong in Products, which have recipes and a selling price. Items are what products are made from.
I buy the same paper from two suppliers at different prices.
Keep one item and set the cost to what you mostly pay. The supplier field is a default for purchase orders, not a constraint.
What happens if I delete an item?
An item used by a product recipe cannot be deleted. Mark it inactive instead — history stays intact and it stops appearing in pickers.
Open Inventory Items
Add your materials and record what is on the shelf.
Related guides
Categories, SKUs, reorder levels and locations
Keep a growing item list usable — auto-generated SKUs, low-stock alerts, and where things are stored.
Tracking paper by the piece
Link a paper item, say how many pieces are in a ream, and get a per-piece cost and balance.
Reading the stock movement trail
Every change to every item, what each movement type means, and how to trace a discrepancy.