What your stock is worth
The Inventory Valuation page: how Landara values your on-hand stock at FIFO cost, how to read the breakdowns, and how it differs from the COGS report and from Shopify.
Updated 4 October 2026
Dashboard → COGS → Valuation answers one question: what is the stock I am holding right now worth, at what it actually cost me.
That figure is what your Inventory account on the balance sheet should say. It is also the number your accountant will ask for at year end.
How the number is built
Landara does not store a stock value. It replays your cost layers against every movement Shopify has reported, works out what is left of each layer, and prices it:
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Start with your cost layers | Each one is a receipt of stock at a known unit cost |
| Deplete them oldest first | Every sale, fulfilment, return, transfer and adjustment draws FIFO |
| Value what remains | Units left on each layer, at that layer's cost |
So the headline figure is the sum of remaining units multiplied by their own layer costs. Nothing is rounded until the total, which is why it agrees to the cent with the Stock on hand page.
Because it is replayed rather than stored, correcting a cost layer changes this figure immediately, including for stock you received months ago. That is the point: there is no separate revaluation step to remember.
Reading the page
| Section | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| The headline | Total on-hand value, units, SKU count and average cost per unit |
| On the books | The live Inventory account balance in Xero or QuickBooks, and how it compares |
| COGS not yet journalled | Shown when there is any. Your books lag Landara by exactly this until you post it |
| Shipment bills not yet published | Shown when there is any. Stock in Landara whose bills have not reached your books yet |
| By location | Where the value is sitting. Stock with no location shows as Default |
| By SKU | Units, average cost and value per product. Click a SKU to open its movement ledger |
The average cost per unit on a SKU row is a weighted average of the layers still open, not the price you last paid. A SKU holding 10 units at $4 and 10 at $6 reads $5. If that number looks wrong, the layer behind it usually is: open the SKU's ledger and check.
What it is not
Three pages report on stock and they answer different questions. Mixing them up is the most common confusion here.
| Page | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| Valuation | What is my stock worth right now |
| COGS report | What did the stock I sold in this period cost me |
| Stock on hand | How many units do I have, and how many can I sell |
Valuation and the COGS report move in opposite directions from the same events: stock that sells leaves the valuation and arrives in COGS. If both go up at once, you received stock and sold stock, not one thing counted twice.
Valuation counts costed units, Shopify counts units. If Landara holds no cost layer for a SKU, those units are worth nothing here even though Shopify says you have them, and the sales will show as uncosted on the COGS report. The Stock on hand page counts that gap directly, and sales that cost nothing explains what it does to your COGS. Fix it on the Cost Layers page rather than here.
Comparing against your books
The On the books section fetches the live Inventory account balance from each connected platform and shows the difference.
The difference is measured against what your Inventory account should hold right now, which is not your on-hand value on its own. Three figures build it:
your on-hand value, plus COGS you have not journalled yet, less shipment bills you have not published yet.
The two adjustments are mirror images of each other. A COGS journal is a credit still to come: your books sit above your on-hand value until you post it. A shipment bill is a debit still to come: stock arriving in Landara raises your on-hand value the moment its layers sync, but nothing touches the Inventory account until a bill lands in your books. An account that is exactly right sits at that combined position, and comparing against on-hand alone would report a difference on books that are perfectly correct.
Whenever either adjustment is non-zero the card shows it as its own row between the two balances, so the arithmetic on screen adds up.
On day one the two will not agree, and that is expected rather than a fault. Which account Landara compares against changes once, at setup:
| Before you confirm your opening position | After |
|---|---|
| The account that held your stock before Landara | The account Landara posts to |
Read opening balances and differences before you post anything to close that gap. Once the opening position is settled, the journal your accountant posts explains the one entry that brings the two into line.
From then on they should track each other on their own: published bills debit Inventory, COGS journals credit it. A difference that appears later is a real finding, and my Inventory account does not match works through the causes.
Shipment bills not yet published
Every shipment in your cost ledger reaches your books in one of three ways, and the card tracks which. The value shown per shipment is what was received, at cost: the amount its bills will debit your Inventory account with when they land.
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Waiting to be published | The default, and it needs no action. Publish the shipment's bills and the row clears itself. In Xero, Landara creates bills as drafts, so the row clears when you approve them |
| In my books | You entered the bills in Xero or QuickBooks yourself, outside Landara |
| Won't be pushed | No bill will ever exist. The value reaches your books through the suggested journal instead |
A purchase order does not count as published. It is a non-posting document that debits nothing; only a bill moves the Inventory account. A shipment published as a PO stays in this row until its bill exists.
A Xero bill still in draft does not count either, for the same reason: Xero posts nothing from a draft until it is approved. Landara checks each bill's status with Xero when the card loads and before it posts an opening or reconciling journal, and labels a draft one draft in Xero in the list. Approve it in Xero and it moves into your book balance. QuickBooks bills are posted when they are created, so they count straight away.
Entering a bill in Xero yourself instead of publishing it from Landara? Where to code it depends on where its stock came from. Bills you enter yourself has a table covering each case.
You can mark a shipment from either place: the row on this card, or the shipment's own publish panel, which offers In my books and Won't be pushed beside the Publish button. Marking is freely undoable, and publishing a marked shipment is always safe: once a real bill exists, the mark simply stops mattering.
Publishing never closes a difference. A bill raises your book balance and the should-hold figure by the same amount at the same moment, so the gap between them does not move by a cent. If the card shows an unexplained difference, publishing everything outstanding will not clear it. Something else is wrong, and my Inventory account does not match works through the causes.
Stock received before you connected is usually already in your books, inside your opening balance. The card notices those shipments and offers to mark them all as in your books in one click. Do not publish their bills: your opening balance already counts that stock, and the bills would count it a second time.
Year end
At year end this page is your closing stock figure. Two things make it defensible:
- Every number drills down. SKU to layers to the movements that depleted them, and the whole ledger exports as CSV.
- Every cost edit is logged with who changed it, when, and why. Set Books closed through once a period is reported so a later edit cannot restate it.
