My Inventory account does not match
Why your Inventory account is not moving, why a variance will not clear, and what to do when an account is missing from a dropdown.
Updated 4 August 2026
Numbers that do not line up between Landara and your books almost always come down to one of the causes below. Work through them in order.
My Inventory account never moves when I receive stock
The most common cause by far, and it is a mapping problem rather than a bug.
Your Inventory account is debited by the bill or purchase order you publish, not by creating a cost layer in Landara. So check two things:
- Are you publishing the document? Importing a PO into the Cost Layers page records the cost in Landara but sends nothing to your accounting software.
- Is Products mapped to your Inventory asset account? Open Settings → Connections → Configure Tax Codes. If Products is set to Default account, or to an expense account such as Purchases, the bill will never touch Inventory.
See Map your tax and GL accounts for which account to choose.
The same cost seems to be counted twice
You are probably mixing the two inventory treatments. If your product purchases are expensed on receipt and you post COGS journals, the cost hits your profit and loss once through the bill and again through the journal.
Pick one:
- Perpetual: map Products to your Inventory asset account and keep posting COGS journals.
- Periodic: leave Products on an expense account and stop posting COGS journals.
Landara shows a warning in the settings modal when it detects the combination.
The variance on the valuation page will not clear
Check first that Landara is reading the right account. If the valuation card shows an amber notice saying it picked an inventory account for you, everything below it is measured against a guess. Set Inventory before Landara under Settings → Connections → Configure Tax Codes and look again.
If you have accepted an opening difference and the gap got bigger, that is expected. Accepting switches Landara to comparing against the account it posts to, which on an existing file starts empty. The card shows the journal to enter in your accounting software, and the difference closes once your accountant enters it. See the journal your accountant posts.
If the difference is large, roughly stable, and dates back to when you started, it is your opening difference. It is not something a journal should fix. Read Your opening difference and accept it as a baseline instead of posting it through the profit and loss.
If the difference appeared recently, it usually means one of:
- the migration journal has not been entered in your accounting software yet,
- a bill you have not published yet,
- a COGS journal for a period you have not posted,
- a stocktake or reconcile adjustment that has not been journalled,
- a journal created as a draft in Xero and never approved.
Landara refuses to post my COGS journal
A COGS journal credits Inventory, so stock has to have been debited into that account first. Three refusals enforce it: your opening position is not confirmed, the account holds nothing, or the credit would take it below zero. All three are covered in post a COGS journal.
An account is missing from a dropdown
Landara only offers accounts that make sense for the slot:
| Slot | Xero account types offered | QuickBooks types offered |
|---|---|---|
| Products | Inventory, Current Asset, Expense, Direct Costs, Overheads | Inventory, Other Current Asset, plus expense types |
| Freight, duty and other costs | Expense, Direct Costs, Overheads | Expense, Cost of Goods Sold, Other Expense |
| Cost of Goods Sold | Expense, Direct Costs, Overheads | Cost of Goods Sold only |
| Inventory | Current Asset only | Inventory sub-type, Other Current Asset |
| Inventory before Landara | Inventory, Current Asset | Inventory sub-type, Other Current Asset |
| Inventory adjustment and Shrinkage | Expense, Direct Costs, Overheads, Other Income | Cost of Goods Sold, Expense, Other Expense, Other Income |
If your account is not listed, check its type in your accounting software. Also check it is active: archived accounts are excluded.
If you have just created the account, click Refresh accounts in the settings modal. Landara reads your chart of accounts live, but it does not poll, so a newly created account needs one refresh to appear.
Only sales tax rates appear, or none at all
Landara filters tax rates to those that can apply to expenses, because every document it publishes is a purchase. If the list is empty, your accounting software has no expense-applicable rates active, which is unusual and worth checking there.
If the list fails to load entirely, Landara now tells you what your accounting software said rather than showing an empty dropdown. If it reports a permissions error, reconnect the integration from Settings → Connections.
Some COGS rows are flagged as uncosted
That means Landara costed a sale it had no cost layer for, so it used the last known unit cost and flagged the shortfall. Usually the receipt has not been recorded yet. Add the missing cost layer from the PO, or record an adjustment on the Reconcile page, then re-run the report.
