What a unit really cost you once freight, duty and financing are in it — and what it costs to keep holding.
6 pieces
Consignment is a good arrangement badly recorded almost everywhere it exists. The stock is physically with you, so it goes in the count; it is not yours, so it should not be in the valuation. Both of those are true at once.
Every unit on your shelf was bought with money that had a price. When that price goes up, the cost of being wrong about what to buy goes up with it — and most stock reports never mention it.
An aging report is usually read as a to-do list for chasing payments. It is more useful read as a statement of how much of your business you are currently financing on someone else's behalf.
The paperwork around an import got lighter this year. The arithmetic behind it did not, and it is the arithmetic that determines whether the line you think is your best seller is actually making money.
One of the most ordinary things a shop does is also one of the most common sources of a wrong stock figure: buying in one unit and selling in another.
Getting this wrong does not produce an error message. It produces a margin figure that is confidently, consistently wrong, in a direction you will not notice.
