Go straight there: Stock adjustments
Sometimes stock leaves your store without being sold — an item is stolen, something breaks in the stockroom, you donate a piece to a charity auction, or you pull one for a window display.
Use a stock adjustment instead. It corrects your on-hand count, keeps a permanent record of who changed what and why, and posts the cost to the right expense account in QuickBooks — without ever counting as a sale.
Record an adjustment from the web
- Go to Inventory → Adjustments. You'll land on the Stock adjustments page.
- Click New adjustment in the top right.
- We fill in an Order number for you. You're welcome to replace it with something you'll recognize later, like
DONATION-SEPTorWINDOW-DISPLAY. You can use letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens, and underscores — and you can search on it later.
- Check the Location. It defaults to your store, so change it only if the items left a different location.
- Search for a product in the box at the bottom of the Items list and click the green + to add it. Add as many products as you need.
- For each item, Current qty shows what we think you have. Type what you actually have into New qty.
- In the Notes column, open Select reason and choose Stolen, Broken, Lost, or Other. We recommend always choosing one — see "Always choose a reason" below.
- Click Create adjustment. Your stock updates right away.
About Unit cost. When you're reducing stock, we show the item's current average cost and it can't be edited — that's the value coming out of your inventory. When you're adding stock, you can set the cost yourself.
Record an adjustment from the iPad
You can do the same thing at the register. Tap Inventory, then Inventory Check, then New. From there it works just like the web: add your products, set the new quantity, choose a reason, and save.
Always choose a reason
If you leave the reason blank, the adjustment still works and your stock is still correct — but the cost gets grouped under "Other," and you lose the breakdown between theft, breakage, and everything else.
The same is true of the quick +/− stock edit on the product list. It's handy for a fast correction, but it doesn't record a reason. When the reason matters for your books, use a full stock adjustment instead.
Donations, comps, and displays
We offer four reasons today: Stolen, Broken, Lost, and Other.
- Theft → choose Stolen
- Damage or breakage → choose Broken
- Items you can't account for → choose Lost
- Donations, employee comps, giveaways, advertising, and window displays → choose Other
To tell those last ones apart at year end, record each kind on its own adjustment and name the Order number accordingly — DONATION-2026-09, EMPLOYEE-COMP-2026-09. You can search the Stock adjustments page by order number, so they're easy to pull back up.
Find the history later
Every adjustment is kept. Nothing is overwritten, and you can review the full history any time.
Stock adjustments (Inventory → Adjustments) lists every adjustment with its date, total, location, and the employee who made it. Search by order number, filter by location and date range, and click Export to download a spreadsheet.
Stock Events (Inventory → Stock Events) is the complete history of every stock movement in your store. Set the type filter to Adjustment to see only these. Each row shows the date, product, the size and color, the change, the resulting on-hand count, location, and which employee made it. Click Export and we'll email you the file when it's ready.
How this appears in QuickBooks
If you've connected QuickBooks, the reason you choose decides which account the cost posts to. Each one is valued at the item's weighted average unit cost:
- Stolen → Stolen Merchandise Adjustment
- Broken → Broken Merchandise Adjustment
- Lost → Lost Merchandise Adjustment
- Other, or no reason at all → Other Merchandise Adjustment
None of this touches your sales figures — adjustments are a separate kind of activity and are never counted as sales.
Make sure all four of these accounts are mapped in your chart of accounts. If an account isn't mapped, the activity posts as an Over/Short adjustment instead of landing where it belongs. See QuickBooks Mapping for how to set that up — it's worth reviewing with your bookkeeper.