# How to add the stock you already have

Count what's on your shelf once and enter it with Add Stock: ingredients and materials as lots at what you paid, the things you make as batches at what they cost to make. From then on, your orders keep the count.

Source: https://www.prophitable.io/help/inventory/opening-stock (updated 2026-11-04)

## Before you start

You don't need stock to get your costs. Add it when you want Prophitable to keep count of what's on the shelf and to warn you when an order will run short.

An item needs its basic details before it can take stock. An ingredient needs a supplier, a price and a shelf life, for example. If something is missing, **Add Stock** is greyed out and the page says what to add first.

## Add ingredients and materials

1. Go to **Ingredients** or **Materials**, open the item, go to **Stock** and click **Add Stock**. On the list, the row's menu has **Add Stock** too.
2. Check the **Supplier**. It starts at the one you usually buy from. The **Lot number** fills itself in.
3. Set **Received on** to the day it arrived. For an ingredient, the **Expiration date** is worked out from its shelf life. Change it if the package says otherwise.
4. Under **Purchase Info**, enter the **Cases** or **Units** you bought. The **Subtotal** comes from the supplier's price, so change it if you paid something different.
5. Under **Current Stock**, the **Units** start at what you bought. Already opened some? Lower it to what's left.
6. Click **Create**.

Each one you add is a lot, costed at what you paid for it.

## Add what you've made

Recipes, packaging and products work the same way, from their own page or the list's row menu. The panel asks for a **Batch number** (filled in for you), the **Made on** date, the **Expiration date** if the item has a shelf life, and the **Units** you have.

There's no price to enter. The **Total cost** is what the item costs to make today, from its recipe, packaging and labor.

Does a recipe have outputs, like several sizes or flavors? Add their stock from the recipe's **Add Stock** and pick one under **Output**.

> [!TIP]
> Count one shelf at a time, and start with what you use every week. Stock you don't enter isn't lost: if an order uses more than Prophitable knows about, it records what was used before it was entered, and the next stock you add pays it back.