Item type, stock type and stocks account

Three data together govern how an item behaves in stock and how it is posted:

The item type says what the item is.
The stock type classifies the stock for accounting and is only meaningful for the Goods item type.
The stocks account is the actual account the stock ends up on.

Item Type

The item type is entered on the ~ BASIC ~ tab and applies to the whole company and all of its departments (warehouses). The dropdown offers only the types the company uses, as set by G_RU.

Code	Item type	Nature
A	Packaging	material
G	Own product	material
H	Food and Drinks	non-material
R	Goods	material
U	Service	non-material
X	Assembly/Menu	non-material
Y	Service package	non-material

Types G, H, X and Y can have a structure.

A material item type cannot be changed while the item has stock in any department (warehouse) of the company.

Stock Type

The stock type sets the accounting posting rules. The code book holds seven values, but there is a real choice only for the Goods item type — for the other types the stock type either follows from the item type or does not exist at all:

Item type	Stock type
Packaging	Packaging — follows from the item type
Own product	Own product — follows from the item type
Goods	Small inventory, Consumables, Merchandise, Raw materials or Spare parts — selected
Food and Drinks, Service, Assembly/Menu, Service package	no stock

The stock type is entered at three levels, from the widest to the narrowest:

Department — the basic tab holds the department's default stock type. It turns the department into a warehouse and enables stock handling. It also states the kind of goods predominantly held in that warehouse.
Item — on the ~ BASIC ~ tab, when the item differs from the department default.
Item stock in a department — on Stocks or on the ~ STOCKS ~ tab, when the same item has to be handled differently per warehouse.

The department's default stock type cannot be changed while the warehouse holds stock of items that have no stocks account entered.

Every stock type has its own default stocks account. The chart of accounts defines which stocks accounts are allowed for each stock type.

Stocks Account

When posting, Brix looks for the stocks account in the following order and uses the first one it finds:

The stocks account entered on the item stock record. It can only be changed while the item has no stock in that warehouse.
The stocks account entered on the item.
The stocks account entered on the department. It can only be changed while no warehouse in the company holds stock of an item that has no stocks account of its own.

Different rules apply in retail, described below.

Stocks account in retail

In departments marked as retail the stocks account is set solely by the item type and cannot be redefined. Only three material item types can be held in retail:

All three can be held in the same retail department at the same time, and each has its own postings on separate accounts. Retail accounts are the same for the whole company and carry the department as analytics and, where needed, the VAT rate — which makes it possible to review retail per department (shop) and per VAT rate.

Accounting rules

The item type, stock type and stocks account set the accounts used for automatic postings and various rules applied when stock documents are entered in a warehouse.

If the item type is not compatible with the department's default stock type from an accounting point of view, the default account of the stock type entered on the item is used. An own product in a raw materials warehouse is an example of such an incompatibility. Brix does not prevent two stock types in one warehouse and will post the stocks accounts correctly.

The stocks accounts available for a given stock type are set in the chart of accounts, by assigning an account to that stock type.