Stock Value reports show you the total cost of your inventory at any given date. This helps you understand your inventory investment and track how it changes over time as you buy, sell, and adjust stock.
How Stock Value is Calculated
The new Inventory Analytics report now uses an improved method that directly pulls data from your Business Central system. This means the numbers you see match exactly what Business Central shows in its official Inventory Valuation report.
The Three Simple Steps
Step 1: Track All Movements
We capture every inventory transaction — every purchase, every sale, and every adjustment. Each transaction updates your stock quantity.
Step 2: Assign the Right Cost
For each item sold or adjusted, we use the actual cost recorded in Business Central at the time of the transaction. This respects your costing method (whether you use FIFO, average cost, or standard cost).
Step 3: Calculate Total Value
We multiply the quantity on hand by the corresponding cost to show your total inventory investment at that point in time.
What This Means for You
- Accuracy: Your Analytics numbers match Business Central exactly, no surprises or discrepancies
- Completeness: All transactions are included: purchases, sales, transfers, and adjustments
- Real costs: Values reflect the actual costs in your system, including any manual adjustments or indirect costs you've added
Quick Tips
For Best Results: Make sure your Business Central cost adjustment process has been run for the period you're reporting on. This ensures indirect costs (like freight and overhead) are properly included in your inventory values.
For Faster Reporting: Use the pre-calculated monthly and weekly inventory snapshots if you need quick dashboards without detailed calculations.
Simple Example
Here's how it works in practice:
- You purchase 10 items at $2 each on November 1st → Inventory cost = $20
- You sell 5 items at cost of $2 each on November 9th → Inventory cost = $10 remaining
- You purchase 25 items at $1.50 each on November 25th → Inventory cost = $47.50
- You sell 20 items at cost of $1.50 each on December 3rd → Inventory cost = $27.50 remaining
Your report will show these exact values on each date, so you can see how your inventory investment grows and shrinks with your business activity.
Understanding Your Data (Technical Reference)
The calculations are built from two key Business Central tables:
Item Ledger Entries: Records all inventory movements with their quantities and dates.
Value Entries: Records the costs assigned to those movements, reflecting your costing method and any adjustments made in Business Central.
By combining these two sources, we ensure complete accuracy and full alignment with Business Central's official Inventory Valuation report.
Legacy Method (Historical Reference)
Prior to this update Analytics (2026.2) Release Notes, at the "old" Inventory Analytics report, inventory costs were calculated using a daily average cost method. The following information is provided for historical reference and understanding of older reports.
The average cost was registered by item, variant, and location for each date when a sale occurred. The result was a table called [fItemCostAdjustment] with columns for Item No, Variant, Location, ValidFrom date, ValidTo Date, and AverageCost valid for the period between the ValidFrom and ValidTo dates.
Example of Legacy fItemCostAdjustment Table
| Item No_ | Variant Code | Location Code | ValidFromDate | ValidToDate | AverageCost |
| 6 | LOCATION 1 | 16.12.2016 | 4.5.2020 | 18,0 | |
| 6 | LOCATION 1 | 10.11.2016 | 15.12.2016 | 15,0 | |
| 6 | LOCATION 1 | 1.1.1901 | 9.11.2016 | 20,0 | |
| 6 | LOCATION 2 | 1.1.1901 | 4.5.2020 | 17,0 | |
| 6 | LOCATION 3 | 27.12.2016 | 4.5.2020 | 20,0 | |
| 6 | LOCATION 3 | 16.12.2016 | 26.12.2016 | 15,0 | |
| 6 | LOCATION 3 | 13.11.2016 | 15.12.2016 | 10,0 |
When the legacy Inventory table was processed, the system looked up if the current item, variant, and location combination had a cost that matched the date range and used that as the cost for the quantity adjustment. If no cost was available in fItemCostAdjustment, the cost in the Item table was used as a fallback. For each date, the accumulative sum of cost per item (both negative and positive) was the Inventory Cost for the selected item or items.
Example of Legacy Inventory Cost Calculation for Item 6, Location 1
| Date | Quantity | AverageCost | Inventory Cost by date | Accumulative Inventory Cost by date |
| 1.11.2016 | 10 | 20 | 200 | 200 |
| 9.11.2016 | -5 | 20 | - 100 | 100 |
| 17.11.2016 | -5 | 15 | -75 | 25 |
| 25.11.2016 | 25 | 15 | 375 | 400 |
| 3.12.2016 | -20 | 15 | - 300 | 100 |
| 11.12.2016 | 100 | 15 | 1.500 | 1.600 |
| 19.12.2016 | -70 | 20 | - 1.400 | 200 |
| 27.12.2016 | 20 | 20 | 400 | 600 |
| 4.1.2017 | -30 | 20 | - 600 | 0 |