AWRA Help Center

AWRA values owned stock at a moving average cost (often called weighted average cost, or WAC). There is one average per item across all your warehouses. It changes only when stock comes in; issuing, selling or transferring stock uses the average but does not move it.

How A Receipt Moves The Average

When a receipt is applied, its cost is blended in before the stock lands:

Example: 40 bags on hand at 1,200 each, and 60 arrive at 1,350. The new average is (40 × 1,200 + 60 × 1,350) ÷ 100 = 1,290. With nothing on hand, the receipt sets the average outright.

Every kind of receipt blends: a supplier check-in, a receipt against a purchase order, a stock-count gain, and a POS return (which comes back at the cost it was sold at). Customer-owned and consignment stock carries no value and never moves the average, and services hold no stock at all.

Where A Receipt’s Cost Comes From

AWRA takes the first of these that applies:

1. A unit cost typed on the check-in line. The field is optional and sits under the quantity, in your workspace currency.
2. The purchase order line price, for a check-in against an order. If the order is tax-inclusive, the tax is taken off first. If the order is in another currency, the price is converted at the exchange rate recorded on the order, or at today’s rate when the order recorded none.
3. The current average, for a count gain — found stock comes in at what stock already costs.
4. Otherwise the current average, or the item’s buying price when it has no average yet.

The cost used, and where it came from, is saved on the receipt line, so you can always see why the average moved.

What The Ledger Posts

• Receipt: Dr Inventory / Cr Accounts Payable (or the receiving clearing account, where no supplier document says anyone is owed) — at the receipt’s cost, not the item’s buying price.
• Issue or sale: stock leaves at the average current at that moment, and that cost is recorded on the line.
• POS sale lines keep the cost they were sold at, so a later receipt that moves the average does not rewrite an old sale’s margin, and a return reverses exactly the cost the sale posted. See Returns & Receipts.

Landed Costs

Freight, duty and clearing allocated to a purchase order receipt still go onto that receipt’s batches. After an allocation, the item’s average is recalculated across what is on hand: batched stock at its landed unit cost, unbatched stock at the moving average. When stock reaches zero, the last average stands — it is no longer reset to the buying price — and the next receipt replaces it.

Reports

Stock valuation, dead stock, turnover and ABC classification read the moving average, and say so in their header: Costing: Moving average, in your workspace currency. See Inventory Reports.

What Changed On 14 October 2026

Before this date, the average moved only on a landed-cost allocation or an assembly build, so most valuations fell back to the item’s buying price, and receipts were journalled at the buying price too. Receipts from that date onward carry their own cost. Averages built before it are where blending starts from; a count or a correcting receipt is the way to reset one you do not trust.

Common Mistakes

• Leaving the unit cost blank on a check-in with no order behind it. The receipt then comes in at the current average and the average does not move. Type what you paid.
• Typing a foreign-currency price into the unit cost field. That field is in your workspace currency. Receive against the purchase order instead and the conversion is done for you.
• Expecting the buying price to change the valuation. The buying price is a default for new orders; the valuation follows receipts.

Related

• Stock Check-ins — where the unit cost is typed.
• Purchase Orders — receiving against an order.
• Stock Counts — how count gains and losses are costed.
• Units Of Measure & Decimal Quantities.