Accounting glossary
What is inventory?
Goods held for sale, valued as an asset until sold — at which point their cost becomes COGS. Inventory is where retail businesses hide their mistakes: over-buying, shrinkage and dead stock all live here until someone looks.
Example
A store holds 1,650 units of one box line at $0.12, 999 fryers at $250 cost, and thousands of other SKUs — together the inventory asset on its balance sheet.
Inventory is one of the few balance-sheet numbers a business can walk out and physically count, which is exactly why counts matter.
In SeroBooks
Serials, batches, bins, transfers and adjustments — inventory treated as seriously as cash. Inventory management →