Fix a Receipt: Voids and Cost Corrections | Build with Bookkeep

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Mistakes happen when receiving a purchase order — a wrong quantity, a wrong price, or a receipt entered against the wrong PO. Bookkeep gives you two tools to fix a committed receipt, and choosing the right one matters because they affect your inventory and cost history differently.

If only the price was wrong, always use a cost correction. It is the lower-risk tool: it can't cause negative stock, and it keeps your cost history anchored to the date the goods actually arrived.

Cost correction: fix the price, keep everything else

A cost correction changes the unit cost of a received line without changing the quantity, the receive date, or your on-hand inventory. This is the standard tool for the classic case where the supplier's invoice arrives at a different price than what was entered on the receipt.

When you correct a cost:

• Weighted average cost (WAC) is recalculated from the original receive date forward. Bookkeep revalues the receipt at the date it happened, then replays every later cost event so your current WAC is exact — even if you've received other purchase orders since.
• Landed cost fees stay attached. If the receipt had landed costs (freight, duties, discounts) allocated to the line, those allocations are kept. The line's landed cost becomes new unit cost + fees − discounts, and WAC is recalculated using that landed value. (Landed cost fee amounts themselves can't be edited after receiving — if a fee was wrong, void and re-receive.)
• Supplier costs update. The supplier's last cost is recalculated from your receiving history — if the corrected receipt is the supplier's most recent one, last cost becomes the corrected price. Cost reports (average, min/max) recalculate from the corrected history.
• Shopify's cost per item is updated to the recalculated value automatically.
• A full audit trail is kept. The original value, the new value, who made the change, and why are all recorded in the variant's cost history.

Worked example

The invoice shows the real price was $8.00. After a cost correction:

Your current WAC becomes $6.50 and that's what is pushed to Shopify. Note that WAC blends the corrected receipt with what was already on hand — it doesn't simply become the new unit cost.

Voiding a receipt: reverse it and start over

Voiding reverses a committed receipt completely so the purchase order can be received again correctly. The receipt is never deleted — it stays in your history marked as voided, with the reason and the person who voided it.

When you void a receipt:

• Inventory moves back. The received units move from available back to incoming in Shopify, restoring them to the PO's expected/on-order bucket. The purchase order steps back to Ordered or Partial so you can receive it again.
• WAC is recalculated as if the receipt never happened. The receipt's cost — including its full landed cost, fees and all — is removed from the cost history at the date it was originally received, and every later cost event is recalculated. Your current WAC ends up exactly where it would have been without that receipt.
• Supplier costs revert. The supplier's last cost is recalculated from that supplier's remaining receipts — usually reverting to the most recent one that still stands (cleared if none remain). Units, receipt counts, and averages in cost reports recalculate without the voided receipt.
• Shopify's cost per item is updated to the recalculated value.
• Everything is auditable. The voided receipt, its lines, its landed cost allocations, and a void marker in the cost history are all retained.

Voiding an older receipt

You can void a receipt from days or weeks ago. The cost history is corrected retroactively — WAC is recalculated from that original date forward — but the inventory movement happens today (units leave your available stock now, not in the past).

One important limit: receiving always happens at the current time. You can't re-receive into a past date. So if you void last week's receipt and re-receive today, your cost history for the in-between period reflects that inventory as never having arrived. This is another reason to use a cost correction when only the price was wrong — it fixes the past in place, with no gap.

If units were already sold

If some of the received units were sold before you void, moving them back can push on-hand negative. Bookkeep warns you and asks for confirmation before proceeding. After confirming, reconcile the negative on-hand by re-receiving correctly or with a manual inventory adjustment.

What never changes: posted COGS

Neither operation restates the cost of goods sold for sales that already happened. COGS is locked in at the moment each sale is fulfilled; fixing a receipt corrects the cost of future sales only. This is intentional — your books stay auditable, and your cost history shows exactly what was known at each point in time.

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