Material Transfer and Stock Entries

A Material Request says "move these materials from here to there." A Stock Entry is what actually does it. This page covers the two kinds of Stock Entry that matter to the logistics flow: Material Transfers (moving stock between warehouses) and OLE-driven consumption (discounting stock as operations run).

Both end up in the Stock Ledger — the canonical record of every movement in ERPNext.

Material Transfer — the routine flow

When the warehouse team picks up a Material Request from the Prep view, they gather the materials and post a Stock Entry of type Material Transfer.

The Stock Entry:

• Source warehouse = the MR's Set From Warehouse (typically Raw Material).
• Target warehouse = the MR's Set Warehouse (typically a Production Unit warehouse or WIP).
• Items = matched to the MR's items, with actual quantities transferred.
• Posting Date = today.

The Stock Ledger now shows: fabric moved out of Raw Material at 10:32, into Stitching Line A at 10:32. From this point on, the Stock Balance for Raw Material is down by the transferred quantity; Stitching Line A is up by the same.

The MR's status moves to Issued once fully transferred, or Partially Received if only some items were moved.

OLE-driven consumption — the in-flight flow

Operations don't sit on transferred stock forever. As work happens, materials get consumed. GarmentFlow records that consumption through the Operation Ledger Entry.

When an OLE is posted with a Consumption Method other than None, GarmentFlow creates a Stock Entry that discounts the consumed quantities from the source warehouse. This is the mechanism that turns "we used cloth on this batch" into a real inventory deduction.

Consumption Method options

The OLE has three consumption modes:

• None — no Stock Entry is created. The OLE records the operational event (start, transfer, handoff, end) without touching inventory. Used when consumption is handled separately or doesn't apply to this operation.
• Recipe Based — GarmentFlow computes consumption from the BOM on the linked Production Batch / Tech Pack. The Stock Entry's items table is auto-populated from the recipe × the OLE's quantity. Most common path; minimum data entry from the supervisor.
• Manual — the supervisor (or the App's UI) populates the Consumed Materials child table on the OLE directly. Each row: item code, warehouse, quantity, UOM, rate. The Stock Entry mirrors those rows. Used when actual consumption diverges from the recipe (over-issue, under-issue, defect-driven scrap).

The Stock Entry created is Draft. A warehouse manager or supervisor reviews and submits, at which point the Stock Ledger records the consumption.

The OLE carries a consumption_stock_entry field that links to the created SE — so anyone reading the OLE can trace through to the actual stock movement.

Material cost rollup

When the Stock Entry is submitted, the cost of the consumed materials (rate × quantity, summed) lands on the OLE's material_cost field. This rolls up into the Production Batch's Cost section as material cost for that operation step. See Production Batch — Cost rollup.

How the two flows interact

A typical batch sees both:

1. Transfer: raw materials move from Raw Material to WIP (Stock Entry, Material Transfer).
2. Consumption: as operations run, OLEs post (Stock Entry, Consumption type) discounting from WIP as work happens.
3. Reconciliation: the Material Reconciliation dashboard compares planned vs actual at the end. Variances are visible and explainable.

If transfers happen but consumption doesn't, stock piles up in WIP. If consumption happens without transfers, the OLE fails (the source warehouse doesn't have the stock). The two flows are the two halves of how stock actually moves.

When to manually create a Stock Entry

GarmentFlow auto-creates Stock Entries for the routine flows above. You'd manually create one for:

• Stock adjustments. A physical count shows 4 metres of fabric you didn't know you had (or didn't have). Create a Stock Reconciliation entry.
• Stock corrections. A previous Stock Entry was wrong; correct it with a new Stock Entry.
• Manual transfers outside the production flow (one-off requests, internal lending between sites).

For the production flow, let GarmentFlow handle it.

What to do next

The third leg of the material flow is reservation — how stock gets earmarked for a Batch before it's actually consumed. See Stock reservation on Production Batch.