What inter-store trade does to your figures
What moving goods between your own stores does to cost prices, stock value, VAT and your reports — and what it deliberately leaves to you.
Goods move and stock values move. Money does not. Flow Retail prices the trade, shifts the stock from one store to the other and keeps both sides' cost prices right. It does not invoice or reconcile anything between the two stores. Settling is up to you.
For a chain where every shop is the same legal entity, that is usually exactly what you want. If your stores are separate entities that have to invoice each other, read this page before you go live.
What the receiving store pays
One rule decides the price, in this order.
A price list. If the receiving store's customer record has a price line for the product at the sending store, that is the price. No markup is added on top, because a list price is already the agreed price.
The purchase the goods are bought on, plus markup. If the sending store has reserved the goods against a purchase line, or they came in on one, that line's price in your currency, plus Markup percent.
The latest supplier price, plus markup. Otherwise the most recently changed purchase price among the product's ordinary suppliers (not suppliers that stand for a store), converted to your currency, plus the markup. A supplier in a currency without a rate is skipped.
The product's purchase price, plus markup. When nothing above gives a price.
Discounts and freight on the purchase line or the supplier price are not counted. A purchase line at a price of zero counts as no purchase.
That price becomes the receiving store's cost price, and it is the figure their margin is measured against when they sell the goods on. The customer at the till is priced as always, by the receiving store's own price lists and campaigns. The end customer is not part of the trade.
Neither side copies the other's price. Each works its own out when the line is created, so a change on one side never moves the other. The two can show different prices for the same goods, for example when the sending store typed its own. That is expected.
The sending store's line is worked out again when you change what it is reserved against. Receiving the goods, or releasing them to stock, does not change it. A price someone has typed stands.
VAT
The rule always answers net. A purchase order line carries net prices and takes the number untouched; a sales order line carries gross, so VAT is added there. A VAT-free order, and goods under the margin scheme, keep the net figure.
Worked through for goods the sending store bought at 100,00, with a 10% markup and 25% VAT:
Sending store's own purchase
100,00
What they paid their supplier
Receiving store's purchase line
110,00 net
That purchase line plus 10%
Sending store's sales line
137,50 gross
Same figure, plus VAT
With no purchase line to point at, the latest supplier price stands in: 150,00 gives 165,00 net and 206,25 gross.
What happens to stock value
The goods leave the sending store at their own cost, and arrive at the receiving store at the inter-store price.
The difference between the two — your markup, or the price list margin — is not booked anywhere. There is no revenue at one end, no cost of goods sold at the other, and no internal transfer account. It shows up only as a step up in stock value as the goods cross.
Goods reach the receiving store's stock when they register the receipt, not when you ship. Until then the receipt sits waiting and their stock is untouched.
Settling between the stores
While a sale is unsettled, these orders stay out of your books: they do not reach the accounting export, they are not in your turnover on the settled basis, and they never appear as outstanding receivables. Your chain does not count the same goods twice.
Two things to know anyway:
Turnover on the ordered basis counts them. Run a turnover report on ordered rather than settled figures and every internal trade is in there, on top of the shop's own sale of the same goods. Use the settled basis for anything you are going to act on.
Webhooks still fire. If an integration of yours listens for order events, it sees these machine-created sales orders appear and change state like any other.
If you settle a sale
You can settle a sale to a store like any company sale: with an invoice, or with a payment method set up for settling outside the till. Flow Assistant has Settle and send for this (see Inter-store trade in Assistant).
It is booked like any other company sale, with the store's customer record as the debtor.
A sale paid straight over the counter creates the receiving store's purchase order, and books what was handed over as a goods receipt on it. Goods that are still to be shipped are booked when the delivery is marked Delivered. A line is only ever booked once.
It freezes the link. Once the sale is settled, the receiving store can no longer add, change or delete lines on their purchase order, and the sale can no longer be cancelled.
The receiving store can still archive the purchase order, and can delete it if a return has emptied it.
So settle one only when you mean to, and when the trade is finished.
Returns and credits
When goods have already shipped, a sale can no longer be cancelled, and Flow Retail tells you to credit it instead. What a settled return does depends on whether the receiving store has received the goods.
Not received the goods
Its purchase line shrinks to what is left, or disappears. Goods already on their way are adjusted too
Received the goods
The line stands. The goods are in its stock, and sending them back is its own return
It can be refused. If the receiving store has promised more of the goods to customers than would remain, the return is refused. Ask them to release the goods first.
The quantity is then fixed. After a settled return, neither store can change the line's quantity. For more, the sending store makes a new sale. For less, a new return.
Price is not touched.
An exchange is not supported. Don't mix a return and new items for the same store on one order.
A credit line itself is never mirrored at the receiving store. Only its effect on the purchase line is.
Last updated 13.10.2026
Was this helpful?