Mixed-lot costing

Sell before you finish counting — without pretending the cost is final.

A storage unit, a reseller pallet, an estate lot: one price for a pile of unknown stuff. Here is what Intakes does with it, from the day you pay to the day you close.

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Intake 1042

Open

Storage unit · one price, contents unknown

Purchase total
$1,500.00
Unpacked so far
138 items
Already sold
21 items

Costs stay provisional until you close — keep unpacking, keep selling.

Sale 2087

Completed
Vintage denim jacket
$45.00
Cost
Provisional
Profit
Provisional
✓

On close, $1,500.00 spreads fairly across all 138 items — including the 21 already sold, whose profit updates to the final figure.

The problem

You paid $1,500. What did the jacket that sold yesterday cost?

The honest answer is nobody knows yet — three boxes are still taped shut. A spreadsheet cannot say that; it needs a number in the cell. So most tools make you choose between guessing and waiting.

  • Intakes lets you say "not yet" — and keep selling.
  • The cost arrives when it is real, and lands on every piece, sold or not.

Three answers

Guess, wait, or know when you know

Guess

$1,500 ÷ 40 items found so far = $37.50 each. Two boxes later it is 400 items and the truth was under $4. Everything you sold in between now shows a loss that never happened.

Wait

Do not list anything until the last box is counted. Honest, and it costs you weeks of selling on the buys where speed matters most.

Intakes: provisional, then final

Sell now. Profit reads as a ceiling that only firms up, never a made-up number that swings — and the day you close, it becomes exact.

Step by step

From the day you pay to the day you close

  1. 1

    Record the buy as one purchase, at the price you paid

    A storage unit for $1,500. One intake, one number, contents unknown. Open it — nothing has to be counted first.

  2. 2

    Unpack in batches, adding items as you find them

    Forty things today, sixty next week. Each batch is a few more lines on the same purchase, so a staged delivery or a slow unpack is still one buy and one bank transaction to reconcile.

  3. 3

    List and sell while the count is still open

    Anything you have added can be shelved and sold straight away. The profit on those sales is shown, and marked provisional — because the cost is not known yet, and Intakes will not guess it.

  4. 4

    Close the purchase when you are done

    The $1,500 — plus freight, the buyer’s premium, anything else you added — spreads fairly across everything you found. Every piece gets its real cost, including the ones you already sold, whose profit updates to the final figure.

  5. 5

    Forgot a fee? Reopen, add it, reclose.

    Every affected cost recalculates again, and every change is on the record. The number is never frozen wrong.

What close writes

Every cost, on the piece

The lump sum, the freight, the auction’s buyer premium, the duty: spread fairly across everything the purchase turned out to contain, and written onto each individual piece. That is the number that follows it onto the sale — and it is what makes the profit on a $45 jacket a real figure rather than a rounded one.

  • The parts always add back up to exactly what you paid.
  • Damaged pieces keep their share, so a write-off is valued, not shrugged at.
  • Reopen and reclose as often as the paperwork demands.
WC

Wool coat, camel

SKU-1042 · Intake 1038 · Unit 2 of 12

Available · Shelf B-3
Sells in a $2.00 box? The box lands on that sale’s profit — the margin is told the truth.

Landed cost

How this exact unit got its number

Purchase
$40.00
Freight
$6.20
Duty
$3.40
Handling
$0.00
Unit cost $49.60

Questions

The honest answers

What does "provisional" actually mean?
That the cost has not been computed yet, because the purchase is still open. It does not mean estimated: Intakes never spreads a total over a count nobody knows yet, because that figure would be wrong by an order of magnitude in the direction that alarms. Until close, unpriced cost counts as zero, which makes the profit you see an honest ceiling that can only come down.
Does closing change reports I already looked at?
Yes, and deliberately. The profit on sales made from that purchase updates to the true figure, in the period those sales happened. The number you looked at was marked provisional; the one that replaces it is real.
What if I never finish counting?
Leave the purchase open. Sell from it, keep adding as you go, and close it when you are done — a week or a season later. Nothing is waiting on you except the final figure.
How is the price spread across the items?
By each line’s own cost where you gave one, and by weight across the whole purchase for the shared costs — freight, fees, the lump sum. A line can carry its own adjustment too, for the one crated item on a pallet. The parts always add back up to what you paid.

Buy the pile. Sell the pieces. Know the number.

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