Cost of Goods Sold — what your sales cost you

A per-account view of your Cost of Goods Sold for a period — essentially the COGS section of the P&L broken out on its own screen so you can look at it without loading the full income statement.

Useful for margin analysis: divide your sales revenue by the COGS from this report to get gross margin, then compare periods.

Before you start

• You need Ledger Reports permission (same access as General Ledger and Day Book).
• The report reads accounts marked with AccountType = "Goods Sold Cost Acc" in your Chart of Accounts. Every stock item's Cost of Sales configuration should point at one of these — that's how inventory sales post the cost side.
• Totals here match the P&L's COGS section exactly for the same date range — if they don't, something's misclassified in your Chart of Accounts.

Steps

1. Open Reports → Cost of Goods Sold.
2. Pick a From / To date range. Defaults to the last month.
3. Read top-to-bottom: rows sort by size (biggest cost first) so the most material accounts are at the top.
4. The Total at the bottom is the period's total cost of sales — subtract this from your Sales Revenue for the same period to get gross profit.
5. Export → Excel for margin analysis in a spreadsheet, or to hand to a tax accountant.

Tips

• Use the same From/To as the P&L to cross-check totals.
• Rows show only accounts with non-zero movement — empty COGS accounts don't clutter the view.
• COGS is normally positive (debit-natural). A negative row here means the account received a credit adjustment (return, write-back). Worth investigating if unexpected.

Common problems

• "No COGS activity in this period" — either the period genuinely had no inventory sales that recognised cost, or your Chart of Accounts has no accounts typed as Goods Sold Cost Acc. Check the latter under Setup → Chart of Accounts.
• Totals don't match the P&L — nearly always a misclassified account. An account posting COGS-like amounts but typed as Expenses (or vice versa) will show up in one report but not the other. Ledger Diagnostics can help pinpoint.
• A single account is dominant — normal for hotels with a single bar/kitchen cost centre. If you want more granularity, split into additional COGS accounts (Food COGS, Beverage COGS, Housekeeping Supplies COGS) and re-configure your items.