Key concepts and glossary

If you are not familiar with some of the Business Central terms used in this guide, this section explains them in plain language.

• Item Ledger Entry: Business Central's permanent record of every quantity movement for an item (a sale, a purchase, an adjustment, and so on). On-hand inventory for an item is simply the sum of all its Item Ledger Entries. This extension works by creating an extra, internal Item Ledger Entry alongside the normal one, so the two together produce the inventory effect you asked for.
• Entry Type: A category tag on an Item Ledger Entry (for example, Sale, Purchase, Positive Adjustment, Negative Adjustment). It is used for reporting and statistics, for example separating "sales" turnover from "write-off" adjustments in inventory reports. It does not, on its own, change whether a quantity counts as an increase or a decrease to on-hand inventory; that is controlled by the quantity's sign, not the Entry Type label.
• Wash line / synthetic line: An extra credit memo line this extension inserts automatically, immediately before posting, for the same item, location, and variant as your original line, but with its quantity flipped to negative and its unit price set to zero. It exists purely to offset the automatic inventory increase a credit memo would otherwise produce. It is never visible on the document, before or after posting; its only lasting trace is the offsetting Item Ledger Entry (see How posting works).
• Appl.-from Item Entry (Applies-from Item Entry): A standard Business Central field that ties a credit memo line to one specific, previously posted, inbound Item Ledger Entry, typically used with item tracking or FIFO/specific costing to say "this credit is for that exact receipt." Elevate Credit Memo clears this automatically, with your confirmation, whenever you move a line off Return to Stock, because the line is no longer a genuine physical return being matched to a specific inbound receipt.
• Purchasing Code / special order / drop shipment: Standard Business Central mechanisms for tying a sales line to a linked purchase, for example buying an item specifically to fulfil that sale, or shipping it directly from the vendor to the customer. If your company uses the optional guard rail in First-time setup, a line tagged this way cannot have its Inventory Handling changed away from Return to Stock.
• Net-zero inventory impact: The term used throughout this guide for "on-hand inventory ends up exactly where it started." A positive quantity (the original line) and an equal negative quantity (the wash line) sum to zero, so nothing changes.