Every coin or bar you add to your ledger starts as a Record Purchase. The form has two halves — Transaction Details at the top, Items Purchased below — and submitting it creates one transaction record plus one inventory item per piece you bought.
This article walks through every field on the form, plus the limits and tier-gated behavior worth knowing about before you sit down to record a batch.
If this is your first transaction ever and you'd rather read a walkthrough oriented around getting one in fast, Recording your first transaction is the Getting Started version of the same form.
Opening the form
Two paths land you on the same page.
From the left nav: click Transactions to expand it, then click Add Purchase.
From the Transactions History page: click the black + Record Purchase button in the top-right corner.
The URL is /dashboard/transactions/new if you want to bookmark it.
Transaction Details
The top half of the form covers the purchase as a whole — when it happened, who you bought from, and any costs that span the entire order.
Portfolio (required)
You must pick a portfolio for the transaction. New accounts have a single portfolio called "My Portfolio" preselected, so most users can leave this alone.
A few specifics worth knowing:
You cannot create a new portfolio from this form. If you need a second portfolio for, say, a household or trust, create it from the portfolio selector at the top of the app, or from Settings → Portfolios, before you start a transaction.
The transaction stays in the portfolio you pick. Inventory items created by the transaction land in that same portfolio. Moving items between portfolios after the fact isn't a single-click operation, so getting this right at entry is worth the extra glance.
Portfolio limits depend on your plan. Starter (1), Pro (3), Premium (10).
Purchase Date (required)
The date you actually paid for the items, not the date you're entering them. Defaults to today.
Future dates aren't allowed. The form won't accept a date after today; precious metals tracking is about what you own, not what you intend to buy.
Backdating is allowed and encouraged for historical purchases. Set the date to the original purchase date, and the transaction is treated as historical — the cost basis date, the premium calculation, and any later short-term/long-term gain logic all anchor off this field.
The date doesn't drive the spot price in the Items section. Setting an older purchase date doesn't automatically roll the spot price back to that date — the spot field always auto-fills with the current live spot, and you override it manually for historical purchases. See the Spot Price field below.
Transaction Name (optional)
A free-text label for the transaction, useful as a search hook later. Examples: "Birthday APMEX order," "Local coin show, March," "Tax refund stack." Leave it blank and the transaction is still searchable by dealer, product, and date.
Dealer / Source (optional)
Where you bought the items. Click the field to open a searchable dropdown that includes:
A list of popular dealers. APMEX, KITCO, JM Bullion, etc.
A "Private Sale" option for peer-to-peer purchases, gifts, and other non-dealer acquisitions where there isn't really a "vendor."
An option to add a new dealer. If your dealer isn't in the list yet, scroll to the bottom of the dropdown and click to add it. You'll be prompted for a name, and the new entry is saved to your personal dealer list for next time.
Any dealers you've used before. Once you've added a dealer once, it stays in your personal dealer list.
The list is private to your account; your dealers are not shared with other users and the field is not a vetted directory. Spell consistently — "APMEX" and "Apmex" are separate entries — and you can leave the field blank if you'd rather not record a source at all.
For the longer version of how dealer history, labels, and notes work together, see Adding a dealer name, label, or notes to a transaction.
Notes (optional)
Free-text, anything you want to remember about this purchase: an order confirmation number, condition notes, the BU/proof grade, who gave it to you. Notes show up in the expanded view of the transaction on the History page and in CSV exports.
Shipping & Handling (optional)
If your dealer charged shipping, insurance, or handling, enter the total amount for this transaction here. The form allocates it across the line items in proportion to each line's pre-shipping cost, so the per-item cost basis reflects the true all-in price.
Leave it as $0.00 if you bought in person, or if shipping was already rolled into the per-unit price your dealer quoted. For the longer version of how the allocation math works, see Adding shipping and handling costs.
Items Purchased
The lower half of the form is where you list what you bought. Each line is one product, with a quantity, a premium per unit, and a spot price. You can mix metals and forms freely on the same transaction.
Choosing a product
Click the Product field to open the catalog dropdown. You can scroll the list or type to filter — start typing "Eagle," "Maple," "10oz," and the list narrows as you type. Each entry shows the product name, the metal, and the per-unit weight.
If your product isn't in the built-in catalog, you have two options:
Add a custom product inline from the dropdown (Pro and Premium). Pro and Premium users can scroll to the bottom of the dropdown and create a new custom product without leaving the form. The new product is saved to your private custom catalog. Starter users can't create custom products; upgrade to Pro to unlock this.
Add the custom product from the Catalog page first. If you'd rather define the product deliberately — with the full set of fields, calculation method, and so on — head to the Catalog page first, then come back to the form.
Quantity
How many of this product you bought, as a whole-number count. The form creates one inventory item per unit — quantity 10 becomes 10 separate item records — so specific-identification cost basis works cleanly if you later sell.
A note on plan limits: your subscription tier caps the total number of inventory items in your account (Starter 30, Pro 1,000, Premium 10,000). If a line's quantity would push your account over that cap, the form caps the quantity at whatever room you have left rather than letting you submit and fail. If that happens, the simplest fix is to upgrade your plan.
Premium / Unit
The premium you paid above melt value, per unit, in dollars. This field expects the per-unit dollar premium, not the total price you paid and not the total premium across the line.
A worked example: you buy 5 American Gold Eagles for $2,510 each when spot is $2,400. Each coin has a melt value of $2,400 and a premium of $110. The number that goes in this field is $110, with the quantity field set to 5.
If you only know the all-in price you paid, do the math first: premium = pricePerUnit − (weightOz × spotAtPurchase). For the long version of why the form is built this way and how to think about premium-over-spot generally.
Spot Price
The spot price per troy ounce that applied at the moment of your purchase, in USD per troy ounce regardless of your display currency.
Auto-fills with current live spot for the metal you selected. If you're recording a purchase you made today, leave it alone.
Override for historical purchases. If the purchase date is in the past, type the historical spot for that date over the auto-filled value. You can find historical spot on your dealer's invoice (most include it on the receipt), or on a public chart for the metal and date.
Affects cost basis and recorded premium only. The spot you record here doesn't lock in the item's value — the current value of every held item is always recalculated against the live current spot.
Adding more line items
Click + Add Another Item below the first line to add another row. Each row gets its own product, quantity, premium, and spot price.
The cap is 20 line items per transaction. If you have a single order with more than 20 distinct products, split it into multiple transactions. (In practice, this rarely comes up. Most real-world orders are 1–5 lines.)
Mix freely. Different metals, different forms, different mints — all fine on the same transaction.
The trash icon at the right of each row deletes that line. The form keeps at least one empty line at the bottom.
Reading the totals strip
The strip across the bottom of the form updates live as you fill in items. Four numbers:
Total Items: How many physical pieces will be created in inventory across all the lines.
Total Melt Value: the sum of weight × spot across every line, in USD.
Total Premium: the dollar premium across all lines, plus the average premium percentage above melt.
Total Cost: the bottom line — what this purchase adds to your cost basis, including any shipping you entered.
Glance at the strip before you submit. The most common entry mistake — putting the total price you paid into the Premium / Unit field instead of the per-unit premium — shows up immediately as a Total Cost that looks roughly double what you actually spent. That's the easiest single check before committing the transaction.
Submitting the purchase
When the totals look right, click the black + Record Purchase button at the bottom-right of the page. You're redirected to the Transactions History page with the new entry at the top.
The Cancel button discards everything and takes you back to wherever you came from. Nothing is saved unless you click Record Purchase.
What happens after you submit
The transaction is now in your ledger. Concretely:
The Transactions History page lists the new entry at the top, expandable to see the line items.
The Holdings page shows each piece as its own row, with a photo (for standard catalog items), the cost basis, and current unrealized gain/loss.
The Dashboard updates the Total Portfolio Value and the Top Holdings cards.
The Analytics page picks up the new cost basis in its allocation breakdown and performance charts.
If you spot a mistake after submitting, you can edit or delete the transaction from the History page.
Where to go next
Choosing a product from the catalog: The longer version of the Product dropdown.
Using one of your custom products in a transaction: The flow when the catalog doesn't have what you bought.
Entering the premium you paid: The field that catches most new users off guard, explained at length.
Adding shipping and handling costs: More on how shipping is allocated across line items.
Adding a dealer name, label, or notes to a transaction: The recordkeeping side of the form.
Buying multiple products in one transaction: The deeper dive on multi-line transactions.