Many real-world bullion orders aren't a single item. A typical APMEX or JM Bullion order is a few Eagles, a tube of Maples, maybe a 10 oz silver bar, all on one invoice with one shipping charge.
The Record Purchase form is built for that. Every transaction can hold up to 20 line items, mixing metals and forms freely, with shipping allocated proportionally across the lot.
This article covers the multi-line flow: when to use it, how it works mechanically, the few limits to know about, and the case for occasionally splitting one real-world order into multiple transactions.
For the broader Record Purchase walkthrough, see How to record a purchase.
When multi-line is the right call
The rule of thumb is: one dealer invoice should produce one transaction record. A few reasons to prefer that over recording each line as its own transaction:
Shipping is allocated once, automatically. Enter the $25 shipping total in the Transaction Details section once, and the form spreads it across all the lines in proportion to each line's pre-shipping cost. Each inventory item carries its share of shipping in cost basis. If you record each line as a separate transaction, you have to do that math yourself, line by line.
The transaction record matches the dealer's record. Searching for "the APMEX order from March" returns one transaction, not five. The dealer name, order date, and notes all stay together where you'd expect them.
It's faster. One Transaction Details section, multiple lines underneath. You only set the portfolio, date, dealer, and shipping once.
Editing later is simpler. If you need to fix the shipping or the dealer name, you edit one transaction instead of hunting through five.
The exceptions are worth knowing too. See When to split into multiple transactions below.
Adding a second (or twentieth) line
After you've filled in the first line of the Items Purchased section, look directly underneath it for the + Add Another Item button. Click it, and a fresh empty row appears: Product, Qty, Premium / Unit, and Spot Price, each behaving exactly like the first line.
Repeat for every product on the order. A few practical notes:
Each line is independent. The Product field opens its own dropdown; spot auto-fills for that line's metal; premium is per-unit on that line. Nothing on line 2 inherits from line 1.
The trash icon at the right of each row removes that line entirely. The form always keeps at least one line visible, so you can't accidentally delete every row.
Order doesn't matter. The form doesn't care what order you enter the lines in. The summary strip totals everything regardless.
What you can mix freely
A single transaction can include any combination of:
Different metals: Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, all on the same order is fine. The spot price for each line auto-fills with the live spot for that line's metal.
Different forms: Coins on one line, bars on another, junk silver on a third. The junk silver line uses the face-value-times-multiplier-times-spot melt baseline automatically; everything else uses weight × spot. See How junk silver melt value is calculated if you have a junk silver line.
Standard and custom products: Catalog entries and your own custom products live in the same dropdown and can sit on adjacent lines of the same transaction. See Using one of your custom products in a transaction.
Different quantities: A line with quantity 1 and a line with quantity 25 work the same way. The form treats each unit as its own inventory item on submit, regardless of which line it came from.
There's no rule about needing to keep lines visually or numerically similar. If your one invoice has wildly different products on it, the transaction can mirror that exactly.
The 20-line cap
Each transaction can hold up to 20 line items. The cap exists for performance and form ergonomics reasons; in practice, most real-world dealer orders are well under it (1–5 lines is typical).
If you have a single order with more than 20 distinct products — unusual, but it happens with mixed bulk orders or coin-show runs — the cleanest path is to split it across two or more transactions, each capturing roughly half the products.
Use the dealer name and a clear transaction name (e.g. "APMEX March order — part 1" and "APMEX March order — part 2") so the relationship between them stays obvious in the History page.
Shipping in that case gets divided across the transactions, however you choose — typically pro-rated by the products in each.
How shipping is allocated across lines
When you enter a value in the Shipping & Handling field at the top of the form, the app spreads it across the lines proportionally to each line's pre-shipping cost. The formula:
shippingForLine = totalShipping × (lineCost / sumOfAllLineCosts)
The per-line share then divides across that line's individual inventory items and is added to each one's cost basis on submission.
In a five-line order with $25 of shipping, a $2,000 line carries a bigger share of the $25 than a $100 line — because allocation is by value, not by count or by line. For the full walkthrough with a worked example, see Adding shipping and handling costs.
Reading the totals strip
The strip at the bottom of the form updates live as you add and edit lines. Four numbers:
Total Items: How many physical pieces will be created in inventory across every line.
Total Melt Value: Sum of weight × spot across every line, in USD.
Total Premium: Total dollars paid over spot across every line, plus the average premium percentage.
Total Cost: Bottom-line cost basis the transaction will add, including any shipping you entered.
Glance at the strip before submitting. If the Total Cost is roughly what the dealer's invoice says, you're fine. If it's off by a noticeable amount — particularly if it's close to double — that's almost always a line where total price got entered into the Premium / Unit field by mistake.
See Entering the premium you paid for the per-unit vs. total reminder.
After you submit
The transaction is now in your ledger. Concretely, one multi-line transaction produces:
One transaction record in the History page, with every line visible when you expand the row.
One inventory item per unit across every line. Quantity 5 on line 1, quantity 10 on line 2, quantity 1 on line 3 → 16 individual inventory items, each with the cost basis (line cost ÷ quantity + allocated shipping) baked in.
Updated dashboard and analytics. Total Portfolio Value, Top Holdings, allocation breakdowns, and performance charts all reflect every line.
One row in CSV transaction exports. Lines collapse onto the parent transaction; per-item details surface in the holdings export.
If you spot a mistake after submitting
You can edit or delete the transaction from the History page. Most field changes — name, notes, dealer, shipping — recompute on save without affecting which items the transaction created. Deleting the whole transaction also removes every inventory item it created.
When to split into multiple transactions
The default is one dealer invoice = one transaction. The exceptions are narrow but worth knowing:
You're over the 20-line cap. Already covered above.
The invoice covers wildly different dates. Some dealers backorder part of an order and ship it weeks later. If you'd rather record the second shipment with its own date and shipping amount, split it. The first transaction takes whatever shipped first; the second takes the rest.
The invoice spans multiple portfolios. If half the order is for your personal portfolio and half is for a household or trust portfolio, the cleanest move is two transactions — one per portfolio. The portfolio field is set per transaction, not per line.
You're recording an old order partially. If you only have a clean dealer invoice for some of the items on an older order and the rest from memory, you can split into a confident transaction and a less-confident one — keeps your records honest about what you actually know.
In every other case, one invoice = one transaction is the path of least friction.
Where to go next
How to record a purchase: The full Record Purchase form walkthrough.
Adding shipping and handling costs: The proportional allocation logic in detail.
Entering the premium you paid: Per-unit vs. total — the most common multi-line entry mistake.
Using one of your custom products in a transaction: Mixing custom and standard products on the same transaction.
How junk silver melt value is calculated: For multi-line transactions that include junk silver.