The Record Sale form makes you pick the exact coins and bars you sold — checkbox by checkbox — rather than typing "I sold 3 American Gold Eagles." That's not a quirk; it's the whole point of how Gold Silver Ledger tracks inventory.
Every physical piece you own is a separate record with its own purchase date, its own cost basis, and its own holding period. When you sell, you're not removing units from a pool — you're disposing of specific items, each with a specific history.
This article covers what that means, why we built it this way, and what gets locked in the moment you tick a box.
For the form-side walkthrough of the sale flow, see How to record a sale.
Item-level inventory, in one sentence
When you buy 10 American Gold Eagles in a single transaction, Gold Silver Ledger doesn't create one inventory row that says "10 Eagles." It creates 10 separate inventory items, each one a distinct record carrying its own purchase price, its own recorded spot, its own purchase date, and its own status (HELD or SOLD).
That design is what makes the Record Sale form work the way it does. If you later sell three of those Eagles, the form needs to know which three, because the three you pick are the three whose cost basis and holding period are used to compute realized gain or loss. There's no pool to draw from, only specific items.
What "Specific Identification" means
Specific Identification (sometimes shortened to Spec ID or SID) is a cost-basis accounting method recognized for tax purposes in the US. The short version: when you sell a fungible item, you identify the specific unit you sold, and you use that unit's purchase price as the cost basis for the sale.
In a spreadsheet world, this is the method that's hardest to do — you have to track every unit individually and remember which one you sold. In Gold Silver Ledger, it's the only method available because the inventory model is already item-level.
Every checkbox you tick on the Record Sale form is, in tax language, a Specific Identification of the item being disposed of.
A few practical consequences:
Cost basis is unambiguous per sale. No formula, no averaging, no first-in-first-out guess. The cost basis of the sale is exactly the sum of the cost bases of the items you ticked.
Holding period is per item. Each ticked item brings its own purchase date with it, so short-term (held under a year) and long-term (held a year or more) treatment is decided item-by-item, not transaction-by-transaction.
The same sale can mix short-term and long-term items. If you sell two Eagles bought ten years apart in the same transaction, one is long-term and one is short-term, and the Annual Report sorts them into the right buckets automatically.
Why Gold Silver Ledger uses Specific Identification (and not FIFO or LIFO)
Other tracking tools default to FIFO (first-in-first-out) or LIFO (last-in-first-out). Those methods exist because pooled-inventory systems can't tell one unit from another, so they need a rule — "always sell the oldest one" or "always sell the newest one" — to compute cost basis without you having to think about it.
Gold Silver Ledger doesn't have that problem. Because every coin and bar is its own record, we can just ask you which one left your possession, and your records reflect what actually happened.
Specific Identification is the most accurate of the three methods and the one that gives you the most flexibility. It's also the one the IRS recognizes when you can demonstrate which unit was sold.
FIFO and LIFO aren't on the roadmap. There's no UI for them and no plan to add one. If you've used a system that defaulted to FIFO, the switch to ticking actual items takes a minute to get used to and then feels obvious.
What gets locked in when you tick a box
The moment you submit a sale, three things happen for each item you ticked:
The item's status flips from HELD to SOLD. It's still in your records — sold inventory isn't deleted — but it stops counting toward your portfolio's current value and drops off the active Holdings view.
The sell transaction is linked back to the item. The sale transaction line records which inventory items it disposed of, and each item records which sale transaction disposed of it. This two-way link is what lets the Annual Report reconstruct exactly what was sold and when.
The item's cost basis becomes its tax cost basis. The historical cost basis recorded for that item (its purchase price plus allocated shipping) is now the cost basis used to compute realized gain or loss for the sale. It doesn't change after the sale; it's the same number it was when the item was sitting in HELD.
Nothing else moves. Items you didn't tick keep their HELD status and keep tracking live current spot like any other held inventory.
A concrete example: choosing which Eagle to sell
Say you own two American Gold Eagles you bought at very different times:
Eagle A: Bought for $1,610 when spot was $1,500. Held just over six years.
Eagle B: Bought this week in May 2026 for $4,810 when spot is $4,700. Held a few days.
This week you sell one Eagle for $4,750. Which one you tick matters:
If you tick Eagle A: Cost basis is $1,610, proceeds are $4,750, realized gain is $3,140 long-term (held over a year). Long-term gains on physical precious metals in the US are taxed at the 28% collectibles rate, so this is a sizable taxable gain.
If you tick Eagle B: Cost basis is $4,810, proceeds are $4,750, realized loss of $60 short-term (held under a year). The loss reduces your taxable gain for the year rather than adding to it.
Mechanically the coin walks out the door either way — they're identical pieces of metal. But the tax consequence is entirely different, and Specific Identification is what gives you the choice.
This is the single biggest reason serious stackers prefer item-level inventory: when you decide to dispose of a piece, you also decide which historical purchase you're closing out.
We surface the cost basis, current value, and unrealized gain or loss for every item in the Step 1 table specifically so you can make this call with your eyes open.
It is not tax advice. What's optimal for you depends on your overall tax picture, and we don't pretend to know it, but the information you need is on the screen.
Common patterns
A few ways this comes up in practice:
Selling part of a position: You bought 10 silver Eagles last year and are selling 3. Tick the three specific items you sold. The other seven stay HELD.
Selling out of a position entirely: You're closing a position completely. Tick every item from that product. The result is the same as if you'd ticked them in any other combination — Specific Identification is just bookkeeping when you're selling them all.
Mixing items from different purchases in one sale: Perfectly fine. The form treats each ticked item independently, regardless of which buy transaction created it.
Mixing items from different portfolios: The portfolio selector at the top of the app scopes which items appear in the list. Set it to All Portfolios and you can mix items from multiple portfolios on the same sale.
What this means for your Annual Report
Because Specific Identification is baked into the sell flow, your Annual Report doesn't need any cost-basis configuration. Each sale already knows exactly which items it disposed of, what the cost basis of each item was, and how long each item was held.
The report walks through your sales for the year, sorts each item into short-term or long-term based on its individual holding period, and totals the realized gains and losses without any manual entry from you.
The Annual Report is Premium-only at launch. The Specific Identification record-keeping for sales happens for every user on every plan.
For the longer version, see Generating your Annual Report.
Where to go next
How to record a sale: The form-side walkthrough.
Selling part of a position: The pattern for selling some-but-not-all of a single buy.
What happens to sold items in your inventory: The longer version of HELD-to-SOLD and how sold items stay in your records.
How cost basis is determined: The Annual Report side of the same concept.
Short-term vs. long-term gains explained: The 1-year holding rule for US tax purposes.