Deleting a buy transaction is the right move when the transaction shouldn't exist at all — a duplicate, a test entry, a row that landed in the wrong portfolio, or a purchase you recorded with the wrong product.
Unlike editing, a delete also removes every inventory item the purchase created, so use it deliberately.
This article covers the click path, the cascade, and the small handful of cases worth thinking through before you commit.
Opening the delete control
Every saved transaction on the Transactions page has a red trash icon on the right-hand side of its row, next to the pencil icon. Click it to start a delete.
Like the edit pencil, the trash icon is the only delete entry point. There's no batch delete and no delete-from-detail-view — every removal starts from a single row on this page.
The confirmation step
Deleting a buy isn't a single click. After you click the trash icon, you'll be asked to confirm before anything is removed. Read the prompt before clicking through — the line about removing the inventory items along with the transaction is the one that catches users by surprise the first time.
If you click away from the confirmation, the transaction is left exactly as it was. Nothing is removed until you confirm.
What gets removed
A buy transaction and the inventory items it created are bound together. Deleting the buy removes both, in one operation:
The transaction itself disappears from the Transactions list.
Every inventory item that buy created disappears from your Holdings — one item per unit you bought. A buy with quantity 10 removes 10 inventory items; a buy with three line items at quantities 5, 5, and 1 removes 11 items.
Any nicknames, user references, or date annotations you added to those specific items are removed with them.
This is the deliberate design. Inventory items are children of the buy transaction that created them — they don't have an independent existence in your ledger. Removing the parent removes the children.
What also updates downstream
Once the delete is committed, the rest of the app catches up immediately:
The Dashboard drops the affected items from Total Portfolio Value, Top Holdings, and the metal allocation breakdown.
The Holdings page no longer lists those items in any of its views.
The Analytics page recalculates cost basis, allocation, and performance without the deleted purchase.
The Annual Report would no longer reference the deleted purchase as a cost-basis source for any sales — which is exactly why you need to handle sold items before deleting their buy (see the next section).
Before you delete a buy that includes sold items
If you've already sold any of the items from this purchase, the cleanest path is to delete the sale first, then delete the buy. Deleting the sale restores those items to held status; then the buy can be removed without leaving a sale record that points at items no longer in your ledger.
The usual scenario where this comes up isn't "I want to vaporize half my history" — it's a duplicate or test buy that you later sold from by mistake. Reverse the sale, reverse the buy, and re-record what really happened.
For the mechanics of reversing a sale, see Deleting a sell transaction.
Deletes free up headroom against your plan caps
Every plan caps the number of transactions and inventory items in your account. Deleting a buy frees both — one transaction slot and one item slot per unit removed.
If you've been clearing duplicates or trial entries to make room for a real import, the deletes apply immediately; you don't need to wait for an overnight refresh.
For the specifics on the caps and how to check your current usage, see The three plans compared and Bulk upload and your transaction limit.
There's no undo
A deleted buy is gone. There's no trash bin, no 30-day window, no recovery from a "recently deleted" view. If you delete the wrong one, the recovery path is to record it again from your dealer invoice or your CSV, including the original purchase date and the historical spot price.
This is the main reason the confirmation step exists, and the main reason to pause for a second before clicking through it. Two clicks is not a lot, but it's enough.
Delete or edit? A short rubric
If you're not sure which tool fits, the short version:
Edit if the transaction is real but a field is wrong — dealer, date, premium, spot, notes, shipping. Most fixes land here.
Delete and re-record if the product or the quantity is wrong, since those fields are locked once a transaction is saved.
Delete with no re-record if the transaction shouldn't exist at all — duplicate, test data, wrong portfolio entirely.
The middle case — wrong product or quantity — is the one users miss most often. There's no way to nudge a product from Eagle to Buffalo, or to bump a quantity from 5 to 6, in the edit form. If that's what you need, delete and start over.
For the editable-fields list and what an edit actually changes, see Editing a transaction after the fact.
Where to go next
Deleting a sell transaction: The equivalent for sales, including how items get restored to held status.
Undoing a mistake: Patterns for the most common entry errors and the cleanest recovery for each.
How to record a purchase: The form you'll use to re-record after a delete-and-replace.