The Add Purchase form has a Storage Location selector — a dropdown listing every location you've set up in Settings. Picking one assigns every item from that purchase to that location the moment they're created.
Assigning a location at purchase is optional, but it's the lowest-friction way to keep custody tidy. Skip it and the items land as Unassigned, ready to be sorted from the Holdings page later.
This article covers where the selector lives, how the per-transaction assignment behaves when a single buy is destined for two places, and what propagates downstream the moment you submit.
Where the selector lives
Open the Add Purchase form from the left nav: Transactions → Add Purchase. The Storage Location selector sits in the Transaction Details section alongside Portfolio, Purchase Date, Dealer, and Notes. It's a single dropdown that applies to the whole transaction — every row under Items Purchased lands in whichever location you pick.
If the dropdown shows no options, you haven't created any storage locations yet. The fix is a one-time setup in Settings → Storage and the new location is available in the dropdown immediately.
Picking a location
Click the dropdown to expand it. Locations are grouped by type, with the type chip alongside each entry and the institution shown underneath the name — useful when two of your locations would otherwise look identical (two depositories, two IRAs at different custodians).
Pick the one where these items will physically live. The selector closes and shows the location's name and type chip. Leave it on Unassigned if you don't know yet, or if you'd rather sort things out later from Holdings.
When the whole purchase doesn't go to the same place
The selector is per-transaction, not per-item. If you bought ten coins and five are headed to a depository while the other five go in a safe deposit box, you have two ways to handle it:
Record two transactions: Pick the depository for one buy, the safe deposit box for the other. Cleanest if the dealer issued separate invoices anyway, since each transaction stays a faithful record of one order.
Record one transaction, then split on Holdings: Pick whichever location is the larger share of the buy, then use Move to Location on the Holdings page to relocate the minority. Easier for mixed batches from a single invoice.
There's no penalty for either approach — both produce the same end state in your inventory.
What happens after submitting
The location is recorded on each inventory item the moment the transaction is created. From there:
Holdings page: The Location column shows the name on every new item, and the location filter groups them together.
Dashboard: The Custody Breakdown donut and the Holdings by Location widget pick up the new items on the next render.
Custody Statement: The new items appear under that location's section, contributing to its weight, cost basis, current value, and gain/loss totals.
Tax Report: If the location is IRA-typed, the items are excluded from your taxable totals from the moment they exist, and surface in IRA Activity instead.
The assignment is a current-location flag — it's not locked to the purchase in any cost-basis sense and can be changed later from Holdings without affecting anything else on the transaction.
When to leave it on Unassigned
Unassigned is a fine choice when you genuinely don't know yet — the metal hasn't arrived, you're still deciding between two places, or you're recording a backlog of historical transactions and you'd rather sort custody in one pass after the fact.
Items that stay Unassigned still show on Holdings, in the Dashboard's totals, and on the Tax Report's taxable side. They just don't roll up under a location, and they don't appear in the Custody Statement or the Custody Breakdown widget until they're assigned.
A note on Bulk Import
If you're recording purchases via CSV rather than the form, the storage column accepts a location's CSV key — the stable identifier shown alongside each location on the Storage tab. The key is what bulk imports resolve against, so renames don't break existing CSVs.
See Preparing your CSV for the column structure and where to find each location's key.
Where to go next
[Moving items between locations]: Reassigning items after the fact from the Holdings page.
Creating a storage location: Adding a new location if your dropdown was empty.
[The five storage location types]: Longer treatment of each type, especially the IRA tax implication.