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Understanding your spend and purchase totals

Spend is what you paid over a period; Total Purchase Value is what the wine you hold now cost — why the two never match.

InVintory keeps two money figures built from your purchase prices, and they answer different questions. Spend is what you paid over a stretch of time. Total Purchase Value is what the wine you hold right now cost you. They are both correct, and they will almost never match.

💡 Drinking a bottle changes one figure and not the other. The bottle stays in Spend forever, because you really did buy it. It drops straight out of Total Purchase Value, because you no longer have it. A cellar you have been drinking from will always show more Spend than Total Purchase Value.

Neither figure is an estimate. Both add up only the prices you entered yourself, and a bottle you left blank contributes nothing rather than a guess — so if a total looks low, the usual reason is bottles with no price on them.

Which number answers which question

Spend

Total Purchase Value

"How much did I spend on wine last year?"

"What did the wine in my cellar cost me?"

A period — this year, last year, a single year, or all time

Right now. There is no timeframe on it

Keeps bottles you have drunk, sold or given away

Counts only bottles still in the collection

Dated by each bottle's purchase date, or by the day you added it if you left the date blank

Dates do not come into it

The Spend card in Analytics

The Total Purchase Value row in Collection settings

Where to find each one

Home → Analytics → Spend

On iPhone and iPad, Spend is one of the cards in the Analytics section of your home screen. Tap it for the full chart and the timeframe menu. On app.invintory.com, open Analytics and read Spend in the Activity section.

Home → collection name → Collection settings → Total Purchase Value

Total Purchase Value sits near the top of Collection settings. On the web app it is on the home page instead, as Purchase value beside Market value. Open a single cellar or fridge and its header carries a Purchase price for just that storage.

What neither of them includes

  • Market value. Both figures are what you paid. What the wine is worth today is a separate number with its own sources, and the two are never mixed.

  • Wine still on its way. A bottle attached to a delivery is not counted until the delivery is marked delivered.

  • Bottles with no price. They count as nothing, not as an average.

If a figure looks blurred rather than missing, values are simply hidden — every screen that shows money has a Show values control, so you can hand someone your phone without handing over what your cellar cost.

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