Skip to content
Cash Flow Inventory / Docs
Operations

Receiving

A Purchase Order is a promise; Receiving is where you check that the supplier kept it. When goods physically show up, you record exactly what arrived — which might be less than what you ordered, exactly what you ordered, or spread across several partial deliveries against the same order — and that record becomes the foundation for the supplier's Bill, so nobody has to type the same quantities and pricing in twice.

Who this is for

  • Any business that orders from suppliers and needs to confirm what actually arrived, not just take the packing slip's word for it.
  • Warehouses handling partial or staggered deliveries against a single large order.
  • Finance teams who want Bills to be based on verified received quantities, not just whatever the supplier's invoice claims.

Receiving — the main screen

drop a screenshot at assets/screenshots/guides/receiving.png to replace this

1. RECEIVING GOODS — STEP BY STEP

  1. Open the relevant Purchase Order.
  2. Record a Receipt against it — enter the quantity actually received for each line item. If the delivery is partial (some items arrived and some didn't, or fewer units showed up than you ordered), just record exactly that — the receipt doesn't need to match the order line-for-line.
  3. If the item requires batch/lot or serial details, this is where you capture them — right at the point stock enters your warehouse, the same discipline the sales-side picking step uses, just running in the other direction. Non-Inventory and Service lines on the order (freight, installation, a supplier's labor charge) skip all of this and pass straight through the receipt — there's no physical stock to log for them.
  4. The received quantity updates your stock, then feeds back into the item's reorder record to recalculate its actual average lead time — so reorder-point planning gets more accurate the more you use the system, without any extra work on your part.
  5. Send to Bill — an explicit hand-off that turns the completed (or partial) receipt directly into the basis for a Bill, so Accounts Payable never has to re-enter quantities and pricing that Receiving already captured.

2. PARTIAL RECEIPTS — HANDLED HONESTLY

Large or backordered purchase orders rarely show up in one shipment. Receiving supports multiple receipt records against the same order over time, so a Purchase Order for 500 units that arrives as 200, then 150, then 150 stays accurately tracked at every stage — you always know exactly how much of an order is still outstanding, not just whether it's "done" or "not done."

Receiving pipeline

Purchase Order Partial Receipt Received Send to Bill

3. HOW IT CONNECTS TO THE REST OF THE SYSTEM

  • Inventory — received quantities post to stock through the same central inventory engine used everywhere else, ready for sale or use the moment they land.
  • Bills / AP — Send to Bill carries a receipt's verified quantities and costs straight into a new Bill, so what you pay stays tied to what you actually received.
  • Reorder planning — average and max lead-time figures on the item record recalculate from real receiving history, keeping your reorder points grounded in reality instead of a one-time guess.

4. WHY IT SCALES FROM SMB TO ENTERPRISE

01

Small business

Record what arrived and you're done — no separate paperwork to chase.

02

Growing business

Partial-receipt support matches how deliveries actually happen in the real world, especially with backordered items or split shipments.

03

Enterprise

Receipt-based billing — rather than trusting a supplier's invoice at face value — is the standard three-way-match control finance and audit teams expect, and here it's built in by default.

Quick Reference

Quick reference — where things live 
  Receiving list ........................... Purchase > Stock Receives
  Record a receipt against an order ........ Open Purchase Order > Receiving
  Send a receipt to Bill ................... Open Receipt > Send to Bill

See this running in your own account

Free to start, no credit card required — most businesses are set up and creating real records within minutes.

Create free account