The three-way match — purchase order, goods receipt, supplier invoice — is the control that stops you paying for material you did not get. It fails far more often at the receipt than at the invoice, because the receipt is recorded by whoever is at the gate when the truck arrives, usually in a hurry, often on paper.
Five minutes of accuracy there removes most invoice disputes downstream.
What the receipt has to capture
- Quantity actually received, in the unit the purchase order used. If the PO is in tonnes and the delivery note is in bags, someone must convert it, and it should not be the accounts clerk three weeks later.
- Lot or batch number from the supplier, for anything lot-tracked. This is the only moment it is available. Once material is in the silo it is too late.
- Condition and any shortfall, recorded as a fact rather than a conversation. Two damaged drums noted at the gate is a credit note. Two damaged drums remembered in a fortnight is an argument.
- Date and time, which sets your payment terms clock and your supplier performance history.
- Certificate of analysis or supplier test results, attached to the receipt rather than filed separately.
Partial deliveries are where matching breaks
A purchase order for 20 tonnes delivered as 12 then 8 should produce two receipts against one order, and an invoice that matches the total. What often happens instead is a receipt for 20 when the first truck arrives, because the paperwork says 20.
Now the stock figure is wrong for a week, the second delivery has nothing to book against, and the invoice matches an order that was never verified.
A system that supports partial receipts against an open order handles this without anyone thinking about it. One that does not will be worked around, and the workaround will be exactly the shortcut above.
Reject at the gate, not later
The receipt is your last easy opportunity to say no. Once material is unloaded, mixed or issued, a rejection becomes a commercial negotiation instead of a delivery refusal.
Things worth rejecting at the gate: no certificate of analysis where the specification requires one, a lot with insufficient remaining shelf life for your production plan, quantity materially over the order without agreement, and obvious damage.
That requires the person at the gate to know the specification, which means the receipt screen has to show it. If they have to phone someone to find out whether to accept, they will accept.
Where this connects
Receipt accuracy feeds three things at once: stock that can be trusted for planning, a defensible three-way match for payment, and the inbound half of lot traceability — the link from a supplier lot to your finished lot that lots, retest dates and FEFO depends on.
In Aourix, procurement runs as plan, source, order, receive, with receipt lines booked against the open order and the supplier's lot captured at that point, so the invoice matches receipt lines rather than the original order quantity. The Academy walks through it in order and receive.
Ask your gate
Next time a delivery arrives, stand at the gate and watch. Note what gets written down, where it goes, and how long it takes before it exists anywhere the buyer can see.
If the answer is a paper docket that reaches the office the next morning, your stock is a day stale by design — and every planning decision made before that docket lands was made on a number you knew was wrong.