Receive goods and create a GRN

What it does

A Goods Received Note (GRN) is the record of what the warehouse, or the person who opened the courier box, actually accepted from the supplier. You raise one against a sent PO and enter the quantity received per line — usually the full ordered quantity, but partials are fine when the supplier ships in tranches. Saving the GRN increments quantity_received on each PO line and flips the PO status to partial (some lines still outstanding) or received (everything in).

GRNs are also the prerequisite for the three-way match. When the supplier's bill lands, the matcher checks sum(grn.qty) >= bill.qty per line before letting the bill auto-approve. No GRN, no match — the bill stays in manual review.

How to use it

1. Open the sent PO and click Receive goods in the action bar. The GRN modal lists every PO line with its ordered and outstanding quantities.
2. For each line, set the quantity received. It defaults to the ordered quantity; reduce it if you only got part of the shipment. Leave a line at 0 if nothing of that SKU arrived this time.
3. Optionally add condition notes per line — "2 boxes dented, accepted with discount" or "serial numbers logged on shelf 4". These print on the GRN PDF and stay on the audit trail.
4. Save the GRN. The system inserts a grn header + grn_lines rows, increments each PO line's quantity_received, and recomputes PO status: partial if any line is still short, received if every line is fully in.
5. The PO detail page now lists the GRN in the Goods received card. Click PDF on any row to download the formal Goods Received Note.
6. For tranche deliveries, raise another GRN later against the same PO with the next batch. The outstanding column on the modal shrinks each time until everything is in.

Tips

• The GRN PDF is the formal receipt document. The header lists FROM (your company) and RECEIVED FROM (the supplier), each line shows ordered vs received with condition notes, and the orange TOTAL UNITS bar summarises the count. The footer reads "This document confirms receipt of goods, not approval of an invoice" — useful when handing a copy to a supplier driver.
• Over-receipts (received > ordered) are blocked at save. If the supplier sent too much, raise a PO amendment first or split the excess into a separate PO.
• A GRN can't be edited once saved — that would corrupt the match evidence. Raise a correcting GRN with negative quantities if you need to back out a mistake, then capture the actual receipt.
• Three-way match unlocks the moment the GRN is saved. If a bill is already sitting in manual review waiting for evidence, re-run the matcher from the bill detail page after receipting.

Related

• Send a purchase order to a supplier
• Three-way match: PO, GRN, bill
• Raise a purchase request