Receiving and Invoicing

A Purchase Order is a commitment. Purchase Receipts and Purchase Invoices are how that commitment becomes real: physical stock landing at your dock, money landing on the supplier's account.

Purchase Receipt

A PR is what you post when goods physically arrive. It's the document that posts stock to your warehouse — until you create a PR, the PO's items are expected, not received.

The flow from the dock:

1. Truck arrives. Your receiving team checks the packing slip against the PO.
2. From the Logistics App (or from the PO on the Desk), create a Purchase Receipt against the PO.
3. Confirm items and quantities. Adjust if the delivery is short, over, or has a substitution.
4. Pick the receiving warehouse (typically your Raw Material warehouse).
5. Save and Submit. Stock posts immediately.

The Stock Ledger now shows the items in the receiving warehouse, at the rate from the PO.

Inspecting on receipt

Some items get inspected at receipt — typically fabric (for quality, shrinkage, color matching) and specialty trims. ERPNext's Quality Inspection mechanism can be triggered on PR creation: a QC entry is required before the PR can be submitted, and the stock won't post until the inspection clears.

You configure this per Item (the Inspection Required (Purchase) flag on the Item master). For items with the flag set, the PR enforces it; for items without, the PR submits immediately.

Partial receipts

POs are commonly received in parts. ERPNext handles this:

• A PO with 1000 metres of fabric can be received as PR-001 (600m), PR-002 (300m), PR-003 (100m).
• The PO's status reflects partial receipt at each stage.
• Each PR posts its own stock to the receiving warehouse.

The Inbound Tracker page

The Inbound Tracker dashboard shows incoming PRs across all open POs — the "what's arriving and when" view your warehouse manager opens in the morning to plan dock space.

Purchase Invoice

A PI is what the supplier sends you asking to be paid. Posting a PI books the accounts payable.

The right rhythm:

1. Supplier sends an invoice (paper or PDF).
2. Accounts payable creates a PI in ERPNext, referencing the PR (which references the PO).
3. ERPNext performs the three-way match: PO quantity vs PR quantity vs PI quantity. Differences are flagged.
4. If the match is clean, submit the PI. Accounts payable is now booked.
5. Schedule payment per the supplier's payment terms.

The three-way match

The match is the protection against paying for goods you didn't receive or paying twice. ERPNext enforces it by default:

• The PI can only invoice quantities that have been received (per PR).
• The PI can only invoice items that were on the PO.
• The rate on the PI is checked against the PO rate; differences require explanation.

If a supplier invoices you for 1000 metres but you only received 950, the PI for 1000 won't post cleanly. You either get the missing 50 metres delivered, request a credit note, or pay only for 950.

Getting there

Awesome bar: Cmd/Ctrl + K → type purchase invoice → pick Purchase Invoice List

Click path: Desk → ERPNext → Accounts → Purchase Invoice

Reports that help

A handful of reports earn their keep here:

• Received Items To Be Billed — PRs that don't yet have a matching PI. Flags POs where receiving has happened but the supplier hasn't invoiced (or A/P hasn't processed the invoice).
• Purchase Order Trends — supplier-by-supplier trends over time. Useful for sourcing reviews.
• Item-wise Purchase History — for any item, every PO/PR/PI in history. Useful when negotiating new rates ("we paid X last quarter for Y volume").

What to do next

That closes procurement. The materials are in your warehouse, the books are balanced. The next step is using them — head to The Logistics App.