Claiming the shortage you found
Most small businesses find discrepancies and never claim them, because the process for claiming is more effort than the amount involved.
A shortage is found, someone means to raise it, and the week moves on. Across a year this is a meaningful sum, given away in small increments to suppliers who are frequently unaware it is happening.
Clear ownership matters when a record spans several people. For a broader discussion of responsibility and accountability, see this guide.
Make the claim while the evidence exists
Claims are strongest immediately: the goods are on the floor, the packaging is intact, the driver's signature is on the note, and a photograph takes five seconds.
Most supplier terms contain a window for reporting shortages and damage — often short, sometimes as little as a few days. Discovering that window at the point of claiming is discovering it too late.
A photograph of the pallet as delivered, with the packaging as it arrived, resolves most damage disputes without discussion. It costs nothing and it is the evidence you cannot recreate.
One route, low friction
Where claiming requires an email, a form and a manager, small claims are abandoned. A defined route — a template, a named contact, a photograph attached — that takes three minutes is what makes the difference.
Receiving and putaway also have a safety dimension; OSHA warehousing guidance summarises common warehouse and material-handling hazards.
Set a value threshold below which you do not claim, deliberately, rather than abandoning claims by accident. Then claim everything above it, consistently.
Do not adjust the stock silently
The temptation when a shortage is found is to receive the correct quantity and move on. That fixes the stock record and erases the supplier problem.
Receive what arrived, raise the discrepancy separately, and let the record show both. The pattern of discrepancies by supplier is what eventually supports a conversation or a change of supplier.
Substitutions are a decision, not a delivery
A supplier sending a similar item instead of the one ordered is common and is not automatically acceptable. Booking it in as the ordered item corrupts the record and hides a decision somebody should have made.
Either accept it explicitly as a substitution, with the record showing what actually arrived, or reject it. Silent acceptance means the next order also arrives substituted.
Track claims to conclusion
A claim raised and never chased is the same as no claim. A short list of open claims, reviewed fortnightly, is enough — and its main effect is that the list gets shorter, because claims that are chased get settled.