Checking a delivery properly
Signing for a pallet without counting it transfers the supplier's error onto your stock record, permanently.
The delivery arrives at the busiest moment, the driver is waiting, and someone signs. The order said forty, the paperwork says forty, and forty goes into the system.
Frequent interruptions create a task switching cost that is easy to miss when a process is estimated only by its visible steps.
If thirty-six arrived, the discrepancy is now invisible. It will surface in a count months later as an unexplained variance, by which point the credit cannot be claimed and the cause cannot be traced.
Check against the order, not the delivery note
The delivery note describes what the supplier believes they sent. Checking the goods against the note confirms their paperwork is internally consistent, which is not the question.
The check that matters is goods against your purchase order. That catches short shipments, substitutions and the item that was quietly discontinued and replaced with something similar.
A shortage recorded on the delivery note at the point of receipt is a claim. The same shortage discovered on Thursday is an argument you will probably lose.
Receiving and putaway also have a safety dimension; OSHA warehousing guidance summarises common warehouse and material-handling hazards.
Decide what gets a full check
Counting every unit of every delivery is not realistic in most small businesses. What is realistic is a stated rule about what is checked in full and what is spot-checked.
- High value, or anything critical — counted in full, always.
- New supplier, or a supplier with a poor fill rate — counted in full until they earn otherwise.
- Routine deliveries from reliable suppliers — carton count against the note, with a periodic full check.
- Anything where the packaging is damaged — full check regardless.
Book in what arrived, not what was ordered
Systems frequently default to receiving the ordered quantity with one click. That default is the single largest source of stock record error in small businesses.
The person booking in should be entering an observed number. Where the system makes accepting the expected quantity easier than entering the actual one, it is actively producing bad data.
Record the dates while you are there
Receiving is the moment to capture what makes supplier measurement possible: date promised, date arrived, quantity ordered, quantity received, condition.
Five fields, entered once, and they are the entire basis for lead time and fill rate. Captured nowhere else, and unavailable afterwards.
Put it away the same day
Stock received but not put away is stock the record says you have and nobody can find. A pallet sitting in the receiving area for three days is a stockout waiting to happen while the item is in the building.
Where same-day putaway is not possible, the received-not-putaway state should at least be visible in the record, so a picker knows to look at the loading bay before telling a customer no.