Goods Received Note Processing

You are on the receiving bay when a supplier’s van pulls in, and by the end of this guide (this page and the one that follows it) you will have turned that delivery into a finalised Goods Received Note that closes off the right quantity on the purchase order and queues itself for accounts payable. A straightforward receipt takes about five minutes in BigLedger once the counting is done; a delivery of serialised goods takes as long as it takes to scan them.

Before anything else, one fact that decides how you read the rest of this page: finalising a standard GRN does not add anything to your stock balance. It records that goods arrived and were counted. The purchase invoice is what books them into stock and creates the money you owe. This surprises people who have come from other systems, and it is the single most common cause of “the goods are here, why does BigLedger say we have none?”.

One delivery, at a glance

Start the receipt, dated the day the goods arrived, with the supplier’s delivery note number in the reference (Step 1).
Pull in the purchase order through Search Document, KO For or Import — never type the lines by hand. If you came in through KO For, set the date again (Step 2).
Enter what actually arrived: the quantity you counted, and only goods you are willing to pay for (Step 3).
Capture serial numbers, one per unit, and the batches and bins the item needs (Step 4).
Attach the paperwork: the delivery note, the packing list if it is separate, and photographs of any damage (Step 5).
Save, check, and finalise. FINAL adds nothing to your stock balance; it queues the receipt for the purchase invoice when your company’s Knock Off Configuration has the Purchase GRN → Purchase Invoice row enabled (Step 6).

The receipt runs across two pages. Steps 1 and 2 are on this one; Steps 3 to 6 (the count, the serial numbers, the paperwork and FINAL) are on Goods Received Note: Count and Finalise.

Meet GadgetSphere

GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd runs 22 consumer-electronics branches. Head office raises the purchase orders; the branches and the fulfilment centre receive against them. Today’s delivery at branch GS-KV-01 is against a purchase order for 200 units of a mid-range wireless earbud at RM 128, and a second line of 40 flagship smartphones which are serialised. The van has brought all 200 earbuds and 38 of the 40 phones.

What the GRN is for

If it does not move stock, what is it doing? Three things:

It records the count. What actually came off the van, at which branch and location, on which date, against whose delivery note — with serial, batch and bin detail where the item needs it.
It knocks the purchase order down. The 200 earbuds stop being outstanding. The 2 undelivered phones stay in the open queue for a later delivery.
It queues itself for the invoice. Accounts payable will pull this GRN into a purchase invoice rather than retyping it, which is what makes the quantities on the bill match the quantities on the bay.

Between finalising the GRN and finalising the invoice, the received quantity is visible in Stock Availability as GRN quantity — goods that are here but not yet stock and not yet a liability. That gap is the point of the document.

The chain, end to end:

    flowchart LR
  PO["Purchase Order<br/>FINAL"] -->|"Search Document,<br/>KO For or Import"| GRN["Goods Received Note<br/>records the count<br/>posts nothing"]
  GRN -->|"FINAL"| Q["Open queue<br/>lines waiting to be invoiced"]
  Q -->|"pulled into"| PI["<b>Purchase Invoice</b><br/><b>books the stock</b><br/>and the money you owe"]

If your business needs stock available the moment goods land, you want the separate Purchase GRN Stock In (Internal) applet, not this one. That document does book stock on receipt (Dr Inventory Not Invoiced / Cr Creditor Not Invoiced) and is paired with Purchase Invoice No Stock In for the money. Your company uses one pair or the other — never a document from each, which double-counts or never counts. Check with your finance manager which pair your tenant is set up for before you start receiving.

Before you start

The purchase order is finalised. A draft order has no open queue, so its lines will not appear when you search for it. If the order you expect is missing from the picker, that is almost always why.
You know your branch and location codes — GS-KV-01 and the receiving location within it.
You have counted the delivery. Count before you open BigLedger, not while typing.
You have the supplier’s delivery note with its number, and a scan or photo of it to attach.
A scanner, if the delivery is serialised. Manual typing works, but 38 IMEIs is a long afternoon.
You hold create and update permission on the GRN document type; there is no separate finalise permission (who can finalise). If the FINAL button is missing altogether, the applet setting HIDE_GENDOC_FINAL_BUTTON is hiding it for everyone, and no role permission brings it back on this applet’s screens — ask your administrator.

Step 1: Open the applet and start the receipt

Purchasing > Purchase GRN (Internal) > Internal Purchase GRN > Create

The listing you land on is filtered to a default posting status and a default transaction-date window, which is why a GRN someone raised last month may not appear until you widen the filter or use Advanced Search. The quick search box looks at the document number.

Click Create. On the Main Details tab set the branch and location — GS-KV-01 and its receiving location — and the transaction date. Use the date the goods actually arrived, not the date you are typing. It is the date the receipt carries in the listing and in reports, and the date FINAL checks against a locked period. If you bring the order in through KO For in Step 2, that route resets the date to today, so you set it once more there.

One thing to know: if your tenant’s Transaction Date Logic (Settings > Default Selection) is set to Finalized Date, BigLedger replaces the date you key with the date you click FINAL. If your GRN dates keep coming out as the day you typed them rather than the day the van arrived, that setting is why.

Put the supplier’s delivery note number in the header reference field. In six weeks, when the supplier queries an invoice, this is how you will find the receipt from their paperwork.

On the Account tab, pick the supplier. If you bring the purchase order in first (next step), this fills itself.

Step 2: Pull in the purchase order

Purchasing > Purchase GRN (Internal) > (your draft) > Search Document > Search Purchase Order

Never type the lines by hand when a purchase order exists. Bringing the order in is what links the two documents, and without that link the order stays open forever and accounts payable has nothing to match against.

There are three ways in, and they all end in the same place:

Search Document → Search Purchase Order on a saved draft. Finds the finalised order and offers add all to purchase GRN.
KO For tab on a new document → Purchase Order. Knocks the order’s lines off directly.
Import tab. Shows a grid of active purchase orders and their lines to pick from.

Use whichever your applet has enabled — the KO For tab and the search button can each be hidden by a setting, so you may not see all three. If one is missing, another will be there.

The lines arrive on the Lines tab, carrying the ordered quantity from the open queue alongside the quantity you are about to receive.

If you came in through KO For, set the transaction date again. The knock-off stamps today’s date on the draft, over the arrival date you set in Step 1, and the screen reloads showing it with no warning. Search Document and Import leave the date alone. A GRN posts nothing, so no stock or ledger balance moves with the wrong date, and the purchase invoice takes its own date when it knocks off the receipt. What goes wrong is the record: the receipt shows the day you keyed it instead of the day the van came, so a delivery received on the 30th and keyed on the 1st reads as next month’s receipt.

Watch out for: if the order is not in the list, check three things in order — is it finalised, is it for this supplier, and has it already been fully received by someone else? A fully knocked-off order disappears from the picker by design.

Next: Steps 3 to 6: count, serials, paperwork and FINAL — read its opening before Step 6’s FINAL.

What success looks like

Thirty seconds, three checks:

Open the purchase order. The received quantity has come off its open balance. For our delivery, the earbud line is closed and the phone line still shows 2 outstanding.
Open Stock Availability for the item. On-hand is unchanged — correct. The GRN quantity figure has gone up by what you received. That is the receipt sitting between the bay and the ledger, waiting for the invoice.
Open the GRN’s Doc Link tab. The purchase order is linked. If it is not, the invoice will not find this receipt and someone in accounts payable will retype it. If your company auto-generates invoices, the new purchase invoice is linked here too — tell accounts payable it exists.

Common mistakes

Most mistakes belong to the count and FINAL, and are on that page: receiving damaged or wrong goods “to sort out later”, serial counts that do not match the quantity, backdating a GRN into a closed period, and voiding a GRN without checking Doc Link. These two belong to the whole receipt:

Waiting for the stock balance to move. It will not, on this document. If your company needs stock on receipt, you are in the wrong applet — you want Purchase GRN Stock In (Internal). Symptom: goods received days ago, Stock Availability still showing nothing on hand, and a growing suspicion that something is broken. Nothing is broken.

Typing the lines instead of pulling in the order. The GRN saves happily either way, and looks identical. But with no link the purchase order stays open forever, the invoice cannot knock the receipt off, and the same goods can be received twice. Always come in through Search Document, KO For or Import.