Goods Received Note: Count and Finalise

Goods received note: enter the count, capture serials, and finalise

Steps 3 to 6 of Goods Received Note Processing: enter the quantities you counted, capture serial numbers, attach the paperwork, and finalise the receipt. It follows Step 2, where you pulled the purchase order into your draft GRN.

The running example: at branch GS-KV-01 the van has brought all 200 of the wireless earbuds on the order at RM 128, and 38 of the 40 flagship smartphones, which are serialised.

Two things to know before FINAL in Step 6. Finalising adds nothing to your stock balance: the purchase invoice books the goods into stock. And FINAL queues the receipt for the invoice only if your company’s Knock Off Configuration (Organisation > Company > Knock Off Configuration) has the Purchase GRN → Purchase Invoice row enabled; the same configuration can generate the invoice by itself, so after finalising, look at the GRN’s Doc Link tab before anyone types another invoice. If the FINAL button is missing altogether, that is the applet setting HIDE_GENDOC_FINAL_BUTTON, which no per-user permission overrides in this applet: ask your administrator (Before you start).

Step 3: enter what actually arrived.
Step 4: capture serial numbers.
Step 5: attach the paperwork.
Step 6: save, check, and finalise.

Step 3: Enter what actually arrived

Purchasing > Purchase GRN (Internal) > (your draft) > Lines

This is the step that matters. Change the received quantity on each line to the number you counted on the bay.

Everything arrived. Leave the quantities as they came across. Earbuds: 200 ordered, 200 received.

Short delivery. Enter what came. Phones: 200 ordered on the order, 38 received. The remaining 2 stay in the purchase order’s open queue and a later GRN will pick them up — you do not need to do anything special, and you must not “fix” the order.

Damaged goods. Receive only the good ones. If 5 of the earbuds are crushed, receive 195, not 200. Anything you enter here is a quantity you are telling accounts payable to expect a bill for. Photograph the damage, note it, and take it up with the supplier — a replacement delivery becomes another GRN against the same order, and a credit is a purchase credit note.

More arrived than you ordered. BigLedger will let you receive the excess. Whether you should is a business decision, not a system one — there is no over-delivery block and no approval routing to catch it. If you accept it, expect the invoice to bill for it.

Wrong item entirely. Do not receive it. Leave it off the GRN, keep it separate from your stock, and get it back on the van.

The Standard View grid is the default; a setting adds a Spreadsheet View for faster keying on large deliveries, so if you cannot see it, it has not been switched on for your applet. If your applet shows a stock-balance column, that is the current on-hand figure for the item — a useful sanity check, and a reminder that it will not change when you finalise.

Step 4: Capture serial numbers

Purchasing > Purchase GRN (Internal) > (your draft) > Lines > (open the line)

For serialised items — phones, laptops, anything with an IMEI or a serial plate — open the line and enter one serial per unit. The count must equal the line quantity: 38 phones means 38 serials.

Scan them if you can. Place the cursor in the serial field and let the scanner do the typing; it is faster and it does not transpose digits. Where you have no scanner, type them, and check the first few characters of each against the label rather than trusting your fingers at unit 30.

If your applet has serial validation on FINAL switched on, it re-checks the serial and batch quantities when you finalise and refuses any line it flags as Duplicate Serial Number — the same unit scanned twice within the document. The backend adds two checks of its own at FINAL: a serial that is already in stock in this company is refused with Serial number already exists for company, and a serial count that differs from the line quantity with Quantity base and serial number quantity does not match.

Batch-tracked items work the same way on the same line, with batch number and the dates the item type requires.

If your warehouse uses bins, assign the bin quantities on the line too. The backend validates that the bin quantities add up to the line quantity when you finalise.

Step 5: Attach the paperwork

Purchasing > Purchase GRN (Internal) > (your draft) > Attachments

Attach a scan or photo of the supplier’s delivery note, the packing list if it is separate, and photographs of any damage. Do it now, on the bay, while the evidence exists. A GRN with the delivery note attached settles a supplier dispute in one click; one without it costs an afternoon.

If your tenant uses custom statuses, the Status tab is where you set them — those are your own workflow labels (for example “awaiting QC”), and they stay editable even after the document is finalised.

Step 6: Save, check, and finalise

Purchasing > Purchase GRN (Internal) > (your draft) > SAVE, then FINAL

Click SAVE first and read the lines back once. Compare the received quantities against your count sheet. A draft can be edited freely or DISCARDed; a finalised GRN can only be voided.

Then click FINAL.

What FINAL does. It validates the serial numbers, the bin quantities and the fiscal period, stamps the transaction date, locks the document, and creates one open-queue row per line for the document types your company has configured to consume a GRN — normally the purchase invoice. That configuration lives at Organisation > Company > Knock Off Configuration; if the Purchase GRN → Purchase Invoice row is not enabled, FINAL creates no queue rows and accounts payable cannot find the receipt.

Some companies auto-generate the invoice. The same configuration can tell BigLedger to create the purchase invoice from the finalised GRN by itself, either as a DRAFT for accounts payable to check or straight to FINAL. If your company runs that way, open the GRN’s Doc Link tab after finalising — the invoice will already be there, and typing another one would bill the goods twice.

What FINAL does not do. It writes no inventory transaction and no journal entry. Your stock balance is unchanged and your ledger is untouched. The receipt shows up in Stock Availability as GRN quantity until the invoice consumes it.

If your applet is set to pop the PDF open after FINAL, the printable copy appears automatically; otherwise print from the Export tab.

Watch out for: FINAL needs at least one line. A zero-amount GRN is fine — receiving goods you have not been priced for is normal — but a GRN with no lines is not a document.

What success looks like for this part

The GRN is FINAL, every line carries the quantity you counted — 200 earbuds and 38 phones in the example — each serialised line carries as many serial numbers as its quantity, batch and bin details are on the lines whose items need them, and the delivery note is attached. Stock Availability shows the received quantity as GRN quantity, not as stock on hand, and the GRN’s Doc Link tab shows the purchase order, plus the purchase invoice if your company generates one automatically. The whole receipt’s checks are in What success looks like.

Common mistakes in this part

Receiving damaged or wrong goods “to sort out later”. You have just told accounts payable to expect a bill for them. Receive only what you are willing to pay for.

Serial counts that do not match the quantity. Finalising will refuse, or worse, will let a mismatch through if validation is off — and then the units are untraceable for warranty. Count the serials against the line quantity before you finalise, every time.

Backdating a GRN into a closed period. The fiscal period check runs at FINAL, not at SAVE, so you find out at the last moment. If the month has been locked, either date the receipt into an open period or ask your finance manager to reopen it — do not invent a date that makes the error go away.

Voiding a GRN without checking Doc Link. If an invoice has already knocked the receipt off, BigLedger refuses the void with “Cannot VOID the Document. The document(s) have been knocked off with another document(s).” The message names no document — the receipt’s Doc Link tab shows which invoice it is — so a void that “will not go through” usually means exactly that. To cancel the receipt you would void that invoice first, which reopens the receipt’s lines and undoes everything the invoice posted. Open Doc Link, look at what depends on the receipt, then decide whether a void is really what you want.

Waiting for the stock balance to move, and typing the lines instead of pulling in the order, are on the front page’s list.