Direct GRN Workflow

Can I receive goods without a purchase order? Direct GRN workflow

“Can I receive goods without a purchase order?” Yes: create the Purchase GRN with no source document, type the lines yourself, write down why there was no order, and bill it on a purchase invoice — the GRN still moves no stock and posts nothing, and the invoice books both, exactly as it does when there is an order.

Sometimes the goods arrive before the paperwork does. A supplier ships an urgent replacement, a branch manager rings a distributor directly, a distributor sends a promotional allocation nobody ordered. By the end of this guide you will have recorded a delivery that has no purchase order behind it, billed it, and left an audit trail that survives a question three months later. It takes about the same time as a normal receipt — five minutes — plus whatever it takes to find out who agreed to the purchase.

This page is for the receiver who keys the GRN and the AP clerk who bills it. Skipping the purchase order changes nothing about which document books the stock — the GRN still moves none, the invoice books it, as Purchasing core concepts §3 explains — but it changes who is checking the price, and when, and that is what most of this page is about.

A receipt with no order, at a glance

Check it is the right workflow: the goods have arrived and no finalised order exists. If a draft order exists, finalise it and receive against it; services with no goods go straight on a purchase invoice (When this is the right workflow).
Create the Purchase GRN with no source document, put the supplier’s delivery note number in the reference, and type the lines at the price you were quoted (Step 1 and Step 2).
Write down why there was no order: the arrangement, the date, the role that agreed it and the agreed price. On this receipt nothing else records that price (Step 3).
Finalise. The GRN moves no stock and posts nothing. Without a Purchase GRN → Purchase Invoice row in your Knock Off Configuration, FINAL creates nothing for the invoice to find (Before you start); if that row generates the invoice automatically, the invoice copies the GRN’s price and may already be FINAL, so ask for DRAFT (Step 4).
If a month-end falls before the bill, the accountant either dates each invoice in the month or accrues the receipt by manual journal: nothing posts it on this pair (If a month-end falls before the bill).
Bill it on a purchase invoice that knocks off the GRN, or open the one the configuration generated; a second invoice bills the goods twice. Set its date to the supplier’s invoice date, and compare the supplier’s price with the agreed price in the remarks before FINAL: nothing warns you (Step 5).

The receipt runs across three pages. Step 1 is on this one; Steps 2 to 4 (the lines, the reason and FINAL, with what to do if a month-end falls before the bill) are on Direct GRN: Key and Finalise, and Step 5 (the bill and the price check, with who checks a receipt nobody ordered) is on Direct GRN: Bill and Check.

    flowchart LR
  G["Purchase GRN<br/>no source document · lines typed by hand<br/>moves no stock · posts nothing"] -->|"FINAL"| OQ["Open-queue rows<br/>for the purchase invoice"]
  OQ -->|"knock off"| PI["<b>Purchase Invoice</b><br/><b>stock in · journal · what you owe</b>"]
  PI --> PV["Payment Voucher"]

Meet GadgetSphere

GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd runs 22 branches. On Thursday 26 November a wireless-audio distributor delivers 20 pairs of wireless earbuds to branch GS-KV-01. The branch ran short before a weekend promotion, and the branch manager agreed the top-up with the distributor by phone at RM 150.00 a pair. Nobody keyed a purchase order.

Before the delivery, GS-KV-01 holds 40 pairs at a moving average of RM 140.00 — RM 5,600.00 of stock — and, to keep the arithmetic readable, no other branch holds the item and none sell during the week. The distributor’s invoice arrives on 3 December, dated 3 December, at RM 155.00 a pair, RM 3,100.00, with no tax line on it.

That is the whole scenario this page follows: a receipt with no order, a month-end in between, and a bill that disagrees with what was agreed.

When this is the right workflow, and when it is not

Use a direct GRN when goods have physically arrived and there is no finalised purchase order to receive them against. Typical cases: an emergency replenishment agreed by phone, a warranty replacement, a supplier’s own allocation, a sample.

Do not use it to work around a purchase order that exists but is still in draft. Finalise the order and receive against it — thirty seconds, and it keeps the commitment, the receipt and the bill on one thread.

Do not use it for services or expenses with no goods at all. There is nothing to receive; book those straight on a purchase invoice. See Direct Invoice Workflow.

The neighbours, and when to use which instead:

If the goods…	Use	What it does that a direct GRN does not
are yours, and your company receives on the stock-in pair	Purchase GRN Stock In, then a Purchase Invoice No Stock In	Books the stock at receipt and posts a goods-received-not-invoiced accrual (Inventory Not Invoiced against Creditor Not Invoiced). Use one pair for the whole company, never both
still belong to the supplier until they sell	the consignment documents — Consignment Purchasing	The consignment receipt moves stock and posts to consignment stock and consignment liability, not to the supplier’s payable
turned up with no supplier to pay — a found carton, a count surplus	a Stock Adjustment	Moves stock and posts to the stock-adjustment account, with no supplier. Used for purchased goods, it leaves the supplier’s bill nothing to knock off: keyed as a direct invoice, the bill books the same units into stock a second time
were billed before they arrived	Invoice-First Workflow	Starts from the bill, not the delivery

A direct GRN removes your only preventive control. With a purchase order, someone committed to a price and a quantity before the goods moved. Without one, the first time anybody checks the price is when the invoice arrives — and by then you have the goods. That is a business decision, not a system one: BigLedger will not stop you, warn you, or route the receipt to anyone. If direct receipts are more than an occasional exception at your branches, the fix is upstream, in how orders get raised.

Before you start

The supplier must exist with the right AR/AP type. It decides which payable account the invoice credits later.
The items exist in Doc Item Maintenance.
You know who agreed to the purchase, and at what price. Write it in the remarks — this is the whole difference between a defensible direct receipt and an unexplained one.
Your branch and location are set.
You hold create and update permission on the GRN document type; there is no separate finalise permission (who can finalise).
Your company’s Knock Off Configuration has a Purchase GRN → Purchase Invoice row (Organisation > Company > Knock Off Configuration). Without it, FINAL on the GRN creates nothing for the invoice to find, and Step 5 fails silently. Ask once; it is a one-time setting. While you are there, find out whether the row is set to generate the invoice automatically — some companies configure exactly that, and on a direct receipt it changes a great deal (Step 4).

Step 1: Create the receipt with no source document

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

Click Create. Fill in the Main Details tab exactly as you would for a normal receipt: branch GS-KV-01, its receiving location, and the transaction date the goods actually arrived — 26 November.

Put the distributor’s delivery note number in the header reference. With no purchase order to anchor the receipt, their document number is the only external reference this transaction will ever have — do not leave it blank.

On the Account tab, pick the supplier.

The one difference from a normal receipt is what you skip: there is no Search Document, no KO For and no Import. You will type the lines. That also keeps the arrival date you set: on a normal receipt, KO For resets the date to today.

Next: Step 2: Enter the lines by hand.

What success looks like

Thirty seconds, four checks, on the earbuds example or your own receipt:

The invoice’s Posting tab shows Journal and Inventory posted.
Stock Availability for the item at GS-KV-01 shows Stock Balance up by 20 and the 20 gone from Adj Qty. If they are still in Adj Qty, the invoice did not knock off this GRN.
The item’s Costings tab in Item Maintenance shows a last purchase cost equal to the price on the supplier’s invoice — RM 155.00 here. If it shows the GRN’s price instead, the invoice went through at the receiver’s figure.
Open the GRN and read the remarks. If you cannot tell from them who agreed to this purchase, when, and at what price, go back and write it properly. That sentence is the entire audit trail for a transaction with no order behind it.

Common mistakes

Most mistakes belong to one part and are on its page: leaving the remarks blank, waiting for the stock balance to move on FINAL of the GRN, and entering a placeholder price are with Steps 2 to 4; finalising the invoice at the GRN’s price, a FINAL GRN the invoice cannot find, typing a second invoice, and treating direct receipts as the normal way to buy are with Step 5. This one belongs to the choice of workflow:

Using a direct GRN to bypass a draft purchase order. The order exists; finalise it and receive against it. A parallel direct receipt leaves the order permanently open in the queue and the same goods can be received twice.