explain all the stages and forms used from the time an enquiry is made to a manufacturer up to the time the actual payment is made for goods?
Answers
Answer:
This month I’m focusing on business paperwork that may be flying under the efficiency radar but is actually costing your business a lot of time, money, and effort to manually process. The goods received note or GRN is often reported to our team as being a big problem area, with such things as human error/accuracy, difficulty in referencing against orders and invoices, storage, and indexing.
GRN’s play a key part in the accounts payable process by confirming that items have been received as expected, in accordance with the original order, and that the items can therefore be invoiced by the supplier and subsequently paid for.
Common issues associated with GRN processing:
Slow processing time
Lost paperwork and difficulty referencing against the original purchase order
Accurate matching goods received against multiple purchase order line items for various departments
Effective and timely communication with suppliers about delivery issues
Supplier Management and Supply Chain issues; e.g. Impact on repeat orders due to invoicing problems and payment approval
Impact on cost due to incorrect receipt of faulty orders; incorrect amount of items, duplicate order, wrong price, etc
Disputing damaged or faulty goods
Administrative effort required to answer enquiries from suppliers who are chasing payments or resolving queries
Cleardata can help review and analyse your existing paper or electronic processes and provide scanning and automated document management solutions to help reduce manual data entry and processing, saving time and money for your business. Once scanned, we can automatically extract key information from your paperwork using OCR technology.
We can also provide automated matching, using unique document identifiers e.g. by purchase order number, for digital documentation.
Delivery Notes
Delivery notes are regularly received and signed for by businesses every day. This paperwork or electronic version arrives with goods for signature, to acknowledge goods receipt and in some instances can actually form a contract in accordance with the supplier’s terms and conditions. Delivery notes should be marked unchecked and received in accordance with our terms and conditions if the delivery has not been inspected or matched against the original Purchase Order. Any other delivery issues should also be noted.
Many issues can occur with deliveries, which need to be quickly rectified with the supplier and reflected in your payment to them. One such example is over-delivery – if you’ve ordered 10 items and the supplier delivers 20, you may be expected to pay for the additional items unless you deal with the discrepancy within the agreed terms. Your GRN acts as internal proof of goods received to process and match against your supplier invoices/purchase orders.
Goods Receipt Notes
The goods receipt note is an internal document produced after inspecting delivery for proof of order receipt. Generally produced by your stores team. It’s used by stores, procurement, and finance to raise any issues, update your stock records, and to be matched against the original purchase order and supplier invoice, to allow payment to be made.
Manually processing paperwork such as goods receipt and delivery notes can take a large amount of staff time in data entry and distribution to various departments. Paper copies of notes can be mislaid, supplier payments delayed and stock control systems out of date.