Receiving an Inbound Purchase

Purpose

It records the arriving load, records the physical receipt, and creates the stock lot that the warehouse and outbound teams then work from.

Who does this

Inbound office staff who record goods arriving and turn them into stock.

Before you start

• You have the right account (see Permissions and Access).
• The record and date you are working on are correct.
• Words you do not know are in the Glossary.

Access

Shipping > Inbound Orders, with the weighing steps in Operations > Scale Portal

The order things happen in

1. Record the order
2. Weigh the vehicle in and out — see Weighing a Load at the Scale
3. Finalize the receipt — this is a separate action from the weighing
4. The stock lot is created

Weighing the vehicle does not receive the goods. Until the receipt is finalized there is no stock, even though the weights are recorded and the ticket says complete.

Recording the order

1. Search by date, PO, reference, load or commodity.
2. Open anything that looks like a match before creating a new order.
3. Enter the order type, the parties, the reference, the timing and the lines.
4. Save once, then reopen the order and check the header and every line.

Some lines are filled in for you from the purchase agreement. A filled-in line is a suggestion, not a record of what arrived. Check each one.

Receiving the load

When the vehicle is weighed

For an arriving load the order is: loaded first, then empty. Do both before going any further.

Finalizing

Open the Scale Portal, find the exact order, and run the finalize action. This is separate from the weighing. It sets the items to unloaded, records the time and ticket, and creates the stock lot.

Then reopen everything and check: the ticket, the order, the items, the load, and the new lot.

One line at a time. The lot can only be created for a load with a single active line. If your order has several lines, the finalize will fail and roll back at that point. Split the receipt or check why there is more than one line before retrying.

If the finalize fails after a successful weighing

Do not weigh again. The weighing is already recorded. Reload and read the order and the ticket to see how far it got.

When there is no scale to weigh

Some loads — freight brokerage on an ocean booking — can be received without weighing.

Find the action Complete Without Scale in the Scale Portal's schedule list. It is not on the inbound order screen.

Before you use it, check all of these:

• it is a freight brokerage ocean booking
• it is not cancelled
• nothing has been weighed or moved yet
• there is exactly one active line, and it still says scheduled
• the net weight is filled in

If any of these is not true, it will not work, or it will do the wrong thing.

Choosing what happens next

After the receipt the screen offers a next step: to stock only, straight to outbound, or a mix. Pick what is actually intended.

This choice is only a link to the next screen. It does not create an outbound order, and it does not set stock aside. If you lose it, choose again from the order — it is not saved.

Changing or deleting a received order

The whole order cannot be deleted once any of these exist: a scale ticket, a load, an outbound allocation, a received or located lot, or stock history. That is deliberate — it would break records that other work depends on.

Times that the scale already recorded are also held.

Lines are more fragile than the order. A line that has been received can still be edited or deleted, and doing so can leave the lot balances wrong — the stock left in the lot can be recalculated to a figure that does not match reality.

If a line must change after it is received, change it and then check the lot balance against what is physically on the rack. Do not trust the number the screen shows. And do not decide a repair from the error message alone — report what you see.

If something goes wrong

Situation	What you do
The order is not in the list	Narrow the search and reload. It may be outside your date range.
The finalize failed on a multi-line order	Only one active line can be received at once. Split it or check the lines.
The weighing is done but there is no stock	The receipt was never finalized. Finalize it.
Complete Without Scale will not work	Check the five conditions above. Most often it has more than one active line.
I want to weigh again	Do not. The weights are recorded. Read the order and ticket first.
The order will not delete	Something depends on it. That is the intended behaviour — report it instead.
A line edit changed the lot balance	Check the lot against the physical stock and report the difference.
Someone else edited the order	The last save wins. Reload before doing anything else.

Who owns the next step

Inbound office owns the order and the receipt. The scale operator owns the weights. Once the lot exists, the warehouse owns its location and outbound owns what is drawn from it — see Reading the Warehouse Map and The working day, step by step.

The full step-by-step

This page is the short version. The screen-by-screen procedure with every field and recovery step is here:

• Inbound Orders