Receiving Stock & Supplier Bills: From Purchase Order to Payment
Buying stock is a chain of documents, and each link changes your books in a specific way. This guide walks the chain from the order to the supplier's official receipt, explains what is recorded at each step, and covers the guard rails that keep inventory on the shelf and inventory in the ledger in step.
The Seven Steps
| Step | Where | What the books do |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Order | Inventory → Purchase Orders | Nothing yet. A PO is a commitment, not a transaction. |
| 2. Receive | Purchase Orders → Receive, or Inventory → Direct Receive | Stock and cost layers go up. Inventory is debited and the amount you now owe is parked in 2015 Goods Received Not Invoiced. |
| 3. Bill | Supplier Bills → Create from receipt | The parked amount moves from 2015 to Accounts Payable. Any difference between the receipt cost and the billed price goes to 5020 Purchase Price Variance. |
| 4. Voucher | Finance → Disbursements → New | Nothing. The voucher is an authorisation document. |
| 5. Approve | Disbursement voucher page | Nothing. A second person signs off before money moves. |
| 6. Pay | Release the voucher, or Record Payment on the bill | Accounts Payable is cleared against cash or bank. Checks sit in Checks Payable until they clear. |
| 7. Receipt | Release / payment form | The supplier's OR number and a photo of the proof are stored on the payment. Nothing new is posted. |
Step 2: Receiving Books Inventory at Once
The moment a goods receipt is completed, the stock is on your shelf and in your ledger. Before this change, inventory only reached the books when the bill was submitted — so a receipt at month-end without a bill left the balance sheet short on both inventory and liabilities, and goods sold before the bill arrived took cost out of an Inventory account that was never filled.
The liability is parked in 2015 Goods Received Not Invoiced (GRNI). Think of it as "we owe this, but the supplier has not invoiced us yet". It is cleared automatically when you submit the bill for that receipt.
- Paid on delivery? Choose Paid Already and the account the cash came from. Inventory is debited against that account and nothing is parked in 2015.
- Consignment? Consignment stock is tracked separately in Consignment Inventory and Consignment Payable, and is settled rather than billed.
- Voiding a receipt reverses the stock movement, the cost layers and the ledger entry together. A receipt dated inside a closed accounting period cannot be voided until the period is reopened.
The Unbilled Receipts Report
Reports → Financial → Unbilled Receipts lists every completed receipt that has no supplier bill yet: receipt number, date, supplier, PO, amount, and how many days it has been waiting. Each row has a Create bill button. The Supplier Bills page shows the same total on an Unbilled Receipts card.
The report total should equal the balance of account 2015. The page shows the difference and, when there is one, why: a receipt dated in a closed period, an accrual that was voided, receipts recorded before this feature, or automatic journal entries being switched off. Rows marked not accrued are the ones to look at.
Step 3: Bills With Stock Lines Need a Receipt
Every line on a supplier bill is either stock (the GL account is left as Inventory (default)) or an expense (you picked a GL account for it). A stock line has to be backed by a goods receipt, otherwise the ledger would gain inventory that never reached the shelf. When you submit a bill whose stock lines have no receipt, the bill stays in draft and a window asks how to record the stock:
- Items already arrived — create a goods receipt from these lines. Adds the quantities to stock at the bill's cost (net of VAT for VAT-registered suppliers), posts the receipt, then submits the bill. Not offered when the bill's purchase order already has received stock, because that would double it.
- Already received — link an existing goods receipt. Pick the unbilled receipt for this supplier. This is the normal case when someone received the delivery earlier. Bills raised against a purchase order pick up the order's receipt automatically when there is exactly one.
- These are not stock — expense them. Assign a GL account to each line. Nothing is added to inventory.
The easiest way to avoid the prompt is to start from the receipt: open the goods receipt (or the Unbilled Receipts report) and click Create bill, which brings the quantities and costs across already linked.
Three-Way Match
A bill linked to a purchase order or a receipt shows a Three-way match card: for every line, what was ordered, what was received, what is being billed, and the PO, receipt and bill unit costs side by side. Lines whose price drifts past the tolerance (1% or ₱50, whichever is larger) or whose quantity differs from what was received are highlighted with the reason, and the card totals the purchase price variance the bill will post. It is a warning, not a block — the bill still posts, and the difference is visible in account 5020 rather than buried in Inventory.
Step 6: Paying
Route payments through a Disbursement Voucher so one person prepares, another approves, and the release records every underlying payment together. For a quick single payment, Record Payment on the bill does the same for one bill. Either way the payment entry clears Accounts Payable against the cash, bank or check account you choose.
Step 7: The Official Receipt
When you release a voucher or record a payment, enter the supplier's Official Receipt / Acknowledgment number and attach a photo or PDF as proof (the OR, the bank confirmation, or the signed voucher). The OR number is stored on each payment and shown on the bill and voucher pages; the proof lands in the Gallery, linked to the payment, so an auditor can go from the bill to the proof in two clicks.
Paid a Supplier From the POS Drawer?
A cash-out on the POS creates a draft expense so the money is never lost from the books. If that cash actually bought stock, open the expense (or the shift's cash-movement row) and click Convert to Stock Purchase. Direct Receive opens pre-filled with the supplier, date, notes and the drawer photo, marked Paid Already from Cash on Hand. Type in what was bought and save: the items go to inventory, the drawer cash is credited, and the draft expense is voided with a reason and a link to the receipt. The shift page then shows the receipt number in place of the open expense.
Catching Up on Older Receipts
Receipts recorded before this feature, or while automatic journal entries were switched off, have stock but no accrual. Your accountant can post those accruals in one go with the accounting:backfill-grni command (run it with --dry-run first to see the list). Receipts whose bill was already submitted are skipped, because that bill booked the inventory directly.
Who Can Do What
- Receive Stock — record and void goods receipts, convert a cash-out into a receipt.
- View Bills / Manage Bills — see the Unbilled Receipts report; create, link and submit bills.
- Pay Bills and Release Payments — record payments and release vouchers, including the OR number and proof.