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Reverse a goods receipt
Take stock back off the books when goods were booked in twice, in the wrong quantity, or against the wrong order.
- Steps
- 3 · About 3 min
- Who can do this
- Owner · Manager · Accountant
- Needs the module
- Buy
Before you start
Receiving is the moment stock arrives on your books, and at a cost. Book in goods that did not arrive — a pallet counted twice, a quantity read off the wrong line, a delivery entered against the wrong order — and two figures are wrong at once: how much you have, and what it is worth.
This is the mirror of reversing a delivery, and it says the same thing: those goods never arrived, and the receipt should not have existed.
Open the receipt on its order
Purchases, open the purchase order, find the receipt among its goods receipts, and below it, Correct receipt.
An order received in several deliveries has several receipts. They are separate documents; correct the one that is wrong.
What to look at:
Correction date — when the stock comes off. Today by default. If the receipt was booked in a month you have since closed, correct it in an open period rather than reopening one.
Why is this receipt being corrected? — required, and kept. Booked in twice, wrong quantities, received against the wrong order. This is the line that stops the same argument happening twice with the same supplier.
Reverse receipt — one press.
What it did
The received quantity comes off the order, and the same quantity leaves the warehouse it went into. The order returns to partly received or ordered, and its lines can be received again.
Your stock value moves too, and this is the part worth understanding. Receiving pushed the item's moving average towards the price on that receipt; reversing it removes that influence. If the receipt carried a badly wrong unit price, the reversal is what repairs the average — not a later correction to the bill.
The original receipt stays visible with its reversal beside it.
Reversal, or a supplier credit?
The same fork as on the selling side, and the same rule:
The goods never arrived — a duplicate, a mis-keyed quantity, the wrong order. Reverse the receipt. Nothing changes with the supplier; they invoiced what they invoiced.
The goods arrived and went back — damaged, wrong item, over-delivered and refused. Record a supplier credit, which moves both the stock and what you owe.
Reversing a receipt does not reduce what you owe the supplier. If the bill is wrong, the bill is what needs fixing.
If the goods on this receipt have already been sold or transferred, the reversal will take stock you no longer have and can leave the item negative. That is the ERP telling you the truth, not breaking — but it needs sorting the same day, usually by receiving the goods correctly straight afterwards.
Next, you might want to
- Receive goods against a purchase orderRecord what physically arrived, in full or in parts, and put it into stock at the price you agreed.
- Record a supplier creditEnter the credit note your supplier issued you — for goods sent back, an overcharge, or a discount agreed after the invoice.
- Why nothing here is ever editedHorizon213 corrects mistakes by posting the opposite, not by changing what was written. This is the rule behind almost every "you cannot" in the guides.