Receive a purchase order in SSMS

Learn how to receive a purchase order and create and execute the counting tasks necessary to add the items to the stock.

Purchase order

To receive a purchase order, the first step is to generate the goods receipt tasks. They can be generated both from the backend and the frontend.

Generate and assign goods receipt tasks

To generate the goods receipt tasks from the front end, go to the ‘Receive’ screen and click the ‘New Receive’ button

The ‘New Receive’ dialog will be displayed, including the following options:

• From Document. The ‘New Receive From Document’ option allows users to search for documents to generate the tasks.

• Blind (No Document). The ‘Blind (No Document)’ option is used to create a delivery note to receive goods not linked to a purchase or distribution order.

When clicking the ‘From Document’ button, the dialog will display the following fields:

• Creation Date. This field will be automatically populated.

• Document Number. In this selector, documents like Goods Receipts, distribution orders, and delivery notes can be selected to generate distribution order receipt tasks or goods receipt tasks respectively. In this case, we will select a goods receipt to create goods receipt tasks.

• Assign To:

  • Me. To assign the task to the user who is creating it.

  • Different User. To assign it to a different user.

  • Not Assigned. To postpone the assignment. In this case, the task will be available in the ‘Receive’ section to be assigned later.

• Arrive Truck Date and Arrive Truck Time. Date and time of arrival of the carrier. Behavior of these fields is controlled by the system preference: “Determine If Arrive Truck Date/Time Is Mandatory”

  If the preference is set to "Y" (default), the Arrive Truck Date and Arrive Truck Time fields are mandatory and are automatically populated with the current date and time. The values can be modified by the user.

  If the preference is set to "N", the fields are optional, and the process can continue without entering them.

Finally, click the ‘Create Receive’ button to create the task. The ‘Create Receive and Start’ button will be only available if the user assigns himself the task. It creates the tasks and initializes them.

Once created, the task will be displayed in the ‘My Assigned Tasks’ and ‘Receive’ screens. In the ‘Receive’ screen, assigned and unassigned tasks are identified with a specific icon, with the text ‘Me’ or ‘?’ respectively.

When clicking on a task, if it is assigned to ‘Me’, the ‘Assign Task’ dialog will be displayed to confirm the assignment.

Whether or not the Arrived Date and Time screen is displayed depends on the system preference “Determine If Arrive Truck Date/Time Is Mandatory”:

• If the preference is set to “Y”, and the user has not yet entered the Arrive Truck Date and Arrive Truck Time, the Arrived Date and Time screen will be shown.

• If the preference is set to “N”, the screen will not appear, and the process will continue without requesting this information.

Note that this information is only requested during the first assignment. If it is unassigned and then assigned again, it won’t be requested.

The goods receipt tasks can also be checked in the back office: 

• In the ‘Task’ window.

• In the ‘Purchase Order’ window, in the ‘Task’ subtab of the ‘Lines’ section.

• In the ‘Reception List’ window, in the ‘Task’ subtab.

Confirm goods receipt tasks

Once the goods receipt tasks are assigned, they will appear in the ‘My Assigned Tasks’ screen of the corresponding users, in the ‘Pending’ tab/column. 

To confirm a task, click on it and then on the ‘Confirm Task’ button. Note that, depending on the warehouse front end configuration, the list of tasks to be received is displayed in the ‘Pending’ or ‘Counted’ screens showing more or less information.

To start counting items, two different methods can be used:

• Scanning their barcodes with the device camera, by clicking on the barcode icon in the top toolbar.

• Clicking on the task and using the quantity buttons ‘+’ and ‘-’.

Below the quantity buttons, the bin in which the items will be stored is indicated in the ‘To Bin’ field. The bin can be modified by clicking the edit button or scanning a new bin.

Once all the items have been counted, if the quantity is equal to the expected amount, the item is moved to the ‘Counted’ section, and a green icon will be displayed.

Manage discrepancies

If the counted amount is different (higher or lower) than the expected one, the task will stay in the ‘Pending’ tab with an orange warning icon. If a non-expected item is scanned, it will be added to the ‘Pending’ tab with the orange icon.

When all the received items are counted, the receive tasks can be confirmed using the ‘Confirm Tasks’ button. 

If there are discrepancies during the confirmation, the ‘Discrepancies Detected’ screen will be opened, and an action must be selected for each product with discrepancies.

For ‘Missing’ discrepancies, the following options are available:

• Confirm partially and continue later. To confirm the task with the specified quantity (3/5, for example) and automatically create another task created in available status for the remaining amount (2/2, in this case) so it can be confirmed later once the remaining units arrive.

• Propose a different option. To confirm the task with the specified quantity and automatically create another task in available status, for the remaining amount, in another bin.

• Raise Stock Incident. To select a reason for the incident. Different types of actions can be performed based on the selected reason.

The ‘Apply to remaining lines with Missing discrepancies’ checkbox is used to apply the selected action to all the ‘Missing’ discrepancies.

For ‘Exceeding’ discrepancies, only the option ‘Raise Stock Incident’ will be available. 

Once the necessary actions and reasons have been selected, click the 'Apply' button to save the changes and close the task. Closed tasks will disappear from the front end but can be checked from the back office, in the ‘Reception List’ window.

When the purchase order is confirmed, it is moved to the section ‘Confirmed’ in the ‘Receive’ and ‘My Assigned Task’ screens. They can also be checked in the back office, in the ‘Purchase Order’ window. 

If defined, the goods receipt tasks can also consider tolerances to accept variations in the number of counted items.

Action availability and access control

The actions and options shown in the ‘New Receive’ dialog are role-dependent. By default, if a user does not have permission for a specific action, it will not appear in the interface.

This behavior can be overridden per warehouse by defining a custom UI configuration in the ‘Warehouse Definition’ window.

For more details on how access is configured, see the Role and User Action Setup in SSMS section.