What is goods receipt note?
A goods receipt note is the record that material actually arrived on site, in what quantity and condition — the middle document of the three-way match.
Also called GRN.
Goods receipt note in plain words
It links the purchase order to the invoice. Without it, a payment is being made against a promise and a bill with nothing confirming that anything was delivered.
Goods receipt note: a worked example
A month of goods receipts, by entry pattern.
- Entered within 2 days of delivery
- 58% of receipts
- Entered in a month-end batch
- 34% of receipts
- Entered after the invoice arrived
- 8% of receipts
- What the map shows
- A month-end spike that is data entry, not supply
For the 34%, the delivery date in the system is the entry date. Any lead time measured from it is measuring the finance calendar.
Why does goods receipt note matter?
A late GRN is the most common single cause of a delayed vendor payment, and the vendor is usually blamed for it.
Where does goods receipt note mislead?
GRNs entered in batches at month end make every delivery look as if it arrived on the same day. Where that pattern appears, the material delay in the process map is an artefact of data entry, not of the supply chain.
What do people get wrong about goods receipt note?
- Reading a month-end spike as supply behaviour
- It is almost always the entry cycle. Mining lead time through it produces confident, wrong conclusions about vendors.
- Blaming the vendor for a late payment
- A missing or late GRN is the most common single cause of a delayed vendor payment, and the vendor has no visibility of it.
How does Crestline measure goods receipt note?
Crestline flags batch-entered GRNs by their timestamp pattern, so a month-end spike is reported as a data-entry artefact rather than mined as a supply-chain delay.