How to Use a Receiving Report

What is a receiving report?

A receiving report is a document used by companies to track materials received from different suppliers whenever there are deliveries. Typically, the prepared reports are distributed to other departments to ensure that all information is endorsed to relevant people within the team.

It’s meant to let the purchasing agent and accounting team know that specific items from scheduled orders are already on hand. The details indicated on the report will help them do proper inventory and settle the necessary payments for the goods on time.

In this article, the following points are explained:

1. Why to keep a record of received reports

2. How to write a proper receiving report

3. Four ways how digital received reports benefit your process

4. The benefits of digital receiving reports

Why do you need to keep a record of received reports

Whether you offer products or provide services, at some point, you’ll receive goods, tools, or parts to run your business operation. For you to do that smoothly, information on what’s been received or not must be tracked appropriately and disseminated — this is exactly what a receiving report is for.

Here are examples of some of its uses:

1. It helps document damaged goods that need to be returned and keeps clear documentation of the reason for return.
2. It can serve as an essential proof of receipt during a three-way matching process. This approach is typically used to ensure a more accurate payment process, especially for larger-dollar purchases.
3. It can gather and organize expenses for supplier invoices that are yet to be received by the company.

Essentially, it’s a critical factor that helps avoid confusion among departments and helps you always stay on top of any missing items, goods that need to be returned, and payables to your suppliers.

Proper way to write a receive report

How you write your receive report will depend on your company requirements like Free on Board (FOB) and inspection terms. However, there are essential elements that are uniformly observed across industries.

A proper receiving report should include the following information:

• Date and time the delivery was received
• Purchase number
• Name of shipping company
• List of each item received
• Quantity of each item received
• Condition of the goods. The receiving staff has the option to only log damaged goods or missing goods
• Supplemental documents (e.g., proof of delivery or packing slip), if necessary
• Official receiver’s name and signature verifying goods were in good condition

Multiple copies of the receiving report should be made with the master copy kept by the receiving department. The rest of the copies are to be sent to other departments following company guidelines.

Consider assigning number sequences to your receiving reports to organize your reports better and help your tracking become easier. That way, you can easily track if there’s a missing report.

Traditional VS. Digital: Four Ways digital received reports can benefit your process

Previously, reports had been done on paper, but today’s innovations now allow for a faster alternative. Digitization offers a handful of benefits that can help improve your business operations and processes.

Here are four main advantages you can enjoy from digitizing your receiving reports:

1. It improves process efficiency.
   Every time delivery happens, receiving report forms should be readily available and immediately disseminated to the finance team and other departments once completed. Traditional reports would require you to photocopy or scan the master copy, organize the carbon copies, and then physically transport the documents to the respective departments.
   On the other hand, a digital receiving report can be created, stored, and distributed in one click. Best of all, this can all be done even while using a mobile app on a tablet or smartphone.
2. It makes auditing easier.
   One of the best things about digital reports is the ease of recordkeeping. It can help clean your audit trails by improving information consolidation, minimizing lost paper trails, and avoiding confusion or misinformation because of illegible handwriting.
3. It makes data more accessible.
   As the reports pile up, storing and organizing them can be a challenge. But with digitization, gone are the days of swimming through piles of paper reports just to find the information you need. You can access your digitally stored reports, download them, and access them anytime you need. All you have to do is search and download information right at your fingertips.
4. It improves recordkeeping accuracy.
   Because digital forms are highly customizable, you can make specific fields mandatory to ensure that critical information is never missed out. Data gathered through digital forms can be more accurate as it helps minimize entry errors and discrepancies that can otherwise happen during manual entries.

Go digital and reap the benefits of digital receiving reports

With Lumiform, you can bid manual reports goodbye and take your operations to the next level with digitization. You can streamline your process by equipping your team with a powerful reporting tool they can use to consolidate delivery data better.

But that’s not all, when you choose Lumiform, you also enjoy these benefits:

• Draft a receiving report in minutes using our ready-made templates with over 12,000 choices ready for you to use.
• Create all the delivery-related forms you need using our form builder.
• Use the mobile app to get 24/7 data access anywhere — online or offline. Best of all, you just have to search using keywords, and the information you need is made available immediately.
• Consolidate all information, photo documentation, and supplementing documents in one place so you can look up evidence and proof of deliveries easily. Even better, you can generate reports in minutes and send them to your teammates with just a click of a button.
• Improve your team coordination by raising issues right on the app, notify your teammates, and solve issues faster.