Best practice to mark items as received before they are counted?

SOLVED

What is the best way to enter items as received quickly so the quantities received can be changed easily after the fact for accuracy?

Often, when shipments arrives, they can take days, sometimes weeks to be counted, and it makes it difficult for employees to see whether an item has been received or not, particularly salespeople who would otherwise know they can take orders because by the time the order goes into production, it will be available. If the items were received based on the packing list, this system would reflect this receipt. However, for accuracy, we check the contents of every shipment to make sure it corresponds to what is on the packing list. 

The only solution I can think of is doing a return of goods. However, this is not a convenient way to make these sort of corrections, and I'm interested in whether there is a better way. 

  • 0
    verified answer

    Receive into a holding warehouse and then transfer to production warehouse as they are counted.

  • 0 in reply to BigLouie

    Interesting idea. I don't think I would have ever thought of this. 

    In the case that there are missing items, what then?

    The PO at that point should be marked as having backordered items, but if they are marked as received, when then?

    This might be the best compromise between accuracy and speed. I'm just interested in what is the best solution from that perspective.   

  • 0 in reply to HerbSewell

    Best practice would be to count before posting the RoG.  Any other strategy will have you using a work-around to handle short shipments. 

    A temp warehouse for uncounted inventory receipts is indeed a creative idea, but you have to come up with a strategy to deal with short shipments on your own.  A return backs out the mistakenly received quantity, but depending on valuation (FIFO / Average...), the returned inventory costs won't necessarily align with the original receipt.

    If you leave received inventory unverified for a long time, I'd be concerned with the vendor not accepting news of a short count (after a significant delay).