When creating a goods receipt, you must make sure that the goods receipt has a reference (for example, a purchase order reference). This is most often the case. The reference data is then normally stated on the delivery documents. Should the reference data be missing, the system offers various search aids to help determine the correct reference document, if required. The following briefly describes the documents that you can reference at goods receipt:

If goods are delivered for a purchase order, the goods receipt is entered in the system referencing the purchase order. This has a number of advantages:

• The goods receipt can be planned, since the delivery date and the quantities are known to the system (in the purchase order or shipping notification).

• Goods receipt data is updated in the purchase order history and in Vendor Evaluation. This enables the purchase order history to be tracked, dunning procedures initiated, and quantity reliability and on-time delivery performance checked.

• The information entered at goods receipt is available for Invoice Verification purposes.

• An automatic SAPmail can be sent to the buyer who created the purchase order as soon as the goods receipt is posted.

Ideally, the delivery documents should contain a reference to the purchase order for which the delivery is made. If this information is missing, however, you can find the correct purchase order using other information known to you, such as the vendor article number, the EAN or the vendor number.

You enter the number of the shipping notification or the number of the rough goods receipt. The system then creates a reference to the purchase order on which the shipping notification or the rough goods receipt is based. You can add items that are not included in the purchase order to the shipping notification or rough goods receipt. If you want to do this, you can make a setting in Customizing for each movement type that results in a purchase order being created automatically in the background for these additional items after the goods receipt is posted.

At goods receipt, a delivery can be entered for the following types of document:

• Delivery for a warehouse order

• Delivery for a stock transport order

If you enter a goods receipt for a shipping notification, a rough goods receipt or a delivery, you can select an indicator on an additional dialog box and branch to an additional screen. All the shipping units in the reference document (for example, delivery) are proposed here. You can select shipping units and the system will automatically find the items in the goods receipt.

If you post a goods receipt for a document for which distribution data exists in the system, this distribution data must be adjusted to correspond with the quantities actually delivered. If the appropriate Customizing settings have been made, the distribution data is adjusted when the goods receipt is posted.

For each article, the stock is posted to the storage location for the appropriate processing method (for example, cross-docking or flow-through). You should have a separate storage location for each processing method. If you use an optimizing method (for example, cross-docking/flow-through), the system proposes a split for the articles concerned, creating two goods receipt items, each with a different storage location.

If you make the relevant Customizing settings, you can have the system automatically trigger subsequent processing (generation of deliveries or distribution orders).

If you are unable to reference another document in the system, you can still post the goods receipt. No Invoice Verification is, however, possible in this case.

The goods receipt can only be posted if the article is listed at the site. If the article is not listed and you still wish to post the goods receipt (because the vendor delivered a new article to replace an older model, for example), you can configure the system so that the new article is automatically listed. In this case the listing conditions are only valid for the day.

Alternatively, you can configure the movement types in such a way that a purchase order is automatically created in the background when a goods receipt of this kind is entered. Once a purchase order has been created, you can then carry out Invoice Verification.