Recording part deliveries to site
How a contractor records materials that arrive on site in parts against a purchase order, matches the supplier's invoice and pays only for what came.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Construction businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
The truck reaches site with half the face bricks on the order and a driver who wants a signature before he leaves. The site agent signs the delivery note, the note goes into a cab, a pocket or a drawer, and later the supplier invoices for the full order. Now someone in the office has to work out what actually arrived.
Part deliveries are normal in construction. Merchants send what is in the yard and follow with the rest, steel arrives in lifts, and ready-mix comes truck by truck. The part delivery is not the problem. The problem is that nobody wrote down which part arrived, so nobody can check the invoice against it.
This article covers the receiving end of buying: how to record each delivery against the order, what Achekam does with that record, and how it protects you when the supplier's bill comes in.
The delivery note is the supplier's story
A delivery note is the supplier's document. It says what the supplier believes it sent. What a contractor needs is its own record of what it accepted, measured against what it ordered.
That means the person receiving on site checks the load against the purchase order, not against the driver's paperwork. Count what can be counted, check the grade or specification on bags and bundles, and look for damage before anything is offloaded into the works. Write shortages and breakages on the supplier's note before signing it, so the driver's copy tells the same story as yours.
Recording each delivery line by line
In Achekam, a delivery is recorded against the purchase order line by line, and part deliveries are part of the design rather than an exception. Each time something arrives, the quantity received goes against the matching order line, and a goods-received record is kept.
The order itself only exists because it came from an approved requisition and a selected quotation, and because someone other than its author approved it. The delivery record closes that loop: ordered, approved, received.
A worked example in words
Say an order has three lines: face bricks, cement and river sand. The first truck brings all the cement, some of the bricks and no sand. The receiver records the cement line as fully received and the brick line as partly received, and leaves the sand line open.
A week later a second truck brings the rest of the bricks and the sand. That delivery is recorded against the same order. The goods-received records now show two deliveries, and every line shows as received in full. If the second truck had come short again, the gap would sit on the order where the office can see it, rather than in a site agent's memory.
Why receiving does not add to stock
Goods received against a purchase order do not add stock in Achekam. For most contractors this matches how materials behave: bricks and cement delivered to a site go into the works, not onto a shelf.
If your firm keeps a yard and tracks its quantities with the Warehousing add-on, bear in mind that receiving an order will not raise the yard's quantity on its own. A stock count sets a location's quantity to what was counted and records the difference as an adjustment, so a regular count keeps the yard figures honest.
When the supplier's invoice arrives
This is where the delivery record pays for itself. A supplier invoice recorded against an order is matched with what was ordered and what arrived. If the price or the quantity differs, the invoice is held until someone writes a resolution note explaining the difference. This is the control accountants call three-way matching, which AccountingTools explains as comparing the supplier invoice, purchase order and receiving report before paying.
In the brick example, an invoice for the full brick quantity received after the first truck would be held, because the record shows only part of it arrived. Someone has to look, decide and write down why it can go ahead, or send it back to the supplier.
Once matched, posting the invoice puts it in the ledger as expense, input VAT and trade payables. The supplier's invoice number stops the same invoice being posted twice, which is a common way contractors overpay merchants they deal with every week.
Paying the supplier
Supplier bills are recorded line by line with VAT. A bill that has no purchase order behind it waits for approval before it posts, so off-order purchases still pass a second pair of eyes. A bill can be paid in full or in parts from the bank account you choose.
Paying in Achekam records the payment; it does not move money. No bank payment file is produced for suppliers, so the payment itself is made in your online banking and then recorded against the bill.
In Nigerian and Kenyan workspaces, supplier bills currently offer VAT at 15% or 0% rather than your own country's rate, so check the VAT on each bill before it posts.
A site checklist for deliveries
Keep this with the person who receives:
- Have the purchase order on hand, on paper or on a phone, before the truck arrives.
- Count and check against the order lines, not the delivery note.
- Record shortages, damage and wrong specifications on the supplier's note before signing.
- Record the delivery against the order in Achekam the same day, line by line.
- Send the signed delivery note to the office, and file it with the job.
- Raise a query with the supplier straight away when a line is short, rather than waiting for the invoice.
Receiving is the middle of the buying process. The start is covered in buying materials: requisition to purchase order, and the controls around big orders in requiring several quotes on big purchases.
Next time a part load arrives, record exactly what came off the truck before the driver leaves, and let the invoice match do the arguing for you.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
