Receiving closes the loop on a purchase order (PO). When a sent order's shipment lands, you record what actually arrived, and the order moves to Received, the final state in the Draft → Sent → Received lifecycle.
Record a shipment
Open the sent PO and click Receive shipment. The receiving screen snapshots the ordered quantity for every line, then gives you one row per line with an inline received-quantity input:
- Enter the quantity that actually arrived on each line.
- Lines where received doesn't match ordered are highlighted, so shorts and overages are impossible to miss.
- Flag any variance (shorts, overages, or substitutions) on the affected line.
A running Received / ordered counter at the top shows how much of the order you've accounted for as you work through it.
Because the ordered quantities are snapshotted, you always have the original order to compare against. The Accounting CSV (snapshot vs received) export on the PO page gives you both side by side for reconciliation.
What Received changes
Marking an order received updates the Purchase orders page money strip. Each metric tracks a specific slice of the lifecycle:
| Metric | What it counts | When your order affects it |
|---|---|---|
| Capital deployed | Cost of open (sent) orders | While Sent; drops off once Received |
| Projected profit | Expected profit on open orders | While Sent; drops off once Received |
| Received this month | Cost basis of orders received in the current calendar month | The month you receive it |
| Blended margin | Margin across all sent and received orders | From Sent onward; receiving doesn't remove it |
So a single order's journey looks like this:
- Draft commits nothing. Drafted cost appears only as a muted "drafted, not committed" note under Capital deployed.
- Sent: its cost joins Capital deployed and its expected profit joins Projected profit. It also starts counting in Blended margin.
- Received: it leaves the open-order figures and its cost lands in Received this month. It keeps contributing to Blended margin, which reflects your whole committed book, not just what's in flight.
The Received tab on the Purchase orders page keeps the full history of landed orders, and each received row shows its ship date in the ETA column for reference.
Why record receipts at all
Beyond tidy books, receiving is what makes the top-of-page numbers trustworthy. If landed shipments sit in Sent forever, Capital deployed overstates what's actually at risk and Received this month understates what's hit your warehouse. A minute of receiving per shipment keeps the whole page honest.