Purchase Receipt

Because "we ordered it", "it arrived" and "we were billed for it" are three separate facts, and only the middle one can be verified by looking in a warehouse.

The purchase receipt is the physical anchor of procurement and the middle leg of the three-way match. Without it a business can prove it ordered something and prove it was billed, but not that anything was delivered — which is precisely the gap that duplicate and inflated supplier invoices exploit. It is also what makes goods-received-not-invoiced visible, and that number is usually larger than anyone expects.

• A purchase receipt increases stock. If it posts no stock movement, it is paperwork, not a receipt.
• Received quantity is a physical fact and must reflect what actually arrived, even when that differs from what was ordered or later invoiced.
• A receipt creates no payable. The supplier's invoice does that, and the two are deliberately separate events.

The warehouse receives on paper and finance receives in the system, days apart, from different documents. Stock is right eventually and wrong daily, the accrual is understated at every period end, and because both teams are working from their own accurate record, neither believes the discrepancy is theirs.

• Goods received and rejected at inspection — the movement happened and needs a return, not a deletion.
• Partial receipt across several deliveries against one order line, where the balance may no longer be wanted by the time it arrives.
• Goods received without paperwork, which the warehouse must still be able to record — an unrecorded arrival is worse than an imperfect one.
• Subcontracting receipts, where finished goods arrive and your own raw material is consumed at someone else's site.
• Landed costs — freight and duty that belong in the item's valuation but arrive on a different document, days later.