Problem Statement
While it is pretty much standard to order items through purchase order and receive material through material receipt process, the off-the-shelf Adempiere solution looks a bit tricky for the beginners from the perspective of receiving the material and putting the checked / verified material into the inventory. As part of this article we intend to document the overall business expectation, how Adempiere meets those expectations.
Overall Workflow
Following diagram depicts the overall flow involved while receiving an inbound material (including customer return and transfer) in a warehouse. 
Typically this is what happens during this process
- Business places an order (purchase or transfer) for procuring items into a warehouse
- The supplier delivers the items (There will be many intermediate processes involved here, before the item gets delivered at the Warehouse. We will talk about that in separate article)
- The business enters all the material entry into Material Receipt. If the business has already received invoice (or they have a policy that the different person / department will inspect the items than the one who receives material) then they enter everything before deciding on the quality of the items. Depending on quality they quantify certain items as scrap and accept remaining items as valid item.
- The designated person reviews the received items and categorize items as accepted and scrap and confirms the receipt
- The items become available in the inventory
- The business creates Invoice (Vendor) in the system
- Settles the Account Payable with the vendor
How Does it work in Adempiere?
Create a Purchase Order
Create a purchase order by adding the required order line and complete the order document.
Create Material Receipt
- Select the supplier used during the purchase order
- Create receipt line by clicking on Create Lines From button
- Select the order for which you have received material
- Select one or more items from this order and modify quantity as per the received quantity (you can modify this later as well)
Material Receipt Lines From
Note that you can receive material of same Purchase Order multiple times (partial delivery) and you can also receive material from multiple purchase order in the same material receipt.
Alternately, you can also create receipt line from “Receipt Line” tab by clicking on the new button on toolbar enter the quantity detail at the material receipt line:
Once you are done with creation of receipt line, go to Material Receipt window and click on “Create Confirmation” button to create confirmation lines.
Following default confirmation type are supplied off-the-shelf
- Customer Confirmation (SO) – Shall be created when you receive confirmation from the customer regarding acceptance of the quantity being shipped.
- Drop Ship Confirm (Useful for Drop Ship Orders – PO / SO) – As of 3.60, this functionality is not (fully) implemented in Adempiere.
- Pick/QA Confirm (often PO) – This is required before shipment when the document type has “Pick/QA Confirmation” is ticked on the Document Type window of the associated document type. For example if this “Pick/QA Confirmation” is selected for Purchase Order document type then you must create this before you create a Receipt Confirmation record.
- Ship / Receipt Confirm (SO / PO) – This is required for processing a shipment if the document type indicates “Ship/Receipt Confirmation” is ticked for the associated document type (e.g. MM Customer Return)
- Vendor Confirmation (PO) – Shall be created when you receive confirmation from the vendor regarding acceptance of the quantity being shipped to the business.
For the standard material receipt, I have following document types setting:
This means that I really don’t need to go through Pick/QA Confirm or Ship / Receipt Confirm. I can directly go ahead and complete material receipt. However, when you select these flags and try to complete the receipt without completing corresponding confirmation then you will get below warning:
At the time of completion of material receipt the system automatically generated “Pick/QA Confirm” Confirmation Type.
Let’s review the confirmation line and complete the confirmation document.
Note that the system allows you to capture Scrapped Quantity, which is used to Create Difference Document.
Following image shows a completed confirmation document.
Let’s try to complete the material receipt again. It gives following warning:
Remember that we initially talked about ticking the “Pick/QA Confirmation” and “Ship/Receipt Confirmation” check boxes, which were deselected by default. Hence the warning was expected.
Now complete the Confirmation with Confirmation Type “Ship/Receipt Confirm”.
Now you are ready to complete your material receipt and after completion it looks like as follows:
Verify your inventory to ensure that item has really reached your inventory
Also, you can create your vendor invoice from material receipt (by clicking on the Generate Invoice from Receipt button) and after reviewing the invoice, you can complete the same.
After completing the invoice document, you can view following posting details (I have automatic account posting on):
References
- http://www.adempiere.com/ManPageW_ShipReceiptConfirm
- http://www.adempiere.com/ManPageW_MaterialReceipt
- http://help.sap.com/printdocu/core/print46c/en/data/pdf/LEWE/LEWE.pdf
- http://www.adempiere.com/ManPageW_DocumentType
Summary
In this article you have seen how Adempiere manages your Material Receipts process. In addition, I have also covered basics of placing a purchase order and invoicing to ensure that you get the complete picture. There are few other processes, which lead to material receipt in a warehouse. Some of such processes are material return from the customer and the transfer from one warehouse into other warehouse. I have kept them out of this article.
I hope this write-up helps you in making better use of Adempiere. In case you have further queries regarding Adempiere training, consulting, development then do visit our contact us page.
