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When you’ve placed an order, receiving is how you record what actually turns up. Stockful handles part-shipments and partial receipts, and writes the received units to Shopify so your inventory stays right.
Receiving against a purchase order with per-line quantities

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Shipments

A shipment is a batch of the order’s units travelling together. Click Add shipment, choose how many of each unshipped line are in it, and add tracking number, carrier and expected arrival if you have them. Marking the shipment as in transit is what makes those units show as incoming with their own ETA. An order can have several shipments - useful when a supplier splits delivery. Each shows its status: In transit, Partially received, or Received. You can edit a shipment, record its shipment cost, and print a packing slip for it. The order’s own product list carries In transit and Received columns beside the quantity, so you can read how far each line has got without adding up the shipments underneath it. Once every ordered unit is on a shipment there’s nothing left to ship, and Add shipment goes away until you raise a quantity.
A shipment needs a destination on the purchase order - that’s the location the stock arrives at. Set it in the order details before adding a shipment.

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Receiving items

When a shipment arrives, choose Receive items. On the receive screen you work line by line at the destination location:
  • Accept the units that arrived in good order.
  • Reject any that were damaged or short.
  • Use Accept all or Reject all to handle a clean delivery in one go.
Barcode scanning works here too, with any scanner that types like a keyboard. Scan an item on the order and its Accept goes up by one. A barcode that isn’t on this order, one that two lines share, or one for a line already fully accounted for is refused with an explanation rather than guessed at, because a delivery is bounded by what was ordered. The toolbar badge shows whether scanning is live. Ready to scan means it is; Click the page to scan means the Shopify admin has the keyboard rather than Stockful, so a scan would land there instead. Click anywhere on the page and it clears. It works the same way on a count sheet. You can’t receive more than a shipment holds - if the accepted and rejected amounts exceed what’s outstanding, Stockful flags it so you can bring the numbers back in line. Accepted units are written to Shopify as on-hand at that location and drop out of your incoming stock.
If the destination is set to Record in Stockful only (see record-only receiving), receiving records the receipt, costs and history in Stockful without changing Shopify stock - for locations where a 3PL or another app owns the Shopify balance. The receive screen shows a notice when that’s the case.
Receive as many times as you need: a shipment can be Partially received and finished later. The purchase order shows Partially received until every unit is accounted for.

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Receipts

Each time you receive, Stockful records a receipt - a permanent line showing how many units were accepted and rejected, who received them, and the landed cost applied. Receipts are where your cost history comes from; see costs and landed cost.

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Correcting a receipt

Mistakes happen, so a receipt can be corrected rather than lived with. On an order received through Stockful, open the shipment and choose Manage received items to adjust the accepted and rejected quantities. On an order brought in from Stocky, which has no shipment attached, use Correct received quantities on the receipts panel instead. Either way the correction is recorded as its own receipt rather than rewriting the original, so the history of what happened stays intact.

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Reversing a receipt

Received the wrong order, or booked in a delivery that hadn’t actually arrived? Open the receipt on the Receipts panel and choose Reverse receipt. The accepted units come back out of stock at the destination, the shipment goes back to In transit with its units ready to receive again, and the order reopens for whatever is now outstanding. Landed cost is unwound too, so the product’s average cost returns to what it was. Each receipt shows how much of it can still be reversed - Fully reversed, or 4 of 12 still reversible when you’ve only taken part of it back. You can reverse a whole receipt or name the lines and quantities.
The receipt isn’t deleted. It stays on the order with the reversal recorded beside it, so the timeline shows what arrived and what was taken back as two separate events. Shopify has no way to un-receive a shipment, so a receipt is a permanent fact and a reversal is the correction to it - the same way a credit note works rather than a rubbed-out line.
Reversing needs the order to be open: reopen a Closed or Cancelled order first.

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Closing the order

Once you’ve received everything you’re going to, choose Close purchase order. Any units that never arrived are removed from your incoming stock, and the order is marked Closed as a record. Closing can’t be undone, and closed orders stay for your records rather than being deleted.
You don’t have to close an order the moment it’s fully received - a fully received order simply shows as Received. Closing is for tidying off orders where some units will never come, so they stop inflating your incoming stock.