Receiving / Warehouse Receiving

Receiving is the critical quality gate between transportation and warehousing. When a truck backs into a dock door, the receiving team unloads the freight, counts the units, inspects for damage, verifies product identity against the purchase order or ASN, and records everything before the goods enter inventory. A sloppy receiving process lets discrepancies – wrong quantities, damaged products, incorrect SKUs – slip into the warehouse undetected, where they become much harder and more expensive to resolve.

A standard receiving workflow includes matching the inbound shipment to the dock appointment and advance ship notice, verifying item counts and SKUs against the PO, inspecting for visible damage or temperature excursions (critical in cold chain), recording overages, shortages, and damages (OSD), capturing photos or notes for claims documentation, and signing the carrier's delivery receipt or POD. For food and beverage shippers, receiving also involves checking lot numbers, expiration dates, and temperature logs to confirm cold chain integrity.

Receiving accuracy has direct financial consequences. Accepting a short shipment without documentation means the shipper absorbs the loss – the window for filing a freight claim against the carrier closes quickly, and without OSD records from receiving, there's no evidence to support a claim. Conversely, accepting damaged goods without notation on the POD makes it nearly impossible to recover costs later. Retailers who discover discrepancies downstream may issue chargebacks that far exceed the value of the missing or damaged product.

Shippers who connect their TMS to the receiving process – via ASNs that tell the warehouse exactly what's coming, and appointment scheduling that ensures dock crews are ready – dramatically reduce receiving errors and the time goods spend waiting to be processed.