Goods received note GRN
Goods received note (GRN) is a document that acknowledges the delivery of goods to a customer by a supplier and confirms that the goods have been received in a suitable condition by the customer. They may be internally generated by the customer as a project record or be a joint document between customer and supplier and form part of logistics in construction.
A delivery note or Proof of Delivery (POD) may refer to the same document, acting for both purposes but is usually produced by the supplier and acknowledged by the customer, in the case of a construction site, often a particular individual. These documents differ from Goods Despatched Notes (GDN) which are merely supplier documents confirming that a delivery has been shipped from its manufacturing base or warehouse.
A GRN is the record of goods that the buyer has received, and normally contains a description of the goods, the quantity of good, the date of delivery and the individual who inspected the goods. It used by the buyer to compare the goods ordered to those delivered, and is normally completed following a brief inspection of the items, their condition and number. It is then retained to compare to the supplier invoices or purchase orders for a particular project as well as the bills of quantities.
The information in the collected GRN's can also become significant as a body of information for contractual purposes in relating the contractor performance to that of the agreed construction programme or agreed costs. These can become especially important in scenarios where damaged goods or late deliveries have knock on effects causing programme or completion delays that have cost implications.
GRNs may also increasingly be used as evidence requirements for building or site environmental performance assessments, confirming the materials actually used in a building project, for example assessing product and site emissions, known as cradle to gate and gate to site emissions. They may also be a key part of any waste reduction programme both from the perspective of the over ordering of materials but also in terms of waste packaging.
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