A goods received note, abbreviated GRN, is the document recording what a supplier actually delivered: quantities received, date, condition, and the purchase order it relates to. It is the third document of three-way matching, alongside the PO and the invoice.
Its function is evidentiary rather than administrative. The PO states what was ordered and the invoice states what is being charged; only the GRN states what arrived. Without it, a company can verify that an invoice matches an order while paying for goods it never received.
The GRN is the weakest of the three documents, and the reason is organisational rather than technical. The PO is created by procurement and the invoice by the supplier, both of whom have a direct interest in accuracy. The GRN is created by whoever is standing at the delivery door, a warehouse operator or a site manager, under time pressure, with no visibility of the financial consequence of the number entered. It is frequently recorded from memory hours later, or not at all.
Four situations break it in practice. Partial deliveries, where one order arrives in three shipments. Over-deliveries accepted informally. Damaged or rejected goods received then returned without the note being amended. And services, which have no physical delivery at all and require a separate service entry confirming the work was performed.
Unmatched receipts accumulate in the GR/IR clearing account and become the basis of the invoice accrual at close. A GRN that is late or wrong therefore distorts the period result, not just the payment. See three-way match tolerance for how quantity gaps are handled.
