Accounting Best Practices, Fifth Edition

16–25. Verify That All Receipts Are Entered in the Computer at Once

There is nothing that throws a wrench into a company’s production planning and accounting more than the delayed entry of warehouse receiving into the computer system. When this happens (or rather, when it does not happen), the purchasing staff does not know if materials have arrived and they begin a series of frantic calls to suppliers to determine when items are to be shipped. Likewise, the production scheduling staff decide not to produce something because they do not see any receipt in the computer system. Finally, the accounting staff has a very difficult time determining what was really received at the end of the accounting period, resulting in the reporting of inaccurate inventory figures in the financial statements. All this because someone in the warehouse is slow in entering receipts.

The obvious solution is to make the warehouse staff make their receiving entries as soon as they receive any parts, but the solution is not quite so simple. The underlying reason why receipts are not being entered at once is probably because the staff is too busy to do it, and so this chore waits until a slow period, perhaps at the end of the day. Thus, to make them enter receipts more quickly, one must find a better way to enter the receipts, one that is so simple and easy there is no excuse to delay the process. One way is to require all suppliers to attach a bar-coded sheet to all shipments, allowing the receiving staff ...