Delivery note: the document that settles what actually arrived

A delivery note travels with goods and lists what is in the consignment. The customer checks it against what arrived, signs or acknowledges it, and both sides keep a copy. It is a small document with one large function: it is the record that settles disagreements about quantity, condition and date, which are the disagreements that otherwise turn into unpaid invoices.

It is deliberately not an invoice. A delivery note says what was supplied and normally carries no prices; the invoice says what is owed. Merging them is common in small businesses and causes two problems — the warehouse sees your margins, and the accounting record ends up dependent on a piece of paper that travelled in a van.

What goes on it

• A delivery note number and date, and the order or quotation it relates to.
• Supplier and customer details, with the delivery address where it differs from the billing address.
• Item descriptions and quantities — quantity ordered and quantity delivered as separate columns, so a part shipment is visible rather than inferred.
• What is outstanding, if anything, and when it is expected. This is the column that stops the phone call.
• Any special handling, batch or serial numbers where they matter for warranty or traceability.
• Space for the recipient to sign or acknowledge, with the date and a printed name — a signature nobody can read identifies nobody.
• Prices only if you have decided to show them. Most businesses do not.

How it fits the paperwork chain

1. Quotation: what it will cost, covered in quotation format.
2. Order or purchase order: the commitment to buy, covered in purchase order format.
3. Delivery note: what actually arrived, signed on receipt.
4. Invoice: what is owed, ideally matched against the delivery note before it is sent.
5. Credit note if something goes back or was billed wrongly, covered in credit note.

The match between delivery note and invoice is the control that catches most billing errors before the customer does. Invoicing what was ordered rather than what was delivered produces exactly one kind of message — an item was missing and you have charged for it — and that message costs you the payment date on the whole invoice, not just the disputed line.

Signed, unsigned and digital

A signature on receipt is what makes the delivery note useful in a dispute, and it is increasingly captured on a screen rather than paper. Either works. What does not work is a note left in the box and never returned, which is a packing list rather than a delivery note — useful for the person unpacking, useless as evidence. If your carrier will not collect a signature, the fallback is a photograph of the delivered consignment with a timestamp, kept with the order.

Delivery note or packing slip

The terms overlap and are used interchangeably in much of the world. Where they are distinguished, a packing slip is inside the parcel and tells the recipient what should be in it, while a delivery note is the document handed over and signed on receipt. Small businesses generally need one document that does both, and the practical question is whether somebody acknowledged receipt rather than what the form is called.

Where it lives

Ettex Invoices produces delivery notes from the same order records as the invoice, so quantities delivered and quantities billed come from one place rather than two, and the signed copy attaches to the order. The stock side of the same movement sits in inventory management.

The limits: there is no carrier integration, no label printing, no proof-of-delivery capture from a courier network and no barcode scanning on receipt. The document and the record are ours; the van is not.