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114 CHAPTER 4 The Procurement Process

Figure 4-25: Material and accounting documents from a goods receipt

The goods receipt step also results in updates to the purchase order and
the material master. The purchase order history is modifi ed to include the
material document number. A user is able to retrieve the purchase order (or
the purchase requisition, which, if you recall, includes a link to the purchase
order) and display the purchase order history. The history will show the mate-
rial document number, which the user can access to view details. In the material
master, the quantity, value, and the moving average price are updated.
Several optional steps can follow the goods receipt step, including the
creation of inspection lots, transfer requirements, notifi cations, and outputs.
Signifi cantly, SAP ERP includes certain optional capabilities that enable fi rms
to implement these steps. One of these capabilities, quality management, cre-
ates an inspection lot from the goods received and triggers various steps in
the quality management process. An inspection lot is a request for a quality
inspection of the materials received. It includes details such as how many of the
materials to inspect and which characteristics to inspect. In contrast, warehouse
management, another optional capability, generates a transfer requirement. A
transfer requirement documents the need for the warehouse to store or with-
draw materials. It therefore serves as a trigger for warehouse management
processes. We discuss warehouse management in Chapter 7. An example of a
notifi cation is when appropriate persons in the organization, such as the origi-
nal requisitioner, are informed that the materials have been received. Finally,
an example of an output is a goods receipt slip, which is a document that ware-
house personnel use to make certain they store the materials in the correct
locations.

Demo 4.9: Receive goods against a purchase order

INVOICE VERIFICATION

The next step in the process is invoice verification, which is summarized in
Figure 4-26. When a company receives a vendor invoice, it verifi es that the

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