Rule of Thumb | Keeping track of the Actual Ship Date of Shipments

When entering a receiving transaction, managing dates is an important point that shall be well managed in especially as part of vendor evaluation. Therefore, regardless of the document date which is recorded on the receiving transaction, you can still keep track of the "Actual Ship Date", which can mostly be used for reporting purposes.

In the following example (regardless of the fact that there are two types of receiving which are, shipment and shipment/invoice), a distribution company received a shipment at the 1st of March, while the document date is 15,3. In this essence, both dates are important and shall be kept.

On the Receiving Transaction Entry window, there are two dates that we will shed a light upon:

 

Receiving Transaction Entry

Document Date:
As commonly known, this field is the receipt date, by which the journal entry posting date is determined (according to the posting setup). This date determines the cost layer received date on the inventory module as well.

Actual Ship Date
On the other hand, it is still important to keep track of other piece of details, which is the Actual Ship Date regardless of the document date. This can be used as part of the vendor evaluation process.

Click on the expansion arrow, next to the document date field, and it will open the "Receiving Date Entry" window, in which there is a field for the actual ship date.

Actual Ship Date

Actual versus Promised Ship Date
 
It is important to mention that there are many other date fields on the Purchase Order entry level, which can determine lots of other associated details such as: Requisition Date, Promised Ship Date, Promised Date ...etc. Comparing the promised ship date, that is filled on the purchase order level, with the Actual Ship Date recorded on the receiving transaction level can provide valuable information for vendor evaluation.

Best Regards, 

Mahmoud M. AlSaadi