Inbound Shipments
Inbound Shipments can be used to receive stock from suppliers.
If you have used mSupply in the past, you may be familiar with the term Supplier Invoice instead of Inbound Shipment.
All received goods should be recorded in mSupply either by:
- Manually creating an Inbound Shipment (manual Inbound Shipment)
- Working with an Inbound Shipment that has been created automatically as a result of a stock transfer from another store in your mSupply
Viewing Inbound Shipments
Go to the Inbound Shipments Menu
To access the Inbound Shipment menu:
- Go to the
Replenishment
menu in the navigation panel - Click on
Inbound Shipment
Inbound Shipments list
First thing you see is a list of existing Inbound Shipments.
The Inbound Shipments list is divided into 7 columns:
Column | Description |
---|---|
Name | Name of the Supplier |
Status | Current Status of the shipment |
Number | Reference Number of the shipment |
Created | Creation date of the shipment |
Confirmed | Confirmation date of the shipment |
Comment | Comment for the shipment |
Total | Total value of the shipment |
- The list can display 20 shipments per page. On the bottom left corner, you can how many shipments are currently displayed on your screen.
- If you have more than 20 shipments, you can navigate to the other pages by clicking on the page number or using the right of left arrows (bottom right corner).
Search by Supplier Name
You can filter the list of shipments by supplier name. This can be useful if you're looking for one particular shipment!
Type the name of a supplier in the Search by name
field (on the left, just above the list headers). All the shipments for this supplier will appear in the list.
Exporting Inbound Shipments
The list of Inbound Shipments can be exported to a comma separated file (csv). Simply click the export button (on the right, at the top of the page)
and the file will be downloaded. The export function will download all Inbound Shipments, not just the current page, if you have more than 20 of them. Shipments are exported using sort order selected in the table, though of course you could easily sort the list in Excel or whatever you open the .csv file with!
Delete an Inbound Shipment
You can delete a shipment from the Inbound Shipment list.
-
Select the shipment that you want to delete by checking the box on the left end of the list. You can select more than one shipments to be deleted. You can even select them all using the master checkbox in the list headers.
-
Open the Select dropdown (top right corner, above the list) and select
Delete selected lines
.
A notification confirms how many shipments were deleted (bottom left corner).
NEW
.
Creating a new manual Inbound Shipment
- Go to
Replenishment
>Inbound Shipment
- Press the
New Shipment
button, in the top right corner - A new window
Suppliers
opens, inviting you to select a supplier
Select a Supplier
- In the
Suppliers
window, you will be presented with a list of suppliers. You can select your supplier from the list or you can type as much of a supplier name.

- Once you have selected a supplier, you Inbound Shipment is created.
SHIPPED
.
That's why first status of a manual Inbound Shipment is always
SHIPPED
.
Edit the Supplier Name
If you have selected the wrong supplier, you can change the supplier name in the Supplier Name
field or select one the dropdown list:
Enter a Supplier Reference
Once your Inbound Shipment has been created, you can capture a supplier reference in the Supplier Ref
field, if they have one (eg. * PO#1234567 *)
View or edit the Inbound Shipment Information Panel
The Information Panel allows you see or to edit information about the Inbound Shipment. It is divided in multiple sections:
- Additional Info
- Related Documents
- Invoice Details
- Transport Details
How to open and close the Information Panel ?
To open the Information Panel, you can tap on the More
button, located in the top right corner of the Inbound Shipment view.
You can close by tapping on the X Close
button, on the top right corner of the information panel.
Additonal Info
In the Additional Info section, you can:
- See who created the Inbound Shipment (name of the user)
- View and edit the Inbound Shipment color. To edit the color, tap on the colored circle and select a color from the pop-up
- Write or edit a comment
Related Documents
In the Related Documents section, you can see other related transaction document for the Inbound Shipment.
If your Inbound Shipment was created to fulfill a Internal Order, the reference number of your order would appear in this section.
In the future, we would also include other documents such as temperature records, transportation documents or pickslips.
Invoice Details
In this section, you will see by default the total cost price of the items listed in the Inbound Shipment.
You can also add a Service charges if you wish to add other charges such as Freight Costs. To add a Service charges to the Invoice Details:
- Tap on the
Edit Service Charges
button. A new window opens. - Tap on the
Add charge
button on the new window. A new line appears in the list of charges. You tap onCancel
if you do not wish to add anything. - Name: select a service charges in the dropdown list. You can customise the list of available charges. Contact your administrator.
- Comment: You can add a comment to provide further details about the new charge
- Amount: Enter the amount of the charge
- Tax: Enter a % of tax for the charge
- Total: The total field is automatically calculated based on the Amount and the Tax percentage
- Delete: You can tap on the
Delete
icon to delete the charge
In this section, you can also edit the tax rate (%) for the cost price. Tap on the pencil icon and enter
Transport Details
In this section, you can see or edit a transport reference number (eg. a booking or a tracking reference number).
Inbound Shipment Status Sequence
The status sequence is located at the bottom left corner of the Inbound Shipment screen.
Passed statuses are hightlighted in blue, next statuses appear in grey.

New
.
Shipped
.There are 5 status for the Inbound Shipment:
Status | Description |
---|---|
New | This is the first status when you create a new manual Inbound Shipment |
Picked | Supplier has confirmed that shipment is picked and ready to ship (applies only to automatically created shipments) |
Shipped | Shipment has been shipped and goods are now in transit (applies only to automatically created shipments) |
Delivered | When you confirm that the shipment has been delivered |
Verified | When you have verified the inbound shipment |
You probably noticed that two of the status values only apply to automatically created shipments. These are created by the system when another store in the system creates an Outbound Shipment to deliver stock to your store. If this is the case you'll see a message near the top of the page:
If, however, you've created an Inbound Shipment manually, then the following message shows:
and you'll see that the status bar has only the status values which apply to this type of shipment.

New
.If you hover over the status sequence, a shipment history window appears. You can see the date when a shipment was updated from one status to another.
Hold checkbox
Located on the bottom left corner, on the left of the status sequence.
Check the Hold
checkbox prevents the Inbound Shipment from being updated to the next status.
Cancel and Confirm button
Cancel Button
Click on the Cancel
button to quit the Inbound Shipment view and return to the Inbound Shipments list.
Confirm Button
The Confirm
button is the button to update the status of a shipment. The status which you can confirm depends on the current status of the shipment and follows the sequence shown below.
When managing an Inbound Shipment, you can only confirm it as Delivered or Verified.
Confirm... | Current Status | Next Status |
---|---|---|
Confirm Delivered | Shipped | Delivered |
Confirm Verified | Delivered | Verified |
You don't have to update a shipment to next status in the sequence. You can choose to skip some of them to go directly to Confirm Verified
for example.
As demonstrated below, tap on the down arrow of the Confirm
button and select the status you want the shipment to be updated to.
Adding lines to an Inbound Shipment
To add a line, tap on the Add Item
button located in the top left corner of your screen.
A new Add Item
window opens.
Select an Item
In the Add Item
window, you can look up an item by:
- Reading through the list of available items
- or by typing some or all of an item name
- or by typing some or all of an item code
Once your item is highlighted, tap on the name or press Enter
.
Quantities tab
In the Quantities
tab, you can update the following fields:
- Batch: Type here the batch number. Leave blank if item is not managed with batch number.
- Expiry: The expiry date of the batch number. Leave blank is not applicable
- # Packs: The quantity of packs you are receiving
- Pack Size: The quantity of units per pack (by default, pack size is 1)
- Unit Qty (read-only): Automatically calculated based on # Packs and Pack Size (
[# Packs] x [Pack Size]
) - If you are receiving more than one batch number for the same item, you can tap on the
Add Batch
button
Pricing tab
On the second tab, Pricing
, you can update the following fields (all are optional):
- Sell: The selling unit price of the item (default value is 0)
- Cost: The purchasing unit price of the item (default value is 0)
- Unit Qty (read-only): Total number of units for the batch number
- Line Total (read-only): Total purchasing value for the batch number (
[Unit Qty] x [Cost]
)
Location tab
In the third tab, Location
, you can select a storage location to assign the batch number to a location in your storage facility.
Simply select a storage location from the Location
dropdown menu.
Confirm item and quantities
When you're done, you can add the new line by tapping on:
OK
if you don't want to add another line to your shipmentOK & Next
if you have other lines to create
Otherwise, you can tap on Cancel
and your changes won't be saved.
Editing an Inbound Shipment line
To edit an Inbound Shipment line, simply tap on it. You will be presented with the Edit Item
window, which is identical to the Add Item
window, except that the item is already chosen and cannot be modified.
Edit a Shipment Line
VERIFIED
.
-
Open the Inbound Shipment you want to edit
-
Tap on the line you want to edit. An identical window to
Add Item
appears. At this stage:- Edit the main
Issue Quantity
field - or change the number of packs value at the batch number level
- Edit the main
Delete a Shipment line
- Open the Inbound Shipment that you would like to edit
- Make sure that status is not yet
VERIFIED
- Select the line(s) you want to delete by checking the box(es) on the right of the list
- Go to the
Actions
dropdown menu (top right corner, above the list) - Select the action
Delete selected lines
Receiving stock with an Inbound Shipment
Confirm the delivery of the shipment
Whether your Inbound Shipment is manual or automatic, the first step to receive the goods is to confirm the delivery.
At this stage, you don't have to check if quantities or other information are correct, you just have to acknowledge that you have received the goods from your supplier.
To confirm that an Inbound Shipment has been delivered, click on the Confirm Delivered
button.
SHIPPED
before you can confirm that you have received the goods.
Verify your Inbound Shipment
Verification is the last step to receive goods in mSupply. At this stage, you can check what you have received and make sure that that information in mSupply are correct.
You have the possibility to verify the following information:
- Batch numbers and their expiry dates
- Quantity of packs and pack size
- Pricing information: cost and sell prices
You can also capture where received goods are to be stored in the Location
tab.
Once all information have been captured or verified, you can confirm the Shipment as VERIFIED
by tapping on the Confirm Verified
button.
Once you have done this:
- Goods are now part of your inventory
- Shipment status is now
VERIFIED
- You can no longer edit shipment lines
- You can no longer delete the shipment
Viewing an Inbound Shipment
When viewing a specific shipment, you can view the batches on that shipment grouped by item or with each batch listed separately.
To change the view mode, click the Group by item
switch.
When grouped by item, you can expand the item to see individual batches, or use the expand in the table header to expand all grouped rows. If you click on an item you will also see all selected batches, as shown in this example: