Every now and then it may happen that you may get let’s say extra goods that you really did not order – either the shipment comprising of all wrong goods, some missing or some extra, doesn’t really matter – but it happens. When this does occur, depending on the goods and the situation really (i.e. excess of goods or wrong items sent) you have quite a few opportunities to deal with it.

One option is to always to send the excess goods back and account on the balance sheet for the goods that you did order. It essentially means that you are not accepting part of the invoice and as such are also requesting for the vendor to make a credit note on the wrong invoice. However, if the invoice itself is correct, but just the goods don’t match with what is on the paper, they simply need to be reshipped and sorted out with the vendor.

Provided that you can essentially use those goods and are accepting them, you account for them on your balance sheet and under liabilities make an entry to ‘Payables to suppliers (invoice not received)’ or similar account.

In case some of the goods are missing, you account under inventory for the goods you received and under liabilities for the full invoice, however you also make sure the supplier is notified of this and is sending you the missing goods as soon as possible.

Messing around with wrong shipments and trying to sort them is a stressful situation, so the less you have it, the better. Essentially all suppliers should be chosen based on their delivery punctuality and capability.