Receiving lab supplies sounds simple: a box arrives, you open it, you put things away. In practice, the receiving step is where most lab purchasing workflows break down — and where the most expensive problems start.
An unlogged receipt means an unclosed purchase order. An unclosed PO means a delayed payment. A delayed payment means a vendor relationship problem and, potentially, a late fee. Multiply that across a busy lab with dozens of active orders, and receiving becomes a significant source of financial friction.
This guide covers how to set up a receiving process that captures the right information without creating more work than the alternative.
Why Receiving Gets Skipped
The honest answer is that receiving feels like paperwork that gets in the way of real work. Someone orders reagents because they need to run an experiment. When the reagents arrive, they want to start the experiment — not log a receipt in a system.
This is a workflow design problem, not a personnel problem. If recording a receipt takes longer than it's worth, people won't do it. The solution is to make the receiving step fast enough that it doesn't feel like an obstacle.
In well-designed systems, receiving a shipment takes under a minute: scan or find the order, confirm quantities, note any discrepancies, done. That's it. The work is minimal because the data entry is structured — you're confirming pre-populated information, not entering it from scratch.
What to Capture at Receiving
For each incoming shipment, you need:
Date received — this matters for grant compliance (was it received during the grant period?) and for following up on backordered items.
Items received — what arrived, and in what quantities. Don't assume the packing slip matches the purchase order. Vendors make picking errors; shipments get split; items go out of stock and ship later.
Condition — was anything damaged in transit? This needs to be documented immediately, before it becomes a he-said-she-said with the vendor or carrier.
Received by — who accepted the shipment. Useful for follow-up questions and for labs where multiple people receive packages.
Packing slip or delivery confirmation — a scan or photo if your process requires it. Not all labs need this, but it's required for certain federal contracts.
That's the minimum. Some labs also capture lot numbers for controlled substances and biological materials, but that's typically handled by a separate inventory system.
Partial Shipments
The receiving process gets complicated when a single order arrives in multiple shipments. This happens constantly — vendors split large orders, items are backordered, and hazardous materials often ship separately from non-hazardous items.
Your system needs to handle partial receipts cleanly. That means:
- Marking individual line items as received without closing the entire order
- Tracking what's still outstanding so you don't lose visibility on items still in transit
- Alerting the person who placed the order when part of their request arrives
The worst outcome is closing an order as "received" when only half the items have arrived. The outstanding items get forgotten, the vendor doesn't get a follow-up, and someone discovers the shortage when they go to use something that was never received.
Damaged and Incorrect Shipments
Document damage and errors immediately — the same day, if possible. Vendors have narrow windows for accepting damage claims, and "I think it arrived damaged last week" is a much harder conversation than "it arrived damaged today, here's a photo."
For incorrect shipments (wrong item, wrong quantity, wrong specification), the process is:
- Document what arrived vs. what was ordered
- Contact the vendor to initiate a return or replacement
- Update the order record to reflect the discrepancy
- Don't use the incorrectly shipped item unless you've confirmed with the vendor that it can be swapped for what you actually ordered
Labs sometimes use the wrong item "just this once" while waiting for the correct shipment and then forget to follow up. This creates inventory confusion and makes reconciliation harder.
The Handoff Between Receiving and Finance
One of the most common breakdowns in lab purchasing is the gap between receiving confirmation and payment authorization. Finance shouldn't release payment until receipt is confirmed. But if no one tells finance that items were received, payment sits in limbo while the vendor waits.
This handoff needs to be automatic, not manual. In practice, that means your purchasing system should notify accounts payable (or update a shared record) when a receipt is logged. Manual processes — emailing finance when something arrives, updating a spreadsheet — are unreliable because they depend on people remembering to do them under other pressures.
For labs using institutional purchasing systems, the receipt confirmation often needs to be entered into the university's financial system (Banner, Workday, Kuali, etc.) as well as your internal lab system. If that's your situation, make it clear who is responsible for each entry and don't assume one person is doing both.
Inventory After Receiving
Receiving is the entry point for lab inventory. If you're tracking stock levels — which reagents you have on hand, how much is left, when to reorder — receiving is where that count gets updated.
A few principles that make inventory tracking sustainable:
Only track what you actually use the tracking for. If you record that you have 12 bottles of ethanol but never look at that number, you're doing work with no benefit. Start with the items you actually need to monitor — things with long lead times, things that expire, things that are frequently out of stock when you need them.
Update at point of use, not at end of week. Inventory tracking only works if the data is current. A weekly "what did we use?" reconciliation is less accurate and more work than logging usage in the moment.
Set reorder points for critical items. For reagents and consumables that would stop your experiments if you ran out, set a minimum quantity threshold and treat hitting that threshold as a trigger to reorder — not a trigger to panic.
Working With Multiple Receiving Locations
Larger labs often have packages delivered to a building receiving dock rather than directly to the lab. This introduces a handoff between the person who accepts the package from the carrier and the researcher who eventually takes it to the bench.
This handoff needs tracking. A package that sits in the loading dock because no one knew it arrived is a problem. A refrigerated shipment that spends four hours at room temperature because it wasn't flagged as temperature-sensitive is a bigger problem.
Solve this with:
- A notification system that alerts the ordering researcher when their package arrives at the central receiving point
- Clear labels on packages indicating temperature requirements and fragility
- A defined maximum hold time at receiving before a package is escalated to the lab
Building relationships with receiving staff matters here. They're often managing hundreds of packages a day; the labs that communicate clearly about what's coming and when get better service.
Reconciling Receipts Against Invoices
When an invoice arrives, the reconciliation task is to match invoice line items against received items. The questions are: did we receive what we're being charged for, at the price we agreed to, in the quantity that's being billed?
This is easier when:
- Receipt records are complete and accurate (not "received 4/15" but "received 24 units of catalog #12345 on 4/15, confirmed by J. Smith")
- Invoices are matched to purchase orders, not just logged as expenses
- Price discrepancies are flagged automatically rather than requiring manual comparison
A common gap: labs receive partial shipments but get billed for the full order. If you don't have line-item receipt records, you can't catch this without going back to the vendor — and vendors don't always catch it either.
Using Ixion for Receiving
Ixion's receiving workflow is designed to close this loop efficiently. When a purchase order is placed, receiving is a step in the order lifecycle — not an afterthought. Items can be received individually or in bulk, partial receipts are handled natively, and receipt confirmation automatically updates the order status and notifies the PI.
When invoice time comes, matched orders show which items were received and when — giving you the documentation trail for reconciliation without manually assembling it.
If you're currently managing receiving via email or a shared spreadsheet, the transition to a structured system typically takes one lab cycle (one round of ordering, receiving, and reconciliation) to feel natural. The data quality improvement shows up immediately; the time savings show up once you're reconciling for the first time with complete records.