Track shipments and completion work

Follow dispatched purchase-order batches, check carrier information and investigate shipment follow-up work that needs attention. Shipment information tells you what the supplier has sent; your receiving team still needs to inspect the delivery and complete a receipt.

For supplier instructions on entering a shipment, share Record shipments and send delivery information.

Check an order's shipments

1. Open Purchase orders and find the PO. The list includes Delivery status and Est. delivery when that information is available.
2. Open the PO and inspect its shipment cards. An order with several batches shows a separate card for each shipment.
3. Check the carrier, tracking number, ship date and estimated delivery. Use Track on the named carrier when a tracking link is available.
4. Open the tracking history when offered and read any exception, such as a delay, held package or attempted delivery.
5. Compare the batches with Lines and the order's received and remaining quantities. Check Collaboration for shipment and version history, and Documents for supporting files.

A blank carrier field or missing date is missing information, not evidence that a package is on time. If the shipment is unclear, use More actions → Request update from supplier when available, or post a supplier-visible comment in Timeline.

Understand the three milestones

For example, Northwind Packaging may send 48 each of the 72 Kraft mailers ordered and later send the remaining 24 each. The first shipment can show Delivered while the order still has 72 each remaining to receive, if nobody has completed a receipt yet. After the team records the actual first delivery, the remaining PO quantity should reflect that receipt.

Do not complete a receipt only because tracking says Delivered. Receive the goods that actually arrived. If the carrier delivered to the wrong location or a package is missing, investigate the shipment before adding stock.

Partial and follow-up shipments

The Supplier Portal supports partial batches and follow-up shipments for the remaining quantity. Keep all batches attached to the original PO when they fulfill that order. A new shipment record is not a new purchase order.

Review dates per batch rather than assuming that a single estimated date applies to every item. The PO's Requested delivery is your request; supplier confirmation and carrier estimates can differ. Preserve that distinction when communicating a deadline to your warehouse team.

Replacement shipments belong to the relevant replacement dispute. Keep the dispute open while the replacement is outstanding, and use the replacement workflow to receive and close it.

Review shipment recovery

Some work associated with a recorded shipment, such as delivering its notification or registering tracking, can need a separate review. A recovery item does not by itself mean the supplier's shipment was not recorded.

1. On Home, use Shipment recovery → Review shipment recovery when the card appears.
2. Select Review for the relevant item.
3. Check Completion summary against the intended purchase order and shipment. Read each listed item's state, last failure and attempt information.
4. Verify what happened in the relevant external service before choosing an action. If you cannot establish the result, keep the item unresolved and contact Support with its reference.
5. Use only the recovery action that matches the verified situation, then check the refreshed state.

Retry safely is offered for work that may be eligible for another attempt. Zapstra Inventory Management checks eligibility again when you select it; its presence is not a guarantee that the retry will be accepted.

Mark external effect completed records your decision that the external work is already complete. Use it only after verifying that outcome. Supersede effect stops treating that particular follow-up item as the work to carry out; it does not perform the missing external action. These controls do not receive goods or change the physical shipment.

The recovery page cannot accept or edit provider evidence. Keep the underlying confirmation in your operational records. If a recovery action returns an uncertain result, use Retry the same request or Refresh current state as appropriate instead of starting a different recovery action.

When the supplier's submission is uncertain

Ask the supplier to inspect the existing shipment history before entering the batch again. Their portal provides a specific recovery path for an unresolved shipment confirmation, including refreshing history and retrying the same shipment. Re-entering it as a new batch can create confusing duplicate records.

Likewise, an unavailable recovery list is not an empty list. Refresh it before concluding that there is no work outstanding.

Related guides

• Send, track and close purchase orders
• Receive full or partial deliveries
• Resolve shortages, rejected goods and replacements