Receiving discrepancy reports, drafted from the tally, the ship notice and the PO.

Every inbound has two versions. The expected one comes from outside: an advance ship notice from the client's supplier, a stock transfer notice from the client itself, or only a purchase order forwarded by email. The received one is yours: the receiving tally or scan record, notes on crushed cartons, lot and date codes read off the labels, the bill of lading as signed at your door, and photos from the dock. Your inventory control desk lines those up item by item, calls each difference an over, a short, a damage or a mismatch, and writes it up for the client.

In the test, AI reads copies of the same records and drafts each discrepancy report: line by line, what the client expected, what your dock counted, the difference, the condition, the lot and the date as each document shows them, and the photo or note behind every exception. Nothing is posted or sent. Your reviewer sets each draft beside the report your team issued for that receipt.

Three documents, three meanings of expected. The X12 856, the ship notice, lists a shipment's contents along with packaging, marking and how the goods sit inside the trailer. The 943, the warehouse stock transfer shipment advice, is the depositor or its agent telling a receiving location what product is on the way. A purchase order says only what someone ordered. When the answer goes back as a 944, the warehouse stock transfer receipt advice, each item line carries the quantity received and can carry your warehouse lot number, each exception line carries a receiving condition code, and a damage reason code becomes required when that code says damaged product. A client who takes the 861, the receiving advice, or a plain spreadsheet wants the same facts in another shape. The draft names which document it matched each line against.

A pallet label says what the shipper thinks it built. On a GS1 logistics label, the 18-digit SSCC identifies that one pallet or case: an extension digit, the GS1 company prefix of whoever assigned it, a serial reference and a check digit. It is the one element every such label must carry, and GS1's guideline says that when a segment is added later, an SSCC already on the label must never be replaced or changed. A mixed pallet should carry no product number at all; a pallet of one item can show the case GTIN under application identifier (02) with the case count under (37), and (02) is only ever used together with the SSCC and that count. Whether your receivers scanned the SSCC and accepted the pallet as the notice described, or broke it down and counted, depends on the agreement in place, so the draft says which happened on each line.

Lots and dates hide in six digits. Application identifier (10) holds a batch or lot of up to 20 characters. Beside it sit (15) for best before, (16) for sell by and (17) for expiration, the use-by date, each written YYMMDD. A label can carry only one value for each kind of date, so a pallet of mixed dates can't show them all, and GS1's best practice is to print the earliest best-before date on both the label and the ship notice. A day of 00 means the last day of that month, leap years included, except on regulated healthcare products, which must show a real day from January 1, 2025. A notice that says expiry while the label carries a best-before date, or a 00 entered as the first of the month, is a mismatch the draft lists with the label text quoted, never a date it corrects.

Chilled food adds readings to the receipt. FDA's sanitary transportation rule has the receiver of food that needs temperature control assess whether it suffered significant temperature abuse, for example by taking the food's temperature, checking the trailer's ambient temperature and its setting, and doing a sensory check for off-odors. If anything points to a possible material failure, the food isn't to be sold or distributed until a qualified individual determines it wasn't made unsafe. A facility that only stores packaged refrigerated food also has to monitor its temperature controls and review those records, generally within 7 working days of making them. The 944 has its own segment for probe temperatures at receipt. The draft carries every reading your receivers wrote down and flags a chilled receipt with none; it never decides whether the food is fit.

What the receipt claims, and what your reviewer watches. Article 7 of the Uniform Commercial Code generally makes a warehouse answer for misdescribed goods unless its document conspicuously says it doesn't know whether they were received or match the description, for example by describing them in terms of marks or labels, or with words such as 'said to contain' or 'contents, condition, and quality unknown', and that statement is true. One warehousing association's model terms leave concealed shortages and damage outside the warehouse's responsibility, ask the client for a manifest at or before delivery, and want the bill of lading to name the client as consignee in care of the warehouse. So the draft keeps what your dock saw apart from what the paperwork claims, and notes any bill of lading that names you as consignee. Your reviewer, usually the receiving supervisor or inventory control lead, checks counts first, then each damage and lot call, then the photo or note behind every exception. None of this is legal advice.

If your reviewer approves, new inbound receipts get the same drafting for about 30 days.

Every report waits for your inventory control desk to check it, then reaches the client the way reports do today, by your EDI, your portal or your email.

Side-by-side checks continue on live receipts. Whether a second desk follows is up to you, and it gets its own quote.