Goods received before the invoice, and goods invoiced before they arrive
What accountants mean by goods received not invoiced, stock in transit and supplier deposits, how each one should sit in your books, and what Landara does about them today.
Updated 19 September 2026
A container rarely arrives on the same day as its invoice. Sometimes the goods land weeks before the supplier's bill; sometimes the bill is in your inbox while the goods are still at sea. Your accountant has a name for each of those gaps, and each one sits in a different place on your balance sheet. This page explains the three terms people mix up, what the correct entry is for each, and exactly what Landara posts today so that nothing on your valuation page is a surprise.
Three things that sound alike and are not
| Term | What happened | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|
| Supplier deposit (prepayment) | You paid the supplier before the goods or the invoice existed | A current asset, Supplier deposits, until the goods arrive |
| Goods received not invoiced (GRNI) | The stock has landed, the supplier's bill has not | Inventory, with a matching liability called an inventory accrual or GRNI accrual |
| Goods invoiced not received (stock in transit) | The bill has arrived, the goods have not | A current asset, Stock in transit, until the goods land, if the goods are already yours |
A deposit is money. The other two are timing. A deposit is not goods invoiced not received, even though both involve paying before you have the stock, because a deposit has no invoice behind it yet and is fixed at the exchange rate on the day it was paid. See Deposits, balances and exchange rates for that rule.
The entries, one at a time
Goods received before the invoice
You have the stock, you are selling it, and there is no bill to publish. If nothing is posted, your Inventory account is too low and your liabilities are too low by the same amount. The standard fix is an accrual:
| When | Entry |
|---|---|
| At month end, for stock received with no bill | Dr Inventory / Cr GRNI accrual |
| First day of the next month | The same entry reversed |
| When the bill finally posts | Dr Inventory / Cr Accounts Payable, exactly as usual |
Reversing on the first of the month is deliberate. The bill posts normally when it arrives, so there is nothing special to remember, and if the bill is still missing at the next month end the same stock is simply accrued again.
Goods invoiced before they arrive
Whether stock on the water is yours depends on your shipping terms. Under FOB or EXW the goods became yours at the supplier's port, so they are your inventory even though you cannot touch them, and the tidy treatment is a Stock in transit asset that moves to Inventory when the container lands. Under DAP or DDP the goods are the supplier's until delivery, so a bill paid early is economically a prepayment. Many small businesses skip the transit account altogether and post the bill straight to Inventory, which leaves the balance sheet total right and only the label wrong.
A deposit
Dr Supplier deposits / Cr Bank on the day you pay it. When the goods arrive the deposit moves into Inventory at the rate it was paid at, and the rest of the stock cost is either the bill or, if the bill has not come, the accrual above. The exchange rate side of this is the deposits article.
What Landara does today
Be clear on this, because it is where "my Inventory account does not match" usually comes from.
- Publishing a bill debits Inventory on the invoice date. The FIFO cost layer for the same goods is dated the day they arrived. If those two dates fall in different months, your books show the stock a month before Landara's valuation does. That difference is stock in transit, sitting unlabelled inside your Inventory account.
- Receiving stock on a purchase order posts nothing to your books by itself. Landara costs the stock provisionally at the order price (the violet provisional badge on the cost layer) so your cost of goods sold is right while you wait for the bill, but until the bill is published your Inventory account does not move. Purchase orders end to end explains the badge and what clears it. That difference is goods received not invoiced, and the valuation page lists it as "received, not yet invoiced" under bills waiting to be published.
- A supplier invoice costed before its goods arrive puts its units in your costs straight away, and the order stays ordered. Costing never marks an order received, because receiving is what adds the stock in Shopify. When the goods are in, Receive on the invoice, from the shipment or the order, records exactly what that invoice covers; see Receive goods from a supplier invoice.
- A deposit is recorded on the purchase order with its own exchange rate, and can be sent to Xero as spend money to your Supplier deposits account the moment you record it. When the bill exists it is applied to the bill from that account, at the rate it was paid at. Every path a payment can take is on Supplier payments: every way a payment reaches your books.
None of these is an error. They are the two dates every import has, and Landara keeps both. They only matter when a month end falls between the goods and the bill, and when it does the inventory valuation page is where you will see the difference.
What to do about it, by who you are
The COGS report shows a "Stock received, no bill yet" notice whenever purchase-order stock is in your valuation without a bill, with the amount and the orders behind it. It offers three answers, and which one is yours depends on how you keep your books.
- The simplest fix: finalise the order. For an order whose own lines are the invoice, the bill is knowable the day the goods land. Finalise, from the notice or from the order, publishes it to Xero at the order price, approved, with any payments already sent applied to it. Freight is added on the shipment later. The stock is in your books and nothing else is needed.
- Not producing monthly accounts? Nothing else to do. Cost of goods sold is already right, because the provisional cost is in the ledger, and the bill corrects your Inventory account when it arrives.
- Closing the month with the bill still to come, for example a scanned supplier invoice that has not arrived: Post accrual pair posts two journals as one action, Dr Inventory / Cr Goods received not invoiced dated the last day of the month, and the same entry reversed dated the first day of the next month. On Xero both arrive as drafts for your bookkeeper to approve. If the bill is still missing at the next month end, post the pair again; the reversal has already cleared the old one.
The new-month flag. Your Home page carries a month-end card for the month that just ended: whether its COGS journal is posted, any stock received without a bill, and whether the accrual pair went in, with a link to the report. It shows while something needs a decision, and for the first week as a note that the month is closed off. On the current month's COGS report, a month-end item likewise appears when last month ended with unbilled stock and neither answer 1 nor 3 has resolved it, naming the orders and the amount, with the same two actions for that month end. Landara never posts the pair on its own.
The amount is the value of the stock at the order price, converted under the exchange rate rule in the deposits article. It is the same figure the valuation page shows as "received, not yet invoiced", so the two never disagree. A deposit already sent to Xero is sitting in Supplier deposits and is no part of the accrual.
What to set up, and where
Every account Landara posts a journal to lives in one place: Settings → Connections → Configure Tax Codes, in the journal accounts section, set separately for Xero and QuickBooks. When the GRNI accrual arrives it appears there as one more row, and Landara offers to create the account for you when you connect, the same way it creates its Inventory, Cost of Goods Sold, adjustment and shrinkage accounts. See Map your tax and GL accounts.
Landara never picks an account on your behalf. A journal with an unmapped account does not post; it tells you which row is missing.
Two questions worth asking your accountant
- Do you want the GRNI accrual shown as a liability or as a contra-asset? Both are common. The liability is the textbook answer and the default; some accountants prefer it netted against Inventory.
- Do you want a Stock in transit account at all? If your terms are FOB and you regularly have a container at sea over month end, probably yes. If your terms are DDP, or your shipments land within a week of the bill, the reconciling line on the valuation page is usually enough.
