Link a shipment to a bill

Goods usually ship before the supplier bills you, so the shipment already exists in SKU.io by the time you enter the bill. Linking the two tells the bill which shipment it covers. On a staged payment term with per-shipment stages, the bill's Payment Schedule then dates each installment from that shipment's own dispatch and receipt, instead of from the order's estimates.

One shipment can sit on more than one bill. A consolidated container that carries lines for several purchase orders is billed once per order, so you link it to a bill on each of those orders. A supplier who splits one shipment across two invoices can link both bills to it too.

Link, don't create

Create Shipment on a bill is for goods that haven't shipped in SKU.io yet. When the shipment is already on the order's Shipments tab, use Link Shipment — creating another one would count the same goods twice.

Before you begin

• The bill must be attached to a purchase order.
• The shipment must carry at least one line for that purchase order. A shipment for a different order is refused.
• A cancelled shipment can't be linked.

Link a shipment

1. Go to Orders → Purchase Invoices and open the bill.

   The Inbound Shipments card shows the shipments linked to this bill. On a bill entered after the goods shipped, it starts empty.

   

2. Choose Link Shipment.

   The list shows every shipment on this bill's purchase order that isn't already on this bill. A shipment that carries several orders shows Also billed on with the other bills it sits on — it can still be linked here.

   

3. Pick the shipment that brought the goods this bill covers, and choose Link Shipment.

The shipment appears on the card with its status, warehouse, carrier, and line count. The Also Billed On column lists any other bills the same shipment is linked to.

What linking changes

• Payment dates. On a payment term whose final-goods stages repeat per shipment, each installment on the bill's Payment Schedule now dates from this shipment: the shipment stage from the day it was dispatched, the receipt stage from the day it was received plus the stage's offset. Until the shipment is linked, those dates are projected from the order's estimates. A bill that's already paid keeps its dates.

• Manual dates stay. A due date you typed in yourself is never overwritten by a link, an unlink, or a shipment date change.

• The order's milestones. On the purchase order's Deposits tab, the per-shipment Final Goods Invoice rows for this shipment change from Awaiting Invoice to Invoiced, with a link to this bill.

• Remaining to ship. The shipment's lines are paired with the bill lines for the same order lines, so goods that already arrived no longer count as outstanding to ship on this bill.

A shipment on several bills

When one shipment carries lines for more than one purchase order, link it from each order's bill. Each bill dates from the same dispatch and receipt, and each order's milestones read as invoiced against its own bill. The shipment's page lists every bill it's linked to.

Unlink a shipment

If you linked the wrong shipment, open the bill and choose the unlink icon at the end of the shipment's row on the Inbound Shipments card. Only that link is removed: the shipment, its receipts, and its links to any other bills are untouched, and this bill's derived dates fall back to the order-level basis.

Next steps

• Track inbound shipments — creating shipments from the purchase order and receiving them
• Apply a vendor deposit to a bill — netting a prepayment against the bill once it's entered
• Track & pay purchase invoices — paying the installments as they fall due
• Vendor deposits on a purchase order — the payment-term milestones the Deposits tab tracks