Delivery Note Generator

A delivery note lists what is in a consignment so the person receiving it can check the contents before signing. Enter the customer's order reference, list each item with what was ordered and what is actually in the box, and download it to travel with the goods.

There is no price column, and there is no field to add one. That is the defining property of the document rather than an omission: a delivery note is opened by whoever receives the goods, which might be a warehouse team, a site foreman, a third-party fulfilment centre, or (on a drop-shipped order) your customer's own customer. Printing what you charge on a document with that audience tells the wrong people your prices, and on a drop-ship it hands your margin to the business you sell through.

Each line shows what was ordered next to what was sent. A note that lists only the contents leaves the receiver unable to tell a short delivery from a complete one, and the moment of receipt is the cheapest possible time to catch a discrepancy: before the goods are put away, before the invoice arrives, and before anyone has to reconstruct what was in the carton.

When the consignment has gone out, the delivered quantities carry straight into the invoice generator with the prices left blank. You bill for what shipped, not for what was ordered.

Three documents cover a straightforward sale, and each has a different reader. The order (usually the customer's purchase order) says what was agreed. The delivery note says what turned up. The invoice says what to pay. Confusing any two of them creates work: an invoice in the box gets lost with the packaging, and a delivery note sent to accounts cannot be paid against.

The reader is what settles the design. A delivery note is handled by goods-in, which is a different function from accounts payable and often a different company entirely. They want to know which order this is, what should be in the consignment, and what actually is, in a form they can check against the pallet in front of them. They have no use for a price and, in a good many arrangements, no business seeing one.

Drop-shipping makes that concrete. If you sell through a reseller and ship direct to their customer, a delivery note carrying your prices arrives on the reseller's customer's desk showing exactly what the reseller paid. The reseller finds out when the customer asks why the margin is what it is. It is one of the few document errors that can end a trading relationship, and it is entirely avoidable by not having the field.

Showing the ordered quantity alongside the delivered one is the other decision worth defending. A partial delivery is normal (stock runs out, a supplier is late, a line ships separately), and it only becomes a problem when nobody says so. A note that shows four of ten with six to follow is a complete statement. A note listing four with no context is indistinguishable from a mistake, and the receiver either accepts it and discovers the shortfall later or rejects the whole consignment.

The signature block is the reason a paper copy travels at all. A signed note is evidence the goods arrived and that the quantities were accepted at the point of handover. Without it, a later dispute about a missing item comes down to two recollections; with it, there is a document with a name on it. That is also why the space belongs on the page rather than being left to a courier's handheld device, which records that a box arrived and nothing about what was in it.

None of this makes a delivery note a contract or an accounting record. It is a checking document. Where it matters legally is as evidence: of what was despatched, when, and that somebody at the other end agreed it had arrived.