Delivery notes as a checkable spreadsheet
A delivery note — or packing slip — records what actually arrived: the items, the quantities and the order they belong to. It is the document that proves goods were received, and it has to be checked against the purchase order and the supplier invoice before anything is paid. But it lands as a PDF that no spreadsheet can read. FlowParse reads each note with AI and exports clean Excel rows you can match, count and file.
This is the goods-received counterpart to converting your purchase orders and invoices. The three documents only mean something together — what you ordered, what arrived, what you were billed — and getting the delivery note into the same structured shape is what makes that three-way check possible in a spreadsheet.
The output is a tidy table: one line per item, with the code, description, quantity ordered and quantity delivered in their own columns, and the delivery and order numbers alongside — ready to reconcile against the rest.
What FlowParse reads from a delivery note
FlowParse identifies fields by meaning, so it captures what matters across any supplier's layout: the delivery note number and date, the purchase order or sales order reference, the supplier and delivery address, and each line with its item or SKU code, description, quantity ordered, quantity delivered and any back-order quantity.
Delivery notes often omit prices — their job is quantities, not money — and FlowParse handles that gracefully, capturing the count columns cleanly rather than expecting an amount that isn't there. Where a note does carry prices or a total, those are picked up too.
Crucially, the order reference is captured as its own field, so each delivery lands next to the order it fulfils and the match to the PO and invoice is one lookup away.
The three-way match, done in a spreadsheet
The core control in accounts payable is the three-way match: the purchase order says what was ordered, the delivery note says what arrived, and the invoice says what you were billed. Pay only when the three agree, and you never pay for goods you didn't receive or quantities you didn't order.
Doing that match by hand across three separate PDFs is slow and easy to skip under pressure — which is exactly when overbilling slips through. With the delivery note converted to structured rows carrying the order reference, the quantity delivered lines up next to the quantity ordered and the quantity billed, and the discrepancies jump out of a formula.
That is the payoff of getting the delivery note out of PDF: the control that protects your cash becomes a quick spreadsheet check instead of a chore that gets postponed.
How to convert a delivery note to Excel
Upload the delivery note
Drop in one or many delivery notes or packing slips — digital or scanned.
Let AI extract it
The delivery number, order reference, item codes and quantities are read in seconds.
Review the preview
Check the editable preview; low-confidence fields are highlighted for a quick correction.
Export to Excel
Download a clean .xlsx — or CSV, Google Sheets or a file for your inventory system.
Ordered, delivered and back-ordered
The numbers that matter on a delivery note are the quantities, and FlowParse keeps them distinct: quantity ordered, quantity delivered and, where shown, quantity back-ordered. Exporting them as separate typed columns is what lets you spot a short delivery — an item where delivered is less than ordered — with a single comparison.
Short and partial deliveries are the source of most goods-received disputes, and they are invisible if the quantities are locked in a PDF. As structured columns they are obvious: filter for any row where delivered doesn't equal ordered and you have your exceptions list in one click.
Because the counts are real numbers, they also sum and pivot, so totalling units received by product or by supplier over a period is immediate rather than a manual tally.
SKUs and item codes kept intact
A delivery note ties to your inventory through its item or SKU codes, and those codes have to survive extraction exactly — one wrong character and a received item won't match your stock record. FlowParse captures the code as printed in its own column, alongside the description, so the link to your catalogue holds.
That clean code column is what lets a received-goods spreadsheet feed a stock system or a reorder check without a manual cleanup pass. The codes match, the descriptions confirm them, and the quantities update the right lines.
Convert a batch of delivery notes
Deliveries pile up, especially in a busy warehouse or a growing shop. Upload a batch of notes and each is read into the same spreadsheet, so a week of deliveries becomes one table you can sort by supplier, by order or by date received.
For a full goods-received log, Smart Merge consolidates many notes into one dataset with a source-file column, giving you a single running record of everything received over a period — the backbone of an inventory reconciliation or a supplier performance review.
That turns a spike of paperwork into a clean, searchable log in minutes, rather than a tray of notes someone has to key one at a time.
Handling notes that carry no prices
Many delivery notes deliberately show no prices — the customer's copy of a packing slip is about what shipped, not what it cost. A converter built only for invoices stumbles on that, expecting amounts that aren't there and mis-mapping the columns that are.
FlowParse treats the delivery note as its own document type. It reads the quantity and code columns as the primary data and doesn't fabricate a price where none exists, so a priceless packing slip converts as cleanly as a fully-costed one. Where prices are present, they come through; where they aren't, the quantities stand on their own.
Hand-checking versus extraction
Checking deliveries by hand means reading a note, finding the order, ticking quantities line by line and flagging shortfalls — per delivery, often under time pressure at a receiving dock. It is exactly the kind of repetitive count where attention lapses and a short delivery gets signed off.
| Step | By hand | With FlowParse |
|---|---|---|
| Read item codes & quantities | Transcribe each line | Extracted automatically |
| Find the matching order | Search for the PO | Order reference captured as a column |
| Spot a short delivery | Eyeball ordered vs delivered | Filter delivered ≠ ordered |
| Build a goods-received log | Key each note into a sheet | Batch export to one table |
Excel, CSV, Sheets or inventory-ready
Excel is the default, and the same extraction also produces a CSV for importing into an inventory or ERP system, a live Google Sheet for a shared receiving log, or structured JSON via the API for an automated stock update.
One extraction feeds every destination, so a delivery note can update your spreadsheet, your stock system and your supplier scorecard from a single upload — no re-processing the document for each tool that needs the data.
Scanned and signed delivery notes
Delivery notes are the documents most likely to arrive scanned — signed at the door, photographed, or faxed back as proof of receipt. FlowParse runs OCR on scanned and photographed notes first, then structures the recognised text and flags any low-confidence field for a quick check.
That means a creased, signed packing slip photographed on a phone still converts into the same clean columns as a pristine PDF. The messy reality of a receiving dock doesn't block the data from becoming usable.
Feeding received goods into inventory
A delivery note is the trigger to increase stock, and structured delivery data is what makes that update reliable. With item codes and delivered quantities in clean columns, a received-goods spreadsheet can post straight into an inventory system or drive a reorder check, rather than being re-typed by a stock controller.
Because partial and short deliveries are captured distinctly, the stock update reflects what actually arrived, not what was ordered — so your on-hand figures stay honest and a back-ordered item isn't counted before it lands.
Settling delivery disputes with evidence
When a supplier bills for ten and delivered eight, the delivery note is your evidence — but only if you can find it and read it. A structured log of delivery notes, searchable by order and item, turns a dispute from a paper hunt into a lookup: pull the note, show the delivered quantity, and the invoice is corrected.
That record also builds over time into a picture of supplier reliability. Totalling short deliveries by supplier across a quarter tells you which relationships cost you in chase-ups — insight that stays buried while the notes are loose PDFs.
Accurate counts you can trust
Quantities are the whole point of a delivery note, so accuracy on the count columns is what matters most. FlowParse reaches around 98% field-level accuracy on standard layouts and highlights any low-confidence figure in the editable preview, so a misread quantity is corrected before it reaches your goods-received log.
You confirm the data before it exports, which on a document that drives stock levels and payment approval is exactly the safeguard you want — the numbers you post are the numbers you have checked.
Your documents stay yours
Delivery notes carry supplier, address and order detail, so uploads run over TLS, processing is EU-hosted, and the original PDF is deleted immediately after processing. Your documents are never used to train AI models, and nothing is retained once your export is produced.
There is no accumulating store of your delivery records for anyone to target — the data exists only long enough to produce the spreadsheet you asked for.
A record built for logistics teams
For a logistics or receiving team, the delivery note is the daily document, and a clean digital log of it is the foundation of everything downstream — goods-received matching, stock accuracy, supplier scorecards and dispute resolution. Getting it out of PDF and into structured rows is the step that unlocks all of that.
Once the notes are a searchable table, the questions a logistics manager actually asks — which supplier short-delivers, which orders are still part-open, what arrived this week — become filters and formulas instead of an afternoon in a filing tray.
Keeping proof of delivery searchable
A signed delivery note is proof that goods changed hands, and that proof matters when a supplier claims non-delivery or a customer disputes receipt. Left as a scanned PDF in a folder, it is only findable if someone remembers the date; as a structured, searchable record keyed by order and item, it surfaces in a lookup.
FlowParse captures the delivery reference, date and, where present, the recipient details, so a proof-of-delivery query becomes a filter rather than a dig through storage. When a dispute lands, you produce the evidence in seconds instead of an afternoon.
That searchability compounds across a year of deliveries. The signed notes stop being dead paper and become a queryable log of exactly what was received, when and against which order — the record a receiving operation is supposed to keep but rarely can while it lives in loose PDFs.
Handling returns and back-orders
Deliveries don't always go one way. Items come back as returns, and orders arrive split across several deliveries with back-ordered lines to follow. A structured delivery log tracks both: a return note converts the same way a delivery note does, and back-ordered quantities are captured so you know what is still outstanding on an order.
That open-order visibility is hard to keep by hand. When each delivery is a separate PDF, working out which lines of a large order are still to come means cross-referencing a pile of notes; as structured rows, the outstanding quantity per line is a running total the sheet maintains for you.
Keeping returns and part-deliveries in the same clean shape as full deliveries means your goods-received picture reflects reality — what actually arrived, what came back, and what is still owed — rather than the tidy fiction of the original order.
Who converts delivery notes to Excel
Accounts-payable teams running the three-way match, warehouse and receiving staff logging goods in, inventory and procurement managers tracking what actually arrived, and any business that pays against deliveries and wants proof before it does.
If your delivery notes end up as a stack of PDFs nobody can query, converting them to clean Excel rows is what turns them back into the control they are meant to be — ordered against delivered against billed, all in one checkable place.
Convert your delivery notes to Excel
Upload a delivery note or packing slip and get clean rows — item codes, quantities ordered and delivered, ready for the three-way match.