What is GRNI: goods received not invoiced?
GRNI stands for goods received not invoiced: goods you have received and taken into stock, but for which the invoice has not yet arrived. The balance sits on a clearing account until the invoice arrives and the two cancel out.
Also known as: accrued purchases, goods received clearing account, GR/IR
When the warehouse books a delivery, stock goes up. The other side of the entry cannot go to the supplier yet, because there is no invoice. So it goes to a clearing account. When the invoice arrives and is matched, the amount clears off that account and lands on the supplier. Whatever stays on that account is, by definition, work that is not finished.
The GRNI account is therefore the most honest quality figure in your accounts payable process. A rising or polluted balance almost always means one of three things: receipts never invoiced, invoices that did arrive but were never matched, or price and quantity differences nobody resolved. At year end that is the conversation with the auditor nobody wants.
In Exact Online
In Exact Online this balance appears when you work with the Trade or Production modules and post goods receipts before the invoice arrives. The clearing account used sits in your chart of accounts and should be analysed periodically per supplier and per order. Without automatic line-level matching that analysis is manual, which is exactly why the balance keeps growing at many companies.
How a GRNI balance gets polluted
The balance is supposed to move: it goes up on receipt, down on invoice. It becomes a problem when items stick that will never clear.
- A partial delivery booked as complete, so the rest never arrives.
- An invoice posted by hand to an expense account instead of against the receipt.
- A return that physically went back but was never reversed.
- Price differences left on the clearing account because nobody made the decision.
Why this is a board-level number
A GRNI balance is deferred work with a price tag. It affects stock valuation, it distorts purchasing figures per period, and at year end it costs your controller days. The fix is rarely a clean-up at the end. The fix is invoices matched on arrival and differences going to a person the same week.
Where it usually goes wrong
- 1Only looking at the clearing account at year end. By then the context is gone and nobody remembers where an item came from.
- 2Writing old items off without finding the cause. Next year the same pile is back.
- 3Treating the balance as an accounting problem. It is a process problem that becomes visible in the accounts.
- 4Not analysing per supplier. Usually most of the balance comes from a handful of suppliers.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about GRNI: goods received not invoiced.
Questions about your situation?
Open the demoGoods received not invoiced: goods that have been received but for which no invoice has been posted yet. In Dutch financial statements it often shows up as accrued purchases or a goods received clearing account.
A balance is supposed to exist, because there is always time between delivery and invoice. What you want to know is the age: items from this month are normal, items from last year are a signal. Look at the distribution over time, not at the total.
By matching invoices against the receipt line by line on arrival, by using tolerances so small differences clear themselves, and by sending differences outside tolerance straight to the buyer rather than to a list. What is resolved the same week never reaches the clearing account.