Answer
How do you track what suppliers have shipped but not delivered?
Updated July 2026 · by the DynamoDocs team
The short answer
Use the documents already arriving. Advance ship notices and packing slips, matched to the purchase orders they reference, give a live view of what is in transit, what has landed, and what is overdue. An advance ship notice is a statement of intent, never counted as a delivery, so nothing reads as on hand while it is still on a truck.
The gap between ordered and received
Between placing an order and booking the receipt there is a window nobody owns. The ERP shows the order as open, the warehouse has nothing to scan, and the only evidence of what is actually moving is a ship notice sitting in a mailbox or an EDI folder. Teams cover the gap by emailing suppliers to ask, which is how a late delivery is usually discovered days after it mattered.
Built from paperwork you already capture
If you are capturing packing slips for three-way matching, or receiving 856 ship notices from EDI partners, the data already exists. DynamoDocs groups those against the purchase orders they reference and shows each shipment as in transit, received, or invoiced. There is nothing extra to collect and no new integration to build.
A promise is not a delivery
An advance ship notice says what a supplier intends to ship. Treating it as proof of arrival is how a system reports goods on hand while they are on a truck, and how an invoice for an undelivered shipment passes a match. DynamoDocs keeps the distinction: an announced shipment is in transit until something confirms it arrived, and the packing slip that follows advances the same shipment rather than creating a second one.
Overdue against a date somebody committed to
Lateness is measured against a real commitment, and a supplier's own promised date takes precedence over the date you originally requested. Once a supplier has answered with a new date, that is the commitment they should be held to; measuring against your original date reports them late for something they never agreed to. Lateness also stops accruing when the goods land, because a delivery three days late is three days late, not more late every morning.
The missing shipment stays visible
Open and overdue shipments are never hidden by the history filter. A date window that quietly drops the delivery which went missing two months ago removes exactly the row the view exists to surface, and a shipment nobody can find is the most expensive kind.
Related questions
Do we need EDI for this?
No. An 856 is one source; a PDF or emailed packing slip captured like any other document is another. Both become the same kind of record.
What if a shipment has no promised date anywhere?
It is shown as unmeasured rather than on time. Reporting a shipment you cannot measure as on time is a quiet way of being wrong.
How does this relate to three-way matching?
Same documents, different question. Matching asks whether to pay an invoice; this asks what is coming and what is late. The receipts feed both.
Go deeper
See it on your documents
Bring a real invoice, PO, or RFQ and watch DynamoDocs take it from inbox to posted in your ERP in about 30 minutes.
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