Delivery note
What is a delivery note and what contents are important?
Am I obliged to provide my customers with a delivery bill? The answer is no. And yet, for retailers and online store operators, the delivery bill is an important document for their business relationships.
There are neither legal requirements to create delivery bills, nor legally prescribed rules for content and form. And yet virtually all companies use the delivery bill as a document accompanying the goods, also known as a goods accompanying bill or goods accompanying letter.
Questions about the delivery note
It may be used at the time of delivery to verify the scope and nature of the goods ordered and to ensure that the quantity, quality and nature of the goods delivered actually correspond to the service ordered.
In addition, it can help to store the goods in the right place. Furthermore, the delivery bill offers the possibility to provide the recipient with additional information, for example technical data or special features of the goods.
Here, too, there are no legal requirements, but sequential numbering has proven its worth in everyday business, as this ensures greater transparency within accounting and document management.
If the number of the corresponding invoice is also noted on the delivery bill and vice versa, this offers a significant simplification for both the sender and the recipient when allocating documents.
Be careful when disposing of delivery bills! Even if there are no legal regulations to this extent, only delivery bills that do not represent accounting documents may be disposed of. What exactly does this mean? As soon as the delivery bill becomes an accounting document in the business processes, retention periods of 6 or even 10 years apply. In this context, please note the regulations from the German Fiscal Code (AO) § 147 for the retention of documents.
Retention obligation
Is your delivery note an accounting document?
Be careful when disposing of delivery bills! Even if there are no legal regulations to this extent, only delivery notes that do not represent accounting documents may be disposed of. What exactly does this mean? In this context, please note the regulations from the German Fiscal Code (AO) § 147 for the storage of documents:
If it is a simple delivery note, no information on payment is included. With the information about the delivered goods, the order and delivery date, the simple delivery bill counts as a commercial letter. Documents of this kind have after § 147 AO a storage period of six years.
If the delivery note contains the request for payment in addition to the information on the delivery, it is to be regarded as an invoice. In this case it does not belong to the commercial letters according to § 147 AO. A retention period of ten years applies to invoices.
As soon as the delivery bill becomes an accounting document in the business processes, retention periods of 6 or even 10 years apply.
Is there any mandatory information?
Although there is no mandatory information on the contents of the delivery bill, the following information, among others, has proven useful in simplifying business processes for both the shipper and the recipient:
- Names of supplier and recipient
- Delivery address of the recipient
- Order number/order name
- Date of the order and delivery
- Quantity and description of individual goods
- weight or individual prices, if applicable
- if applicable, composition and number of packages
- details of commissions, if any
- possible subsequent deliveries
Digitization and archiving of delivery notes through easybill
With the right delivery note software from easybill is the legal retention obligation no problem, because all your documents are neatly archived and can be retrieved at any time. Not only does this save you the time of time-consuming and tedious filing, but it also allows you to paperless, digitized filing to access the documents at any time or during an audit without worry.
