Every receiving operation meets exceptions. A delivery arrives with a GTIN nobody recognizes. A batch is past its expiry date. A carton label is too damaged to scan. These are not signs of a broken process — they are the process working as it should, catching problems at the dock instead of discovering them during a recall.

What separates a trustworthy operation from a careless one is not how few exceptions it has, but what happens to each one. The discipline has three parts, always in the same order: quarantine the stock, record the failure, and resolve it by a named path. This article works through the exceptions you will actually meet and shows what each part looks like in practice.

The exceptions you will actually meet

Exception handling starts with naming the failures, because an unnamed failure gets improvised. In receiving, the list is short and stable.

  • Unknown GTIN: the scanned identity matches nothing expected — no order line, no shipping notice, no approved catalogue entry. It may be a new product, a supplier error, or a mislabelled carton; until someone establishes which, it is not stock.
  • Expired or short-dated stock: the expiry date parses correctly and is already past, or inside the window your policy refuses. Expiry is a fact about the product, not a negotiation.
  • Quantity mismatch: the delivered quantity does not match the order — short, over, or a mix across batches. A short delivery accepted as complete creates a phantom shortage later.
  • Duplicate serial: a serial number that has already been received. Either the same unit was scanned twice, or two units claim one identity — both need an answer before either moves.
  • Unreadable label: the symbol is damaged, creased, or printed too poorly to decode. After a second attempt and any available rescue pass, it is an exception, not an invitation to type the number in from memory.

Quarantine first, questions second

The first action on any exception is physical and systemic at once: the stock is separated from good stock and marked as unavailable to pick. A quarantine that exists only in software — stock sitting on the good shelf with a flag somewhere — will be picked by someone in a hurry. A quarantine that exists only physically — stock on a separate pallet with no system record — will be forgotten.

Both halves matter because they protect different people: the physical separation protects the picker from shipping bad stock, and the system hold protects the operation from forgetting the stock exists. Until both are in place, the exception is still open, whatever anyone believes about it.

Record the failure, not just the outcome

Every exception record needs four facts: what failed, on which scan, against which expectation, and when. "Wrong item" is not a record; "GTIN 10950600013436 scanned at dock 2, 09:14, against order PO-8841, no matching order line" is a record — one that a reviewer can act on without re-investigating.

The record must also preserve the original scan, even when the resolution changes the outcome. If a mislabelled carton is re-labelled with approval, the history should show both the original scan and the correction, with who approved it. A history that only shows the corrected version is not a history; it is a story, and stories do not survive audits.

Resolve by a named path

Every exception type needs a named resolution path with an owner, decided in advance — not invented at the dock under time pressure. The usual paths are few: return to supplier, re-label with documented approval, accept with a documented variance (for example, an agreed over-delivery), or reject and destroy where safety requires it.

The path matters less than the fact that it is named, authorized, and recorded. Consider one expired batch in an otherwise good delivery: quarantine the batch, record the expiry failure against the order, notify the supplier, and return or destroy it under the agreed path — while the rest of the delivery proceeds normally. That is an operation that can prove, months later, exactly what happened to every unit. The alternative — waving the batch through because the rest of the delivery was fine — is how expired stock reaches a shelf.

The exception workflowThe same five stages for every exception type; the stage order never changes, even when the resolution does.
  1. IdentifyName the failure: unknown GTIN, expired stock, quantity mismatch, duplicate serial, or unreadable label.
  2. QuarantineSeparate the stock physically and hold it in the system so it cannot be picked.
  3. RecordWhat failed, on which scan, against which expectation, and when — preserving the original scan.
  4. ReviewA named owner establishes the facts before any resolution is chosen.
  5. ResolveReturn, re-label with approval, accept with documented variance, or reject — authorized and recorded.

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