What is Billed but not received?

“Billed but not received” describes an invoice line charging for more units than the hotel actually took delivery of. It is also called a short delivery or a quantity variance. You order 12 cases, 10 arrive, the invoice still bills 12 — and without a receiving record, you pay for two cases that never came off the truck.

Why hotels are unusually exposed to it.

Hotel deliveries land early, often at a back door, and are received by whoever happens to be standing there. Out-of-stocks and substitutions are routine in foodservice, linens, paper goods, and amenities. A driver says the rest is coming Thursday, someone signs the manifest, and the shortage never reaches the person who approves the bill.

A signature is not a count. Most delivery signatures confirm that a truck showed up, not that every case listed on the paperwork was physically there.

A worked example.

Housekeeping orders 20 cases of pillowcases at $42.75 a case. Three cases are backordered and never ship. The invoice bills all 20.

That is $128.25 charged for goods sitting in someone else’s warehouse. On a single invoice it is small enough to wave through. Repeat it across a year of housekeeping and F&B deliveries and it becomes real spend leakage that never once tripped an alarm.

What usually goes wrong.

• The credit was promised verbally at the door and never issued — “we will get that on the next invoice”
• The invoice was generated from the order file rather than from what was actually loaded
• The shortage was noted on the packing slip, but the packing slip was never matched to the invoice
• A substitution arrived instead — a different brand, a different pack size — and was counted as a full delivery
• The credit memo did arrive, but nobody confirmed it was actually applied

Why the credit rarely arrives on its own.

Suppliers are not usually being dishonest about shortages. Their billing runs from the order file and their credits run from a different process, often days behind and handled by a different team. A promise made at the loading dock does not travel to the invoicing system unless somebody carries it there.

So the burden falls on the hotel — and the hotel has a check-in rush. The credit gets chased once, then quietly abandoned. Multiply that by every partial delivery in a year and the pattern is clear enough.

Catching it without a receiving system.

No hotel needs procurement software to write down what arrived. A photograph of the annotated packing slip, taken at the door, is a complete goods receipt for this purpose. So is a note on a clipboard that says four cases, two short.

What matters is that the count happens at the moment of delivery and survives long enough to meet the invoice — because after that, everyone is arguing from memory.

What Atrium does about it.

Atrium compares the invoice line to the goods receipt and flags the quantity gap before the invoice is paid, as part of the 3-way check. The exception shows the ordered quantity, the received quantity, the billed quantity, and the value of the difference.

From there the team can hold the invoice, request a credit memo, or approve it deliberately because the shortage was already settled. Atrium does not contact the supplier and does not release payment — the decision stays with the hotel. The record that makes the whole check possible is the goods receipt note, which is worth reading next.