Delivery notes in hospitality: required details, retention and digital capture

It is half past nine, the drinks supplier is at the back door, the driver is in a hurry, and the delivery note on the clipboard is waiting for your signature. You sign, carry the crates into the storeroom and put the paper on the pile with the others. Two weeks later the invoice arrives, and nobody remembers whether twelve bottles of gin were actually delivered or only ten.

This is exactly where the delivery note decides whether your purchasing is properly documented or whether money is slipping through your fingers. In this article you will learn what a delivery note is, which details it should contain, how it differs from an invoice, how long you need to keep it in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and how to capture delivery notes digitally in hospitality instead of typing them up.

1. What is a delivery note?

A delivery note is the document that accompanies a delivery of goods. The supplier lists which items go to which recipient and in what quantity. For you as an operator, it is the key document at goods receipt: it lets you check whether the delivery matches your order before the goods disappear into the storeroom.

In Germany there is no legal obligation to issue a delivery note, as the IHK Südthüringen (German chamber of commerce) makes clear. In practice, drinks suppliers, wholesalers and food suppliers almost always deliver with one anyway, because it gives both sides certainty: the supplier can prove the handover, and you can record any discrepancies.

2. What a delivery note should contain

Because the delivery note is not legally required, there are no mandatory details in the strict sense. The IHK Südthüringen does, however, recommend the following, and these are exactly the points you should check every time you receive goods:

• Name and address of supplier and recipient
• Date of issue
• Type and quantity of goods, for example “London Dry Gin 0.7 l, 12 bottles”
• Order or delivery number
• Order, dispatch and ideally delivery date
• Note on partial deliveries if not everything arrives at once (optional)
• Signature field for the recipient (optional)

Many suppliers also print purchase prices on the delivery note. That is especially useful for you: you see price changes at delivery rather than only when the invoice arrives.

3. Delivery note vs. invoice: the difference

The delivery note documents what was delivered. The invoice requests payment and must contain the details required by VAT law, such as the tax number, a sequential invoice number, the net amount, the VAT rate and the VAT amount. The IHK Ulm provides a full overview of these details (in German).

There are two points where the documents meet:

• Delivery note as invoice: According to the IHK Südthüringen, a delivery note that contains all mandatory invoice details counts as an invoice itself.
• Reference in the invoice: According to the IHK Ulm, an invoice may refer to the delivery note for the date of delivery, provided the delivery date is explicitly stated there. According to the IHK Südthüringen, a delivery note that the invoice refers to remains subject to the invoice’s retention period.

For record-keeping, this makes a big difference, as you will see in section 5.

4. Receiving and signing the delivery note

Your signature on the delivery note is more than a formality. According to the IHK Südthüringen, a delivery note signed by the recipient is strong evidence that the goods were accepted in the correct condition and quantity. If you sign without checking, it becomes much harder to claim a missing crate later.

A simple worked example shows why checking pays off: you ordered 12 bottles of gin at a purchase price of 18.00 € each, 10 are delivered, but the delivery note says 12. If you sign without a note, you will likely pay 2 × 18.00 € = 36.00 € for goods that never reached your storeroom. At the next stocktake, the gap shows up as shrinkage, even though it was created at goods receipt.

Receiving works in four steps:

First, check the goods against the delivery note right at the door: quantity, pack size, breakage, and for fresh produce also temperature and shelf life. If something is missing, note it on the delivery note before you sign. Then photograph the delivery note, review the captured line items and book the goods receipt so your stock is correct. How to structure the check itself and what you need to know legally is covered in detail in the guide to goods receipt inspection in hospitality.

5. Keeping delivery notes: retention periods in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Germany: Section 147(3) of the German Fiscal Code (AO) explicitly states that for received delivery notes that are not accounting vouchers, the retention period ends when the invoice is received. If the delivery note is an accounting voucher, the period for accounting vouchers applies. According to the IHK Südthüringen, this is the case, for example, when it contains invoice details or the invoice refers to it. Since the Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act, the period for accounting vouchers is eight instead of ten years; according to the IHK Karlsruhe, the reduction generally applies from 1 January 2025.

Austria: According to the Austrian Economic Chamber (WKO), books, records, vouchers and tax-relevant business papers must be kept for seven years under the Federal Fiscal Code (BAO). The period runs from the end of the calendar year in which the last entry was made. Whether an individual delivery note falls under this depends on whether it is relevant for tax purposes.

Switzerland: According to the Swiss federal SME portal, business records and accounting vouchers must be kept for ten years, starting at the end of the financial year. Electronic storage is permitted as long as consistency with the underlying transactions is ensured and the data can be made readable at any time.

Regardless of the legal requirement, it is worth keeping delivery notes to hand until the invoice and any complaints have been settled. A tidy record system pays off at the latest during a tax audit. For specific questions about archiving, your tax adviser is the right contact.

6. Worked example: what typed-up delivery notes cost

Many venues transfer delivery notes by hand into a spreadsheet or their inventory management system. On its own this seems harmless, but it adds up. Take a bar with 20 delivery notes per week and an average of 10 line items per delivery note. At 30 seconds per line item for typing and checking, you get:

20 delivery notes × 10 line items × 30 seconds = 6,000 seconds = 100 minutes per week

Over 52 weeks, that is 5,200 minutes, or around 87 hours a year. At a labour cost of 20 € per hour, that is around 1,733 €, just for transferring paper.

There is a second, often bigger effect: price changes easily slip through when you type things up. If the purchase price of a bottle of gin rises from 18.00 € to 19.50 €, 4 cl no longer cost 1.03 € but 1.11 €. With 0.85 € for the tonic and 0.20 € for lime and garnish, the cost of goods of a gin and tonic rises from 2.08 € to 2.16 €. At a selling price of 12.00 € gross, i.e. 10.08 € net, the cost of goods ratio climbs from around 20.6 % to around 21.5 %. With 500 gin and tonics a month, that is around 43 € less margin without anyone noticing. How to calculate cost of goods properly is explained in the guide calculating cost of goods.

7. Capturing delivery notes digitally

Digital delivery notes solve both problems: the data no longer has to be typed up, and every price change becomes visible as soon as the delivery is captured. For this to work day to day, the capture process should do three things:

1. Read line items automatically: items, quantities, pack sizes and purchase prices are taken from the photo or file.
2. Match supplier item names: the supplier writes “GIN LD 0.7 12pk”, while your item list says “London Dry Gin 0.7 l”. These names need to be reliably matched to your items.
3. Book directly into stock: a captured delivery note only adds value once it lands in your stock as a goods receipt and feeds into the next stocktake.

The last point in particular connects the delivery note to your inventory management. Goods receipts are a fixed part of the usage calculation: actual usage = opening stock + goods received − closing stock. If a delivery note is missing or captured incorrectly, usage is wrong, and you end up hunting for stock discrepancies that actually arose at goods receipt.

8. Capturing delivery notes with BarBrain

More than 1,000 venues work with BarBrain. With its AI delivery note and invoice scanner, you photograph delivery notes and invoices in the app for iOS and Android or upload them as a file on the web. The AI reads items, quantities, pack sizes and purchase prices; you review the list and confirm it.

BarBrain matches the supplier’s item names to your items. If the supplier delivers a substitute, the app asks whether it is the item you meant, and you confirm or choose another one. Price changes are shown to you during the scan and flow into your items and your recipe costing. So you see straight away when the more expensive gin makes your gin and tonic more expensive.

Finally, you book the entire purchase as a goods receipt in one click, and your stock is up to date. Together with stocktaking, recipes and POS integration, this creates end-to-end inventory management in which you compare actual and target usage.

The difference shows above all in day-to-day work: instead of working through piles of paper at the end of the month, every delivery is captured as soon as it is in the storeroom. You can find out more about how the building blocks fit together in the overview of inventory management in hospitality. We are happy to show you how the scanner works with your suppliers, using your own venue as the example.

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9. Frequently asked questions