What needs to happen at pharmaceutical goods receipt?
A typical goods-in procedure covers six steps; the exact sequence and responsibilities depend on your approved procedures.
1) Check the delivery
Confirm the supplier is approved and check products and quantities against the expected consignment.
2) Inspect the condition
Record visible transport damage and discrepancies; keep affected products separate for assessment where required.
3) Prioritise special storage
Give products requiring special storage or security measures priority and transfer them to suitable storage once checks are complete.
4) Record what arrived
Capture required receipt details, including date, product, quantity, supplier name and address, and batch information where applicable.
5) Verify identifiers where required
Complete applicable EU FMD unique-identifier checks under your approved procedure.
6) Transfer or segregate
Move products to saleable stock only when required checks are complete; keep unresolved issues appropriately controlled.
Counting stock at goods receipt
Stock counting is part of goods receipt: teams confirm how many packs of each product and batch arrived before the delivery is booked into stock. A missed or doubled count can carry straight into stock records.
Why pack-by-pack scanning slows goods receipt?
In a pack-by-pack workflow, the operator finds each code, scans it, waits for the beep and moves to the next pack. During a busy receiving period, that repeated sequence ties up staff while other deliveries wait.
There is also a reconciliation task. A successful scan confirms that a code was captured. It does not, by itself, confirm that every required pack in the delivery has been accounted for. Teams still need to identify missed packs, avoid duplicate counting and ensure that the correct products and batches have been recorded.
When does EU FMD verification apply at goods receipt?
- Who and whatFor wholesalers, Article 20 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/161 requires verification of specified categories of medicinal products, including certain returns and products received from wholesalers outside the defined manufacturer, marketing-authorisation-holder or designated-wholesaler categories. Article 21 provides derogations. Parallel importers and distributors should assess how these rules apply to their particular role and supply-chain flows.
- WhenGoods receipt can be a suitable point for verification, but EU FMD does not require every incoming pack to be verified at receipt. The applicable point depends on the product category, the source of supply, and your approved procedure.
- What verification is notVerification checks the authenticity of the unique identifier against the medicines verification system. It is not the same as decommissioning the pack, and it does not replace checks of product condition, temperature or anti-tampering features.
- If an alert occursFollow your approved investigation procedure. An alert is not automatically a confirmed falsification. But where there is reason to believe packaging has been tampered with, or verification indicates a product may not be authentic, a wholesaler must not supply or export it and must immediately inform the relevant competent authorities, as Article 24 requires.
Pharmacies, healthcare institutions and other supply-chain participants
Some may have different verification and decommissioning obligations. This article focuses on goods receipt for wholesalers, parallel importers and distributors.
How NexRx supports goods receipt
NexRx turns a supported smartphone into an AR-powered scanning and verification platform. With one-pass scanning, operators point the camera at the packs and capture every visible DataMatrix code at once, presenting further packs or views as needed.