Make Professional Delivery Notes with Billdu

For businesses that routinely ship items, having a delivery receipt form for every delivery is important, especially if it’s a larger and more expensive order. Delivery notes add an extra layer of security for the business because they act as proof that your customer got their order. We’re going to tell you how you would use them and what you’d use them for, define them, discuss a few ways to create them, and give you a step by step guide how to create on using Billdu’s easy platform.

What is a Delivery Note?

Simply put, a delivery note is a document that you send with each shipment of goods you send out to your customers. This delivery note will have a description of everything in the shipment, and the quantity in the order. Once your order makes it to your buyer or the consignee, they’ll sign a copy of your dispatch note signaling that they received the shipment and it was correct. The signed copy comes back to you to keep as proof of delivery.

When to Use Delivery Notes

Ideally, you want to use a delivery note each time you send out a shipment of goods because it’ll help your business if a customer accepts the shipment and then disputes the payment due. It helps to prevent discrepancies between you as a business owner and your customer.

If you plan to ship a large quantity of items, or if the items are more expensive, it should have a delivery note attached to the shipment. However, you should also double check any shipments you send out to ensure that everything you listed in the delivery note is in the shipment, everything is in good condition that is free of damage, and you didn’t accidentally add any additional items that you don’t have on the delivery note.

You should also plan to keep these delivery notes for at least five years from the point of delivery. You want to attach your copy to your invoice to ensure that everything stays together and organized so you can find it should you ever need proof that you held up your end of the contract with your customer.

Benefits of Delivery Notes

There are many benefits that come with creating delivery notes for your business. We’ve picked out the top benefits that come with implementing them into your daily operations, no matter how large or small your business is. They include:

• Reduces Disputes – The last thing you need is to have a dispute with your customer because they claim that they didn’t get all of the items they ordered, and you’re positive that you sent them. Since you double check your shipment when you compare it to your delivery note, you know everything is there. Additionally, your clients sign this note stating that they got everything in the shipment, and this lowers your chances of any disputes. 
  
• Improves Accountability – Maybe something did happen in transit, and your driver noticed it but chose not to say anything. If you know everything was fine when it left your business, but it wasn’t when it reached your customer, something happened in transit. This can make your drivers more careful if they know they can get held accountable for their driving. 
  
• Protect Your Bottom Line – Delivery notes are one way to prevent fraud and chargebacks from happening. If a customer accepts your delivery and signs for it, you’ve upheld your end of the contract. If they decide to dispute it later down the line, you have proof that everything was correct at the time of delivery, and this can help protect your company’s bottom line.

Ways to Create Delivery Notes

There are two broad categories for creating delivery notes. Both categories work well, but it’s up to you to decide which one works best for your business. You should pick one way and stick to it though to avoid confusion when you try to switch from one format to the other.

Paper

Paper is the traditional way of sending or issuing shipping notes. Either you can hand write this delivery note, or you can use a delivery note template and fill in the relevant information before you print it off and send it with your order. You usually send two copies along, and you get the copy that the customer signs while they get the second copy.

You can attach this paper copy to their invoice once you send it out, and this helps you keep everything organized and easy to find if you need to refer back to it. This delivery note should contain all of your relevant information like your business name, address, phone number, email, website, and fax in the header. You should also clearly list your customer with their information, the items, quantity, and the price.

Electronic

The second form for delivery notes is electronic, and it’s quickly becoming extremely popular with large and small businesses because it’s convenient. You can build up a database with your customers and items that you can then add straight to your proof of delivery template. When you finish with your dispatch note, you can either download it as a PDF file and print it off to send with your shipment, or you can attach it to an email and send it to your customer.

If you use software to create your delivery note template, they’ll usually have a tracking system in place so you can pull it back up and review it. You can also usually enable signatures for electronic delivery notes, and your customer would sign this note upon receipt before it updated in your database.

If you’d like to create electronic delivery notes, read on to see how Billdu can help you streamline delivery note creation. Alternatively, we encourage you to try our free delivery note generator that is available online.

Creating a Delivery Note in Billdu

We have proof of delivery templates that you can download and populate on our user-friendly dashboard. We’re going to take you on a step by step guide through the process of creating a delivery note, and you can use it to create your own professional delivery receipt forms to use with your business. 

Step One: Create Your Account 

To get started, you have to visit Billdu.com and click the “Login” button. This button is in the upper right corner, and it’ll open a login screen. If you already have an account, you can sign in. If you don’t, you can click the “Create account” link on below the Facebook sign-in button.

When you select the “Create account” link, it’ll prompt you to fill in your business’s name, the email you’d like to use for this account, and a password. You want to fill this in and click the “Create Account” button to finalize the process and create your Billdu account. It’ll automatically log you in, and it’ll take you straight to your dash.

Step Two: Fill Out Your Business Profile

The first thing you want to do before you create a delivery receipt form is to fill out your business profile. You can see this option in the above screenshot on the upper left side of your dashboard. You want to click the “Let’s Do This” button below where it asks you to complete your business profile. When you click it, you’ll get a popup that asks you to fill in:

• Business name
• Country
• Street
• Zip code
• City
• State/Province

You’ll also come to a section where you can choose whether or not you’d like to display taxes on your shipping note, and it’ll also ask for your business’s tax registration number. The final section asks you to fill in your contact information. It includes:

• Name
• Email
• Phone number
• Website
• Fax Number

There are also two areas that let you upload your business’s logo and your signature.

Step Three: Fill in Your Payment Profile

You’ll notice in the screenshot above that there is a second tab behind your Business Details tab called Payment Options. This is the next portion you want to fill out, and you’ll switch to this tab and fill in:

• Account holder’s name
• Bank name
• Routing number
• Account number

You can also decide if you’d like to be able to get online payments or not, and you can link these payments to go directly into your bank account. If you’d like them to go through PayPal, you can add in your PayPal email before you click save to finish.

Step Four: Open Your Delivery Receipt Form 

Once you finish this section, you have two choices. You can stay on your dashboard and continue to customize your account for your business by adding free invoice templates, specific colors, and layouts, our you can go directly to creating your shipping notes. We’re going to pretend we already created an invoice online and go right to creating this form. When you’re on your dashboard, you’ll notice a “Documents” menu that drops down on the upper left side. When you click it, the menu will open, and you can pick whichever invoice you’d like. For this tutorial, we’re going to pick the Delivery notes. Clicking the Delivery notes link will prompt a template to pop up on your dashboard.

Step Five – Fill in Your Delivery Note 

To get the template to open, you click the “New delivery note” button on the right upper middle of your screen. When you click this button, a popup window will appear. It looks like this:

You can experiment with this template by clicking the drop-down menu under the Client field and selecting “My Sample Client Ltd,” or you can click the + button to create a new client listing for your database. When you click the + button, a smaller popup box will open. It’ll ask you to fill in:

• Billing name
• Country
• Street
• Zip code
• City
• State/Province
• Tax Reg No (optional)
• Email
• Contact
• Phone
• Cell
• Website
• Fax

When you get all of this filled in and complete, click the save button. You’ll notice that the original Delivery note popup window has a Delivery note number that it automatically populates to 001. You can keep this number or switch it to one of your own. However, they should be sequential for organizational purposes. At this point, you’ll also fill in the Issue date box.

Next, you click on the blue “More Options” link to open more options to further customize your shipping note. You’ll fill in:

• Delivery type (none, mail, courier, personal pickup, or freight)
• Currency
• Language
• Order number (optional)
• Discount (optional)

You’ll also put your items in the “Item Name” slot, fill in the quantity, and add any special notes you’d like at this stage. When you finish, push the green save button to populate your delivery note.

Step Six: Edit, Download, and Send Your Delivery Note

When you save your delivery note, your new note will automatically populate and open on your dashboard. Once it’s open, you can double-check that everything is correct. You can click the blue pencil to go back and edit it, duplicate it, download it as a PDF file, send it in an email, copy an online link, or dispose of it.

If you leave and want to get back to your delivery notes, you can simply log back in, click the documents menu, and select Delivery notes. A dashboard will all of your delivery notes will pop up on the screen, and it helps you keep track of them as well because it displays paid, unpaid, overdue, and all tabs. You can pick one to see which delivery notes are at what status.

You can search for your delivery notes by phrases, date, note number, and time. This allows you to quickly and easily keep track of your various clients and orders.