Receiving a parcel: arrival inspection and goods-in documentation

Goods-in inspection has an order, and the order is half the work: photograph the sealed parcel before opening it, record the condition of the packaging and whatever the transport indicators show, match the substance name and batch number across the vial label, the delivery note and the certificate of analysis, hold the material in quarantine until the checks are complete, and only then register it and put it in its storage location. That sequence is not arbitrary. ICH Q7 describes exactly this flow for every incoming material — a visual examination of each container for correct labelling, container damage, broken seals and evidence of tampering or contamination, and quarantine status until the material has been sampled, examined or tested and released ^[1].

Goods-in is a procedure rather than a formality for a simple reason: most of the evidence you will want later exists only at the moment of arrival. The sealed parcel is photographed once; the arrival temperature is read once; the state of the seal is observed once. Anything not recorded inside that window is not recoverable by later analysis, and usually not recoverable in law either — the deadlines for reservations to the carrier are measured in days, not weeks ^[5].

Before you open the parcel: what can only be recorded once

The first step has nothing to do with the contents. It concerns the box. Once the delivery is signed for and the tape is cut, the condition of the parcel becomes a memory — and a memory is not evidence, against supplier or carrier. Two photographs with the shipping label visible, one per damaged face, and one shot of the sealing tape cover almost every later dispute. The same applies to data a photograph does not capture: if the parcel carries a temperature indicator or logger, the reading is taken and noted before the material moves into a refrigerator, because after the move the reading describes the refrigerator rather than the journey.

• Date and time of arrival, and the name of the person who received it — not "reception".
• Condition of the outer packaging: deformation, moisture, tears, carrier re-sealing tape.
• Integrity of the supplier's seal, recorded separately from the carrier's seal; these are two different things and are routinely confused.
• The reading of every temperature indicator or logger, with the time of reading noted beside the value.
• Presence and state of the coolant where the material ships chilled: gel packs still frozen, thawed, or absent.
• Anything missing from the above, recorded explicitly as "not measured" — the absence of a measurement is itself information, whereas a blank field is not.

The deadline for reservations is worth knowing in advance. The CMR Convention, which governs international carriage of goods by road under a consignment note, provides that for apparent loss or damage the reservations are made at the time of delivery, while for damage that is not apparent they must be made in writing within seven days of delivery, Sundays and public holidays excepted; if they are not made, taking delivery is prima facie evidence that the goods were received in the condition described in the consignment note ^[5]. For courier parcels the CMR does not always apply in that form, and carriers' own terms often set even shorter windows. The conclusion is identical either way: the reservation goes in writing the same day, not once the problem is confirmed.

Matching the three documents

The substantive part of receiving is an act of matching between three things that must say the same: the vial label, the delivery note and the certificate of analysis. ICH Q7 states this explicitly, asking among other things that the correlation be checked between the name used by the supplier and the receiver's in-house name where the two differ ^[1]. That is where most findings hide — not in the wrong substance, but in synonyms, abbreviations and batch numbers differing by a single character. One character of difference is not a typo until shown to be one; until then it is a deviation to investigate.

Two documents are checked at this stage for existence rather than content. The first is the safety data sheet: its format is entirely fixed — sixteen sections in a defined order, mandatory under Annex II to REACH as amended by Regulation (EU) 2020/878 for every sheet circulating in the EU since 1 January 2023 ^[9]. A sheet with the wrong number or order of sections is logged as a supplier finding the same day. The second is the customs paperwork, where any exists, which is filed alongside the rest even if it is never needed again.

Quarantine: why the material does not go straight onto the shelf

Quarantine does not mean a separate room. It means a separate status: the material physically exists, but is not available for use until someone releases it explicitly. ICH Q7 asks for precisely that — the material is held in quarantine until sampled, examined or tested and released, with a system that shows the status of each batch at any time through a distinctive batch or receipt number ^[1]. ISO/IEC 17025 approaches the same problem from the identification side, requiring a system for the unambiguous identification of every item, maintained throughout the time the item remains in the laboratory ^[2]. Together the two requirements give the minimum mechanism: every vial has a unique identifier, and every identifier has a status.

• The status lives in the register, not only on the shelf — a label that falls off does not change reality, it hides it.
• Material in quarantine is not mixed with existing stock of the same substance, even where the batches look equivalent ^[1].
• Release is an act with a name and a date attached, not a silent consequence of time passing.
• Where the material requires specific storage conditions it goes into them immediately and is quarantined there, in the conditions a lyophilised solid requires; quarantine is never a reason to leave something outside a refrigerator ^[3].
• Rejected material takes a distinct status and physical separation until it is returned or destroyed, so that it cannot rejoin the flow by accident.

Arrival temperature and what a deviation actually means

Arrival temperature is the most misunderstood field in goods-in. It is recorded wrongly almost every time, in one of two ways: not recorded at all because the parcel "felt cold", or recorded as a failure because a gel pack had thawed. Both are conclusions without data. The first step is knowing what the terms in the documents actually mean: general chapter 659 of the United States Pharmacopeia gives numeric definitions for the most widely used of them ^[10]. We reproduce them as the vocabulary you will meet in supplier paperwork, not because research material is subject to a pharmacopoeia — it is not.

Here we owe the reader honesty, because the market rarely offers any. There is no official guideline defining how transport conditions for sensitive products are to be established; the literature says so plainly and proposes a stability-testing methodology precisely because the gap exists ^[4]. International good storage and distribution guidance describes what should be checked on receipt and how conditions are maintained, but it addresses medical products inside a regulated chain and does not transfer to research material ^[3]. For most research peptides no per-batch stability data is published, and where data exists it usually comes from in vitro studies in a defined solvent rather than the lyophilised form you received; assessing a temperature excursion in transit is a documented procedure even without batch data. The conclusion is unencouraging but useful: a temperature deviation cannot be assessed without supplier data, so it is recorded as an event, the supplier's position requested in writing, and the answer — or its absence — filed with the batch.

ISO/IEC 17025 gives the obligation its correct wording, milder than most people fear: deviations from specified conditions are recorded on receipt, and where there is doubt about the suitability of an item, or the item does not conform to the description provided, instructions are sought before any work continues ^[2]. No requirement says "reject". They say record and ask — and the problem is almost never the deviation itself, but discovering it three months later, when nobody remembers whether the gel pack was frozen.

The goods-in record: the fields you keep

The receiving record is a short document binding the physical object to its file, and the first entry in the record set that follows a batch. It needs no software — one sheet per receipt, filed with the batch number in the filename, covers a small facility. It does need to be the same sheet every time, because its value comes from comparability: ten records with identical fields show whether a supplier is deteriorating; ten free-form notes show nothing.

Customs and paperwork: the European picture in 2026

Within the EU there is no customs procedure, and goods-in reduces to what is described above. For shipments from a third country the landscape has changed twice in five years. First, on 1 July 2021, the VAT exemption for imported consignments of negligible value up to 22 euro was abolished, while an optional import one-stop-shop scheme was introduced for distance sales of goods valued up to 150 euro ^[7]. Then, under Regulation (EU) 2026/382, the 150 euro customs duty relief was eliminated as well: from 1 July 2026 a temporary flat-rate duty per item applies to low-value consignments, a regime set to run until 1 July 2028 ^[8]. The era of the small parcel that travels without paperwork is over.

Two consequences bear directly on receiving. The first is temporal: under the Union Customs Code, non-Union goods in temporary storage must be placed under a customs procedure or re-exported within ninety days, failing which the customs authority takes measures to dispose of them ^[6]. Ninety days sounds generous until a documentation query intervenes; for chilled material the critical interval is far shorter anyway, and time in a customs warehouse is recorded as part of the batch history. The second is linguistic: the safety data sheet is supplied in the official language of the member state where the substance is placed on the market, unless that member state provides otherwise ^[9]. An English-only sheet on material delivered into the Greek market is a finding, not a detail.

As for the Greek authorities, the division of responsibilities is simpler than forum threads imply. Customs offices sit under the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (ΑΑΔΕ) and deal with tariff classification, duties and VAT. The National Organisation for Medicines (ΕΟΦ) is the competent authority for human medicines, and becomes involved only where a material's labelling or presentation carries it into the medicinal field. The National Accreditation System (ΕΣΥΔ) has no role in movement of goods at all — it is the national body that accredits laboratories against ΕΛΟΤ EN ISO/IEC 17025 ^[2], and it concerns who performs analyses, not who receives parcels. Confusing the three is the commonest source of wrong conclusions about what may arrive and where.

When something does not match

The difference between a laboratory with a procedure and a room with good intentions shows only when something does not match. The rule admits no exceptions: material does not move forward in status while a finding is open. It stays in quarantine, with the finding recorded, until there is an answer in writing ^[1][2]. The answer is filed even when satisfactory — especially when satisfactory, because the second assessment of any supplier is made in light of how they answered the first.

1. Photograph the sealed parcel with the shipping label visible and note the date, time and receiver.
2. Read and record every temperature indicator or logger before anything is moved.
3. Open while checking the supplier's seal separately from the carrier's seal.
4. Match substance name, batch number and count across the label, the delivery note and the certificate of analysis.
5. Inspect each vial visually for damage, seal integrity, appearance of the contents and legibility of the label ^[1].
6. Place the whole receipt in quarantine with a unique identifier per vial and move it immediately into the declared storage conditions ^[2][3].
7. Confirm the presence and format of the safety data sheet, and file the certificate and customs paperwork with the batch number in every filename ^[9].
8. Record every deviation, send the query in writing the same day, and note the reservation deadline that applies to the carrier ^[5].
9. Release with a name and a date, and only then register the material as available stock.