You send 300 kg of brass to a turner. Some weeks later 280 kg of finished parts come back, then another lot, then a phone call about scrap. Nobody wrote any of it down in one place, and now your stock register says you own material that is physically in somebody else's workshop.
Why this particular gap is so common
Because nothing about it feels urgent at the time. The goods left, they will come back, everybody knows the arrangement. It only becomes visible at the moment it is most expensive to fix: a year-end count, a dispute with the job worker, or a buyer asking why the inventory figure and the physical stock disagree.
Three numbers, per consignment
The whole of the discipline is this:
- What went out — quantity and description, recorded on the day it left.
- What has come back so far — because it rarely comes back in one delivery.
- What is still out — the first minus the second, which is the only number anyone actually wants.
That third number is the point. If you record the first two honestly, the third is arithmetic. If you don't, no amount of remembering will reconstruct it.
The date that makes it visible
Recording an expected return date turns a passive list into something that can complain. Without it, an outstanding consignment looks the same on day three and day three hundred. With it, anything past its date is a question you can actually go and ask.
Partial returns are the normal case
Treat them as the default and the system holds up. Treat a return as all-or-nothing and you will start rounding — marking a consignment closed when most of it came back — and the small differences you rounded away are exactly the ones that add up to the discrepancy you eventually have to explain.
How this looks in BizGST Pro — and what it does not do yet
A challan raised for job work records the quantity per line and an expected return date, and the challan list shows that date against every open consignment, so what is outstanding and how long it has been outstanding are both on one screen. Recording partial returns against a consignment is not in the product yet — today you would close a challan when the material is back and keep the part-deliveries alongside. We would rather say that than describe a feature that is not there.
What this article does not cover
Any filing, form or time limit connected with goods sent out for processing. Those are statutory, they change, and the sources are the GST portal and your accountant — we will not state them from memory. What is above is inventory hygiene, and it is worth doing regardless of what the filing requires.