Once the vendor has indicated that the item has shipped to the customer, the purchasing dept or other operators invoice the vendor shipment using the vendor purchase order. At this point, an invoice is generated to the customer, the purchase order is closed, the shipment and any serialized inventory informatinon is captured, and inventory activity records are created. The inventory activity records are used to record the activity for the item and they are used to match the vendor shipment transactions to the vendor invoices for the shipments, when those invoices are processed in the accounts payable department.