Where is my bifold door?
A customer ordered a set of bifold doors, a particular roof window and a run of composite decking in a colour you don't stock. The counter raised a purchase order to each supplier. Two weeks later the customer rings. Nobody at the branch knows whether the supplier confirmed a date. The buyer thinks the decking came in, but it might be sitting in goods in with no label. The window hasn't been ordered at all, because the PO was saved but not sent.
Every call like that takes fifteen minutes of someone ringing suppliers and walking the yard. On a busy week the counter fields several of them a day, and each one interrupts a trade customer standing in front of them.
Special orders fall between systems
Stock replenishment is well served by your merchant system. Specials are different. Each one is a promise to a named customer, dependent on a supplier's lead time, and it passes through several hands.
- The customer order and the supplier PO are linked loosely, if at all.
- Supplier acknowledgements arrive by email to whoever sent the PO, with a date that is not recorded against anything.
- Lead time changes are phoned through and forgotten.
- Goods in receives the item but has no prompt that a customer is waiting for it.
- Specials collected late clutter the yard, and some are never collected at all.
The cost of a lost special
The customer's job is held up, and they remember that. Staff time goes on update calls. Specials that arrive and sit uncollected tie up cash and space. Worst of all are the ones never ordered or ordered wrong, which are found only when the customer comes to collect.
Specials are also where a merchant earns loyalty from builders and homeowners doing bigger jobs. A branch that keeps its promises on a kitchen's worth of doors and windows is the branch they come back to for the next project. One that loses track of them becomes the story the builder tells on the next site.
End-to-end special order tracking
- When a special is raised in your merchant system, we create a tracking record linking the customer order line to the supplier PO line.
- The PO is checked as sent. If it is still sitting unsent after a set time, the buyer is alerted.
- Supplier acknowledgement emails are read by an AI parser that pulls out the PO number, confirmed date and any changes, and updates the record. Anything it cannot match goes to a person.
- Overdue confirmations and slipping dates are flagged to the buyer, with the customer's required date alongside.
- At goods in, receiving the PO line prints a label with the customer's name and order, and triggers a text or email to the customer that their goods are ready.
- Specials not collected after a set period are listed for the branch to chase.
| Stage | Who needs to know | How they find out |
|---|---|---|
| PO sent | Buyer | Alert if not sent |
| Supplier confirmed date | Branch and customer | Read from the supplier email |
| Date slips | Buyer and branch | Flag against the customer's date |
| Goods received | Customer and counter | Label and message at goods in |
| Not collected | Branch manager | Weekly list |
The counter can answer in seconds
When a customer rings, the counter types their name and sees every open special with its current date. The buyer's morning starts with a list of what needs chasing. Goods in knows immediately that a pallet is a special for a named customer. The yard stops filling with forgotten items.
Is this your branch?
- Customers ring for updates on specials several times a week.
- Supplier confirmation dates live in individual inboxes.
- Specials sit in goods in unlabelled.
- You have found POs that were never sent.
- There are uncollected specials in the yard that nobody has chased.