A fitting day with no oven
The fitters are on day four. Carcasses are in, worktops are fitted, and the integrated fridge freezer should be going into its housing. It is not there. The supplier moved the delivery a week and emailed the address on the order, which was the showroom's general inbox. Nobody read it. Now the fitters either leave a gap and come back, or they sit waiting, and the customer asks why nobody told them.
The opposite happens too. The appliances arrive two weeks early into a house with no kitchen, and the customer has a range cooker in the hallway while the old units are being ripped out.
Where the tracking breaks
Appliances are usually ordered separately from the units, sometimes from several suppliers for one kitchen: the oven and hob from one, the tall fridge from another, the tap and sink from a third. Each order has its own confirmation email, its own delivery window and its own way of changing it. The fitting diary lives somewhere else entirely.
- Order confirmations and delivery changes go to a shared inbox with no owner.
- The appliance list on the design is not the same list as what was actually ordered.
- Nobody compares confirmed delivery slots with the planned fit day for each item.
- Customers who buy their own appliances are not asked for delivery dates.
- Fitters find out what is missing when they open the house.
What the clash costs
A missing appliance means an extra visit, which is a fitter's half day you cannot bill. An early delivery means storage problems, damage risk and an unhappy customer tripping over boxes. A wrong model, noticed only when it will not fit the housing, can hold the whole completion. The balance payment often waits until everything is in, so each missing item also delays your cash.
Our method: one order line per appliance
- We take the appliance schedule from the signed design and create an order line for each item, with model, supplier, price and the fit stage it is needed for.
- Supplier confirmations and delivery emails are read by an inbox parser and matched to the right order line, so a new delivery date updates the record without anyone retyping it.
- Each delivery date is compared with the fit plan. If an appliance lands too early or after the stage it is needed, the job owner gets a warning.
- Customer-supplied appliances get a short form asking for model and delivery date, with a reminder if it is not filled in.
- Before each fit, the fitters see a list of what should be on site and what is still to come.
- Anything unmatched or unclear goes to an exception list for a person to sort out.
| Question | Answered today by | Answered with the tracker |
|---|---|---|
| Has the hob been ordered? | Searching emails | Order line status |
| When is the fridge arriving? | Ringing the supplier | Latest confirmed date on the job |
| Does that clash with the fit? | Someone noticing | Automatic warning |
| What should be on site tomorrow? | Fitter asks the office | Pre-fit list on their phone |
The difference on fitting days
The office sees every appliance on every live job, with its status and date, in one place. When a supplier moves a delivery, the warning arrives the same day and there is time to rearrange. Fitters arrive knowing what they will find. Customers get told about a delay by you, before it becomes their problem.
Signs appliance deliveries are costing you
- Fitters have returned to a job just to install one appliance.
- Delivery change emails get read days after they arrive.
- You have had appliances delivered to a house before the old kitchen was out.
- You cannot say, without checking emails, what is still outstanding on a job.