A new supplier ready to deliver
A skip hire firm wants to start delivering mixed construction waste to your site next week. Your sales manager has agreed prices. Before the first load, your office needs the documents your process requires from a new supplier: company details, registrations, bank details for payments, and whatever else your own checks require.
The office emails a list. The skip firm sends some documents, then some more. One is out of date. The bank details are in a Word document with no letterhead. The office files what arrives in a folder named after the supplier and tries to remember what is still missing. The first lorry arrives before everything is in.
A year later, one of those documents expires. Nobody notices.
Why onboarding is chaotic
Onboarding is a checklist, but most firms run it by email.
- The list of documents needed is in an email template, not a system.
- Documents arrive in pieces, by email, in different formats.
- Nobody sees at a glance what is missing for each supplier.
- Deliveries start before onboarding is complete, because nobody checks.
- Expiry dates are not recorded, so documents lapse unnoticed.
What documents you require, and what checks you carry out, are for your business and its advisers. We deal with collecting, tracking and renewing them.
What chaotic onboarding costs
Office time goes into chasing, filing and searching. Suppliers find the process disorganised, which is not a good start to a relationship.
The bigger risk is accepting material from a supplier whose documents are incomplete or out of date, contrary to your own process. If anyone later asks to see your records for a supplier, finding them in an email folder is slow and gaps are exposed.
Bank details sent informally are also a known route for payment fraud. Changes to bank details arriving by email, unchecked, are a risk every business should avoid.
How we build supplier onboarding
What we build turns onboarding into a checklist the supplier completes and your office tracks.
- You set checklists by supplier type: skip firm, commercial producer, scrap seller trade account, haulier. Each lists the documents and details you require.
- The new supplier receives a link to an upload page, where they enter details and upload documents against each item on the checklist.
- Your office reviews each document, records its expiry date and approves or rejects it with a reason.
- Reminders go to the supplier for anything missing, on a schedule you set.
- The supplier's status, complete or incomplete, is shown at the weighbridge, so the operator knows before accepting a first load.
- Documents approaching expiry trigger a renewal request to the supplier, and bank detail changes require a verification step you define.
| Status | What it means at the weighbridge |
|---|---|
| Complete | Accept loads |
| Incomplete | Office decides under your process |
| Document expiring | Renewal requested, still complete |
| Document expired | Office decides under your process |
The skip firm's onboarding with a checklist
The skip firm receives a link on Monday. By Wednesday they have uploaded most documents. One is out of date, and the office rejects it with a note; the firm uploads the current version the next day. Bank details are entered on the page and verified by a call using the number you already hold.
When the first lorry arrives the following week, the weighbridge shows the supplier as complete. A year later, the renewal request goes out a month before a document expires, and the new version is uploaded before the old one lapses.
Is supplier onboarding done by email?
- Documents are requested and returned by email.
- You cannot see at a glance what is missing for each supplier.
- Loads have been accepted before onboarding was complete.
- Expiry dates are not tracked.
- Bank details arrive in emails and are not verified.