A crate of yesterday's bread and a pencilled note
The driver drops today's order at the village shop and picks up yesterday's unsold: four white tin loaves, two seeded, a bag of rolls, a lemon drizzle with two days left on it. The shop owner says there were five white. The driver writes something on the back of the delivery note. By the time the van gets back, the note is in the footwell with the others.
On Friday someone in the office tries to work out each shop's credit from a pile of notes, some of them unreadable, and the shop's own count, which is always a little higher.
Why returns are hard to pin down
Sale or return is a trade term that helps smaller shops take your range, and it works. The problem is purely in the record. Returns happen at the van door, early in the morning, during a round with a schedule to keep, and the only tool is a pen.
- Returns are counted by the driver in a hurry, often with the shop owner watching.
- Notes are made on delivery notes that are then filed with deliveries.
- Returned items are not matched to the day they were delivered.
- Credits are worked out weekly from memory and scraps of paper.
- Disagreements with the shop have no record to settle them.
What loose returns cost
Credits that are too generous, because the shop's count is accepted when there is nothing else. Credits that are too slow, which annoys good customers. Time in the office every Friday. And the bigger cost: without a clean record, you cannot see which shops are over-ordering and which products routinely come back, so the waste carries on week after week.
Return logging we build
- The driver's phone shows each drop on the round with today's delivery and the items delivered on the previous day or days that can come back under that customer's terms.
- Returns are entered by tapping quantities against those items, while standing at the shop, with an optional photo of the returned crate.
- The shop can confirm on the screen, or a copy of the return is sent to them by text or email straight away.
- Returns are matched to the delivery they came from, so a return can never exceed what was delivered.
- Each customer's credit for the week is calculated from the returns at their agreed return terms, and a credit note is drafted in Xero, QuickBooks or your invoicing system for a person to approve.
- A report shows returns by customer and product, over time, so the owner can see where the waste is.
| Recorded | Used for |
|---|---|
| Items returned per drop | Weekly credit per customer |
| Delivery the return belongs to | Checking returns against deliveries |
| Photo and shop confirmation | Settling disagreements |
| Returns by product over time | Adjusting standing orders |
A Friday without the pile of notes
Credits are drafted from a record both sides saw at the van door. Disagreements get shorter because there is a photo and a confirmation. The office checks and approves instead of adding up. And the returns report becomes one of the most useful things the bakery has: it shows exactly which shops are ordering more than they sell.
Drivers get something too. The phone screen already knows what was delivered to that shop yesterday, so there is less to write and less to argue about in a cold doorway at half past five.
Over a few months, the returns pattern can shape the conversation about each customer's standing order, or whether sale or return still makes sense for them at all. That is your call; the record just makes it an informed one.
Is this how your returns work?
- Returns are written on the back of delivery notes.
- Weekly credits are worked out from scraps of paper.
- Shops' counts are accepted because you have nothing better.
- You cannot say which products come back most.
- Credits reach customers late.