Friday: are the frames coming Monday?
Every Friday someone in the office works down the list of next week's fits and rings the fabricators. The uPVC frames for the Jones job are on the lorry. The aluminium bi-fold for the extension has slipped a week because of a hardware shortage, which the fabricator emailed about on Tuesday. Nobody saw it. The composite door from a third supplier has no dispatch date at all.
So the fitters are booked for a bi-fold that is not coming and a door that might be. Two customers get a Friday afternoon call they were not expecting.
Why nobody knows where the order is
Most installers use more than one supplier: a main uPVC fabricator, a specialist for aluminium, a door supplier, sometimes a separate glass supplier for replacement units. Each has its own order acknowledgement, its own way of changing a date and its own portal login.
- Order acknowledgements arrive as PDFs that nobody checks line by line.
- Date changes come by email to whoever placed the order.
- Some fabricators only update their portal, which nobody logs into every day.
- Part deliveries, such as frames now and a door later, are not tracked separately.
- The fitting diary is booked from the date given at order, not the latest date.
What the guessing costs
A fitting team booked on frames that have not arrived either sits idle or is moved at short notice, and the customer who took a day off is let down. Wrong items in an acknowledgement, such as the wrong colour foil or the wrong handing, that are not spotted before manufacture turn into remakes. And the Friday phone round takes hours that could go on quoting.
Order tracking that follows every fabricator
- Each order placed is recorded against the job with its fabricator, order number, items and the date promised.
- Order acknowledgements are read with AI extraction and compared line by line with what you ordered, flagging differences in size, colour, glass, hardware or handing before manufacture.
- Date changes and dispatch notes are picked up from email by an inbox parser, or from the fabricator's portal where it can be read, and update the order.
- The latest expected date is compared with the fitting slot, and the office is warned the same day if the order will arrive late or with items missing.
- Part deliveries are tracked line by line, so a job knows it has frames but is waiting on the door.
- A weekly view shows every order in progress with its latest date, so the Friday phone round becomes a short list of exceptions.
| Question | Today | With order tracking |
|---|---|---|
| Did the acknowledgement match the order? | Rarely checked | Compared line by line, differences flagged |
| Has the date moved? | Found out on Friday | Warning the day the email arrives |
| Will it arrive before the fit? | Guesswork | Latest date compared with the diary |
| What is still outstanding? | Phone each fabricator | One list across all suppliers |
Anything the parser cannot read with confidence goes to a person rather than being guessed. Fabricators do not need to change anything they do.
How the week changes
The office knows on Tuesday that the bi-fold has slipped, and moves the fit with days to spare. Acknowledgement errors are caught before the factory builds the wrong thing. Fitters are booked on frames that are actually coming. The customer hears about a delay from you, early, with a new date.
Over time, the order history also shows how reliable each fabricator's promised dates really are, which helps when you decide how far ahead to book fits for each supplier, and gives you something concrete to discuss at your next account review.
Is this your Friday?
- Someone rings fabricators every week to confirm deliveries.
- Fits have been booked for frames that had already slipped.
- Order acknowledgements are filed without being checked.
- You use more than one fabricator and each works differently.