How to find late orders and plan revisions

The order book at Buying › Purchase orders shows your purchase orders as a List or a Board, plus a Revisions calendar. The red late count, the list's groups and the filter bar take you straight to the orders that need a chase or a decision.

New to purchasing? Start with What are suppliers and purchase orders?.

How do you see what is late?

Press the red N late button on the toolbar, where N is the number of late orders. It adds the filter Problem is Late, so the list shows only those orders.

If that filter leaves nothing, the list says Nothing is late. Every open order is inside its expected arrival date. Remove the filter chip to see everything again.

An order is Late when its expected arrival has passed, or its ship date when it has no arrival, and not everything on it has been received. Closed and cancelled orders never count.

How is the list grouped?

By What needs you to begin with, so today's work sits at the top:

• Needs you: a revise-by date in the next week, a sign-off stuck for more than three days, or a draft past its due date.
• Late: past its due date, with goods still to come.
• Coming up: due date still ahead.
• No ship date: add a ship date so Tideswell can tell when it is late.
• Over 6 months late: nothing received on any of these. They may have arrived without being booked in.
• Received or closed: finished orders.

The last two start folded; click a group's heading to open it. While you search or filter, every group opens.

To group by the change you asked the supplier for instead, open the display menu (the button that reads List or Board) and choose Group by › Revision status. Your choice is saved to your account.

What does the When column say?

One plain phrase per order, such as Revise by tomorrow, 12 days late, Due in 9 days, Due today or No date.

Not placed yet marks a draft whose due date has already passed: the order never went to the supplier. Waiting on sign-off marks one stuck at approval. Finished orders show a dash.

How do you narrow the list?

Search by vendor or PO number in the box at the top of the page. The filter bar narrows by Supplier, Stage, Receiving, Problem, Owner, Department, Expected arrival, Approval and Currency.

Some filters appear only once your orders differ on them, so Currency shows when you buy in more than one currency. Your filters stay in place in that browser the next time you open the page.

The display menu also has Hide, to hide orders by receiving state, and Columns, to choose which columns show. Reset columns puts them back, and Make these columns the default keeps your choice. Drag a column heading to move it, and click one to sort within each group.

The Total beside the list adds up the orders on screen, one figure per currency.

What do the Revision and Receiving columns mean?

They answer different questions and are easy to confuse.

Revision is the change you asked the supplier for: Revised, No change, Deliver early or ASAP. Receiving is the delivery picture: Open, Partially received, Received or Closed short.

An order can be Revised and Open at the same time. One is about paperwork and one is about goods.

What are the warnings on an order?

Problems worked out from the order itself. They show on each card on the Board, and the Problem filter selects by them:

• Late: yours to chase.
• No supplier reply: the order has gone to the supplier, its revise-by date has passed, and they have not confirmed it. It clears as soon as their rep answers. See How to let a supplier's rep confirm their orders.
• Waiting on sign-off: stuck at approval for more than three days. See How to route a purchase order for approval.
• No owner: an order past its first stage with nobody accountable, which is often why it went quiet. Give it an owner, as in How to write a purchase order.
• Closed short and Short: finished with goods still missing.

On the Board, drag a card to another stage column to move the order on. See How to move a purchase order through its stages.

What is the revisions calendar for?

Seeing which orders need a decision before the supplier's cut-off, laid out by month against vendor. Press Revisions calendar beside the display menu to open it.

Each row is a vendor and a series of PO numbers, the letters at the start of the number. It has two tabs:

• Revise by places each order in the month of its revise-by date. Green orders are Revised or No change; amber ones are ASAP or Deliver early.
• Ship & dollars places each order in the month it ships, with its original and revised amounts and a total at the foot. A revised amount lower than the original shows in red.

Click an order to edit it. Click the vendor's name to see that vendor's stock on Selling › Inventory, or the pencil beside it (Edit vendor profile) to change the vendor's revision window and lead time.

The vendor link is the useful move. It puts the order you are about to revise next to the stock that should decide it.

Give an order a revise-by date or a ship date to place it on the matching tab.

How should you work this each week?

1. On the List, work through the Needs you group first. Those are the revise-by dates due within a week, the stalled sign-offs and the drafts that never went out.
2. Press N late and chase.
3. Check each late order against stock first. A late order covering something with four months of cover can wait; one covering an oversold line cannot. See How to find items running out, oversold, or not selling.
4. Where the supplier gave tracking, read it on the order's shipments before you call. See How to track a shipment on its way.
5. Open the Revisions calendar to see the revise-by dates further ahead. Vendor deadlines on How to plan a season on the buying calendar lists the same dates soonest first.

When a supplier is repeatedly late, their delivery record turns that impression into a number worth quoting, per How to record new terms and read a supplier's performance.

Can Tideswell tell you instead?

Yes, two ways.

An alert under Brain › Automations can watch for late orders and tell you, rather than waiting for you to look. See How to set up the stock and order alerts.

With the Agent added to chat, a late order also produces a suggested task such as Call Portside Mills about PM-2041, which waits for someone to approve it. See How to add the Agent to chat.

Your workspace may use its own words for purchase orders and suppliers; Settings › Terminology shows both.