How to take school and office supply orders from a quotation list

The list arrives as a photo of a handwritten sheet, a forwarded spreadsheet or a long message in a chat thread. Do not retype it into one free text box. Split it into lines instead. Each line gets one item, one unit and one quantity.

Units cause most of the arguments. A school that asks for forty notebooks may mean forty single books, forty packets or forty dozen, and only one reading is right. Settle the unit for every line, whether ream, packet, box or piece, and write it back to the customer before you price anything.

Match each line to your catalogue code. Where the school names a brand you do not carry, propose a substitute on that line and let them accept or refuse it. Unmatched lines stay visible instead of vanishing.

Many schools and offices hold a negotiated rate, fixed once a year or at the start of each term, for every item they buy from you. Store it as a customer price list. The quotation then picks up their rate for every code, not whatever the shelf price happens to be this week.

Number the quotation, date it and give it a validity date, since paper and toner costs move between supplier invoices. Show delivery as its own line. Send a PDF with line numbers printed, so the reply can read accept lines one to forty, change line forty-one.

Keep every revision. When the school changes quantities, save a new version and leave the old one untouched, so you can show what was quoted, what was agreed and when.

A school’s accounts office pays against a purchase order. An invoice without that number sits in a drawer. Ask for the purchase order before converting the quotation, then record its number, its issue date and the signatory’s name from the stamp or signature block.

Record bill-to and ship-to separately. A trust may pay for a school at another address, and an office may want delivery to each floor with one invoice to head office. Store the contact at the delivery site too. The driver needs a name to ask for.

Freeze the prices at this point, because a list change next month must not rewrite an order the customer has already accepted.

Few suppliers fill a term order in a single van. Plan for part delivery from the start. Each delivery note lists what went out on every line, and the order keeps a running total of ordered, delivered and pending.

Pending is the figure the customer phones about. Print it on the delivery note and show it on the account page, with a reason: awaiting stock, back with the manufacturer, or held at the customer’s request. Invoice each delivery, or the whole order at the end, whichever the accounts office prefers, and always quote the same purchase order number.

Pack by class when the school asks. A label carrying the class name saves the school’s storekeeper a whole afternoon of sorting parcels into classroom cupboards and staff-room shelves.

Accepted quotations are demand you can see weeks ahead. Add up the quantity by item code, then compare it with your shelf and with the orders you have placed on your own suppliers.

Reserve stock against confirmed orders, so that a counter sale on a busy Saturday cannot eat into a school’s allocation of reams. Hold a margin for late additions. Size it from what customers added to their lists last term.

Take the last three school lists you handled and rebuild each as a coded quotation this week, starting with the messiest. It will show where your codes and units fall short.