Part supplies against one order: tracking balance and returns

A contractor orders two hundred lengths of GI pipe, a carton of unions and forty bags of cement, to be supplied as the slab work proceeds. You send a truck on Monday, another on Thursday and a third the week after.

Treat that as one sales order with three deliveries. Do not raise three orders. One order, three draw-downs.

The order carries the agreed rates and total quantity, and each trip draws it down. Commercial terms stay in one place, while the physical movement is recorded in another, trip by trip and truck by truck. The salesman quotes once, and the yard fulfils over weeks.

Raise the delivery note before the vehicle leaves the yard, listing items, quantities, vehicle number, driver and the site contact. The store keeper signs it. The driver carries a duplicate for the site engineer to countersign, with the truck registration pencilled beside the signature. That signed copy proves what was unloaded and who received it, which protects the driver as much as the yard.

Number the notes in sequence. The stores manager can then reconcile the day’s dispatches with the gate register in a few minutes, instead of hunting through loose slips at closing time.

No stock leaves without a note. Every note ties to an open order. The gate guard checks both.

The site engineer phones to ask how much is still coming. The salesman should answer from the order screen, which shows ordered, delivered, returned and balance for every line, rather than walking across to the store.

Add a flag for lines past their promised date. One missing elbow can stall a whole bathroom. The plumber waits. The site loses a day. Someone in your office should hear about it before the engineer calls.

Where stock is short, deliver part of that line and keep the remainder open. Never close the order just to hide a gap that the buyer will notice on site the next morning when the mason asks where the rest is.

Returns come back on a later truck or a hired pickup, perhaps a box of reducers sent in error or a cracked cistern rejected by the engineer. Record each against the delivery note it left on. A sealed carton of fittings goes back to the shelf, while a chipped basin goes to the damaged bin and out of saleable stock.

A loose credit hides the link. Nobody knows whether it belongs to the first trip or the third. The site’s count never matches yours. The invoice dispute starts.

Check that quantity returned never exceeds quantity delivered on that trip. Then record a reason: damaged, wrong size, excess or rejected.

Invoice from delivered quantities net of returns, not from the order. Some suppliers invoice every trip, while others bill monthly across several notes and attach a covering list. Either way, the invoice must name the notes it covers.

Close the order only at zero balance, or when someone with authority cancels the remainder and gives a reason that is written on the order.

This week, pick one open order with three or more trips and check that delivered, returned and billed quantities agree line by line.