Check every truck order before the cutoff

Why the order deserves a second look

Each store's order is usually built by one person, often at the end of a shift, from a count that may be a day old. Most orders are fine. The ones that aren't cause one of two problems: too much product, which ties up cash and turns into waste, or too little, which means 86'd menu items, emergency runs to a store down the road, or a second delivery fee.

Across many stores, a few bad orders a week is normal. The point of the check is to find them before the cutoff, not on the loading dock.

Compare the order against three things

An order line only looks wrong next to something. Put three references beside every line:

• Usage. How much of this item the store actually went through over the last few weeks, adjusted for the days until the next delivery. Your POS sales and your inventory counts together give you a usage number.
• Par. The level the store is supposed to be stocked to. Order quantity should be roughly par minus what's on hand. If par hasn't been updated since a menu change, fix par first.
• Recent orders. What this store ordered for the same item on the last several trucks. Big jumps from the store's own history are worth a question even when they're right.

None of these is the truth on its own. Usage lags a promotion, par goes stale, and history repeats last month's mistake. A line that is far from all three is the one to ask about.

The checks, line by line

The 40-versus-4 problem

The most common bad line isn't a judgment call. It's a typo. For example, say a store normally orders 4 cases of a frozen item and the order shows 40. Nobody planned that. It's a keystroke, and it's obvious once you set the line beside the last six orders. Ratio checks catch these reliably: anything several times the store's own recent average gets a human look before the cutoff.

Watch for unit confusion too. If your distributor sells some items by the case and some by the each, a store that types units where cases were expected will order a truckload.

Missing staples

Overorders are visible. Missing items aren't, because there's nothing on the screen to look at. Keep a short staple list per store, the items that should be on nearly every truck, and check that each one is present. An item absent from a store that orders it every week is far more likely to be forgotten than not needed.

Holiday and schedule shifts

Distributors move delivery days around holidays, and the cutoff moves with them. A truck that normally comes Tuesday may come Monday, or Wednesday, or not at all that week.

• Keep a list of delivery changes by date and by store, and check it before every holiday week.
• If the truck comes a day early, the cutoff probably comes a day early too. Stores need to know before their usual ordering day, not on it.
• If the gap until the next truck gets longer, the order needs to cover more days. Usage-based checks should use the real gap, not the normal one.
• Plan for the holiday itself: higher or lower sales than a normal day change what each store will use.

Verify after placing

"Submitted" is not the same as "received." After an order is placed, open what your distributor shows for that order and read it back: the lines, the quantities, the delivery date and the ship-to address. Orders get dropped at the cutoff, saved as drafts instead of submitted, or attached to the wrong date. The only proof an order is in is the distributor's own copy of it.

Do the read-back before the cutoff, so there's still time to fix anything it turns up.

Shorts and credits at delivery

The order is only half the check. The other half is what came off the truck.

• Check the invoice against the order, not just against the boxes. A short shows up as a line on the invoice with a lower quantity or a zero.
• Note substitutions. A substitute can be fine, or it can be a different size that breaks your recipes or costs more.
• Photograph damage and temperature problems at the door. Credit requests go faster with a photo and the invoice number.
• Request credits the same day. Most distributors have a window. A credit request a week later is a negotiation.
• Track every credit to the statement. A credit that was promised and never posted is money you paid for product you didn't get.

Common failure modes

• Reviewing after the cutoff. A check that runs once the order is locked only explains the problem.
• Trusting a stale par. Pars that predate a menu change make good orders look wrong and bad orders look right.
• Only looking for overorders. The missing item does more damage than the extra case.
• No read-back. Assuming "submitted" means the distributor has it.
• Holiday weeks treated as normal. The cutoff moved and nobody told the stores.
• Credits nobody follows up. Shorts get noted on the invoice and never show up as a credit.

What to measure

• Flagged lines per order, and how many turned out to be real errors
• Orders corrected before cutoff versus problems found at delivery
• Missing-staple catches per store per month
• Shorts and substitutions per delivery, by item
• Credits requested versus credits posted, and the days between
• Emergency runs or extra deliveries, which are the cost of what the check missed

Before the cutoff

• Every store with a truck this cycle has an order in
• No line is several times the store's recent average without a reason
• Every staple on the store's list is on the order
• Delivery date and ship-to match the current schedule, including holiday changes
• The order total sits inside the store's normal range, or someone has said why not
• The distributor's copy of each order has been read back
• Last delivery's shorts have a credit request open or posted

Running this every truck

On paper this is a spreadsheet and twenty minutes per store. Across every store and every truck, it's the first thing to get skipped on a busy week. Poros Ops runs this check for multi-unit operators: it compares each order to usage, par and history before the cutoff, asks the store about anything unusual, and reads back what the distributor received.