Supplier orders: from draft to receipt, what needs to be tracked

A draft commits to nothing: it can be freely edited before sending. A sent order is a commitment, but it stays theoretical until the goods actually arrive. Confusing it with a received order is the most common mistake: it makes stock look available when it isn't yet.

That grey area has a real cost: a team that relies on a "sent" order to promise a delivery, a menu item, or a service (without knowing whether the supplier actually confirmed it) risks having to cancel at the last minute. Clearly separating the three statuses (draft, sent, received) gives a reliable answer to a simple question: can this stock actually be counted on, yes or no?

An order of 50 units that arrives at 30 is neither strictly "received" nor "pending": it's its own state that deserves to be clearly visible, otherwise the missing 20 units silently fall between two statuses. Good tracking distinguishes a full receipt from a partial one, and keeps a record of what's still owed.

In practice, partial receipt is closer to the norm than the exception: a supplier out of stock on one item, a missing box on delivery, a quantity adjusted without notice. Without explicit tracking of what's still owed, the only way to know what's missing is to reopen the original order email and recount by hand, for every order, every time.

The moment an order is marked received, stock should update on its own: no manual re-entry of received quantities on a separate product page, which is exactly the most common source of drift between theoretical and real stock.

That automatic update also has to respect partial receipt: only the quantities actually received go into stock, and the order stays open for the rest. Fluxalyo also blocks receiving the same order twice: a simple safeguard, but one that prevents a common mistake when several people have access to the same supplier order.

An order that gets sent and then forgotten is a classic: the supplier doesn't reply, nobody follows up, and the stockout arrives without anyone seeing it coming. Good order tracking should detect on its own that an order has gone too long without a reply: not just list it somewhere nobody checks.

In Fluxalyo, a reminder delay is configurable per company (7 days by default): past that delay without receipt, the main manager is notified by email, in-app notification, and push, without having to monitor anything manually.

Writing a purchase order by hand, line by line, for every supplier, is the kind of repetitive task that eventually gets rushed, or skipped. Good order tracking should generate the essentials automatically from what's already in the system: products, quantities, supplier.

Fluxalyo pre-fills an order email (subject and body, with the line-by-line detail) sent from your own inbox: the supplier replies directly to you, no middleman. A PDF export of the purchase order is also available, for suppliers who prefer a formal document.