A chef doesn’t think in product codes, and no checklist I’ve ever sent a buyer has changed that. What a checklist can do is cut down the phone calls. I run the order desk at a mid-size food and drink distributor, which means most of my mornings go on turning other people’s shorthand into lines on a sales order. People ask me “what should a purchase order include?” as if there’s an official form somewhere with the right answer. My answer is less tidy: whatever stops me having to ring you back.
So this is the order desk’s version of the answer, the one that keeps my phone quiet.
Some of the reading and matching can be handed to software now, and there are tools that read emailed, PDF and photographed orders and match each line to your own product list. They get on better with a clear order, same as I do. Whoever or whatever reads it, a purchase order still has to say what the buyer wants, how much of it, and when. Everything below is about getting a little more of that onto the page without making your buyers feel like they’re doing a tax return.
Which details actually save you a phone call?
Think about the last few times you rang a customer about an order. I’d bet it was the same handful of things every time.
Your product codes come first. Yours, not theirs. A buyer who writes “the good olive oil” knows exactly which one they mean, and so did whoever took their order last month, but the person reading it before sunrise on a Monday might be looking at four olive oils in the catalogue and no clue which is “the good one”. If they copy your code off the last invoice, the guessing stops. Nobody needs to learn your catalogue for this to work, just copy a few characters from a piece of paper they already have.
Pack size is the sneaky one. “Tomatoes x 10” could mean ten cases or ten single tins, and we sell both.
Then the delivery date, which buyers skip because they always get Tuesday, right up until the week they need it on Monday and don’t say. And their own PO number, if their business uses them. It feels like paperwork for its own sake until their accounts team sends your invoice back because the number isn’t on it. At that point it’s suddenly the most important field on the page.
Multi-site customers need one more thing: which kitchen, shop or bar the order is for. The person writing it is standing in the place it’s going to, so it never occurs to them to say. Usually you can guess. Usually.
I have a laminated page of IKEA assembly instructions pinned above my desk. Not for any furniture I own. It’s there because it’s the clearest document I’ve ever seen: almost no words, a little drawing of every part, a quantity beside each one, and you know exactly what you’re holding before you pick up the screwdriver. Purchase orders don’t need to be that good. Half as clear would do me nicely.
What buyers leave out (and why it isn’t laziness)
Nobody leaves out the pack size to annoy you. Most orders get written at the worst possible moment: end of service, standing in the walk-in, counting what’s left with a phone in one hand. Buyers write in their own language, which is what’s on their shelf rather than what’s in your catalogue. Codes go missing because they’ve genuinely never seen them, since your invoices land in their office and their orders get written in the kitchen.
The delivery date vanishes for a simpler reason. In their head it’s obvious.
I’m in no position to lecture anyone about scrappy orders, though. Some mornings a driver walks in and shouts across the warehouse that the chef at one of his drops wants another case of cream and the small lemons, not the big ones, and I write it on the back of my hand. On a box flap, if I’m feeling organised. I know. It’s the least traceable order format in the building, nobody else can read it, and I have washed at least one order off my own hand before typing it in. I still take them, because the chef needs the cream and the driver is already halfway back to the van.
So the checklist isn’t there to correct anyone. It just points out, politely, which bits only make sense from their side of the counter.
The checklist (short enough that people read it)
My first attempt was a full page with headings. One chef replied within the hour: “I’ll fill in your form when you fill in my prep list.” I laughed, then deleted half of it. He had a point. His job is feeding a dining room, and I’d sent him homework.
The version I use now is short, it’s optional, and it says thank you. Copy it, change the wording so it sounds like you, and drop it into an email or the bottom of your order confirmations.
A quick note on orders
Hi, and thanks for ordering with us. If you can, these few things help us get your order right first time without needing to call you:
- Our product code, if you have it handy. It’s on your last invoice. The product name is fine if not.
- Pack size: a case, a box or a single unit.
- How many of each.
- The delivery date you’d like, even if it’s your usual day.
- Your PO number, if your accounts team needs it on our invoice.
- Which site it’s going to, if you have more than one.
Short on time? Send the order however suits you and we’ll sort out the rest.
Notice what isn’t on it. Prices aren’t there, because they’re on your price list and arguing about them is a different conversation. There’s no account number either, since you already know who sent the email. Six lines, and every one of them is something I’ve phoned a customer about. I also keep a printed copy on a clipboard by the loading door, for the drivers who get handed orders at the back of a kitchen.
Now look at that last line again. It matters more than the other six put together.
Why you still take the order that ignores all of it
Because the alternative is worse. Bounce an order back for a missing code and the buyer doesn’t learn to add codes; they learn that another supplier is easier to deal with. Some of your buyers will use the checklist, and a few will copy codes off invoices forever after, which will make you very fond of them. Plenty will carry on sending “same as last week plus lemons” from a phone at closing time (more on why here). That’s fine. Reading scrappy orders is what an order desk is for, and the checklist only means fewer of them, and fewer calls.
Before you send anything, pull up the orders from the last couple of weeks that made you pick up the phone. Write down what was missing from each one. Then cut your checklist down to those things, keep the line that says send it anyway, and email it to your regular buyers this week.