Placing an order

The desk works from the file alone. Nothing on it is guessed at, and nothing missing from it is filled in from a previous order.

Delivery name

The name a driver should ask for, or the trading name on the door.

Address

As it appears on the letterbox, including a flat, unit or suite number. A driver who cannot find a number cards the parcel.

Postcode

The postcode drives the carrier sort before anybody reads the street.

Email

Where the acknowledgement, the consignment number and any query about the order go.

Lines and quantities

A code and a count for each line. Where a line is sold as an inner pack, the count is packs, not pieces.

Access note

Side gate, buzzer, yard entrance, delivery window at a trade address. This rides on the label where the carrier allows it.

Your own reference

Optional. If one is given it prints on the packing note so goods-in at your end can match it.

The acknowledgement is a mirror, not a confirmation of anything else. It lists the lines and quantities as they were received, so a quantity typed as twelve when two were meant is visible while the order is still a file and nothing has been picked.

If the acknowledgement does not arrive, check the address on the order before assuming the order did not. A mistyped email address is the single most common reason a customer hears nothing until a parcel appears.

1. Email the order number

   Say what should change: a line added, a line dropped, a quantity altered, or an address corrected. One email per order keeps the trail in one place.

2. The desk checks the pick sheet

   The answer depends on one thing only: whether that order has already printed onto a pick sheet. Nothing else about the order matters at this point.

3. Not printed: the file is edited

   The file is amended and a fresh acknowledgement goes out showing the new lines and quantities. The order keeps its place on the current day's file.

4. Printed: it becomes a return

   Once the sheet is printed the parcel is being built, and a change cannot be unpicked from a sealed box. The line travels and comes back under a return reference instead.

The cut-off is what decides which side of that line an email lands on. Sheet 03 has the day's clock and a calculator for it.

A picker who cannot complete a line marks the sheet short rather than substituting something that looks similar. The desk then emails before the box is sealed, naming the line, the quantity picked and the quantity short, and asks which of three things to do: hold the whole order until the line is back, send what is picked and close the short line, or send what is picked and hold the short line for a later parcel.

Nothing is sealed while that question is open, because the answer changes what goes in the box. Where no reply comes before the cut-off, the order waits on the file rather than going out as a guess.