Purchasing as a relay: supplier says shipped, warehouse says no lines—why in-transit never ties

Three chat windows, can't piece together a single ride

At 8 a.m., the planner reported a shortage of critical parts. The purchasing team asked questions in the group chat, and the supplier sent a screenshot of the courier slip; the warehouse replied, 'No such truck at the gate.' Ten minutes later, the truck arrived, and the team leader opened two pallets only to find missing boxes and batches that didn't match the order. In the afternoon, the reconciliation team came to ask, 'Does this shipment count as received?' The same shipment is considered a material shortage incident in the morning and a discrepancy dispute in the afternoon — the purchasing team spent all day relaying messages, but no one looked at the same line status to say: shipped, allocated, actually received, differences closed.

"'Integration' is not achieved by simply buying an extra scanner, but by makingShipping plan, details of this trip, resource occupation, and posting backFalling on the same traceable state. Any segment only exists in WeChat or the registration book, and if materials are missing, it will continue with the screenshots.

The delivery date has been confirmed, but it is still possible not to know which lines will be delivered this week.

Order confirmation only answers 'Do you acknowledge this order?' and does not answer 'Which lines are delivered this week, and in how many shipments.' When the purchaser asks in the meeting 'Exactly which day will it arrive,' the supplier replies 'According to the delivery schedule.' Both are correct, yet the site remains empty.

Minimum rule:

• Only effective PO lines are allowed to create a delivery plan; the total quantity of plan lines must not exceed the undelivered quantity;
• "Shipped" can only be generated from submitted plans or shipment statuses; verbal reporting is prohibited.
• Plan changes (quantity, expected arrival) must retain a version or reason code to prevent being silently overwritten.

Without a planned order, the in-transit kanban can only guess; with a plan but allowing procurement to fill in fake plans to boost coverage rate, it’s even worse than having no plan—numbers look good, but the platform is still chaotic. When the total planned orders exceed the undelivered quantity, the system should intercept it instead of relying on warehouse management to find out afterwards.

Having a tracking number does not mean you can unload the goods

The waybill number proves that the goods 'have left a certain place,' but it does not prove that the warehouse knows what is being unloaded or which time slot it occupies. Without detailed information for the trip, the team leader still has to unpack to know the workload; without track numbers and without row and pallet information, it is impossible to reserve storage space and plan sampling strategies. Appointments with pallet numbers exceeding the threshold but without details should be downgraded to standby slots or completed on-site, rather than competing for the platform with trips that have complete details.

Next-day posting is the most common method of falsification in transit.

Actual receipts are only recorded in the warehouse ledger and are not written back to the order line. The procurement dashboard will always show 'in transit,' and suppliers are always asked 'have you received it or not.' Differences (short delivery, over delivery, damage) must be closed with a reason code on the same day, and it must be decided whether to generate a make-up delivery plan line. Posting in batches the next day will make the 'in transit' status look good for a long time, while the site remains in a long-term panic.

When there is no independent warehousing system, the goods receipt confirmation can be used instead of detailed docking and storage locations, butActual Write-back OrderCannot skip it—otherwise, scheduling and reconciliation will still be disconnected. Direct delivery to the workshop can bypass the platform physically, but on the accounts it still needs to go through the receipt or direct warehouse entry node, otherwise quality inspection and undelivered items will inevitably drift.

If the supplier cannot see the actual receipt, they will continue to use screenshots as proof.

No matter how complete the internal system is, if the strategic supplier can only be called to ask 'Has it arrived?', the portal's value is reduced to just data entry. The receipt results, discrepancies, and shortfall closures should be visible to the strategic supplier (the level of detail can be adjusted, but the state machine must be consistent). If the actual receipt cannot be seen, WeChat screenshots will continue to serve as proof of delivery, and the procurement intermediary cannot remove that.

It is recommended that both parties share these status labels: Planned / Shipped / Scheduled / Receiving / Received / Short Delivery Closed. During spot checks, ask the supplier: 'Is the status you see in the system the same as what the warehouse said?' If it is not consistent, it is not yet connected.

Strategic suppliers should first take at least four steps

Select three to five strategic suppliers and high-frequency materials, only requiring:

1. Before shipment: Submit the details of this trip (line, quantity, expected arrival) through the portal or link;
2. Before arrival: Reservation successful (or recorded by warehouse staff to hold a spot);
3. Upon arrival: Post according to the details, and close any discrepancies on the same day;
4. The supplier can see the 'Received / Discrepancy' status.

Stabilize for two weeks in four steps, then discuss direct delivery, VMI, and automatic appointment algorithms. Write batch and short-term deliveries into a policy in one sentence:Planned items are assessed and closed separately; short shipments must have a reason code, and it must be clear whether a supplementary shipment item is generated. Otherwise, "sending part of it" would simultaneously contaminate the three metrics: delivered, undelivered, and reconciled.

In the supply plan, the coordination of orders and deliveries usually places confirmed schedules, portal shipments, and delivery confirmations on the same state machine, and can be linked with warehouse reservations and postings. When JEDP-SRM and WMS are jointly debugged, priority is given to verifying 'whether the supplier can enter data before shipment, whether the warehouse can post according to details, and whether undelivered posts are written back the same day and visible to the supplier,' rather than first doing a large coverage dashboard.

Compilation, Master Data, and Inapplicable Boundaries

When the warehouse staffing is severely insufficient, scheduling can only smooth the peaks, not create manpower — first supplement staffing or outsource unloading, then discuss mandatory line items. If multiple codes for one item are not addressed, the line items may be wrong. For consignment/VMI, consumption triggers replenishment, while traditional PO line shipping chains require separate indicator design. Spot stores pick up goods and there is no in-transit management, so forcibly implementing a full chain brings limited benefit. When suppliers have zero willingness to cooperate and there are no contractual constraints, forcing a portal will turn into a pretend exercise — first handle business and stratification.

Useful metrics: the proportion of confirmed orders with a shipping plan, detailed coverage rate, proportion of arrivals without details, appointment on-time check-in rate and no-show rate, timeliness of actual receipt backwriting, and random checks of supplier-visible receipt status. Filling in fake plans on behalf of procurement, supplementing details after arrival to boost coverage, canceling appointments without recording no-shows, and batch posting on the next day — all are anti-patterns.

Promotion can be layered by supplier: first, enforce planning for strategic suppliers; then, add details for peak categories with placeholders; next, expand actual receipts and make them visible to suppliers. If the 'planned proportion' and 'proportion of arrivals without details' remain unchanged for two consecutive weeks, first stop the expansion, fix the main factory substitution entries, and delay postings.

Coordination with delivery and reconciliation must be clarified in advance: receipt timestamps enter OTIF, actual quantity goes into the reconciliation pool; If unqualified or unreleased for inspection, whether reconciliation quantities are frozen must follow rules to avoid "goods arrived, payable on account, quality still being returned." Integration failures (plans not being pushed out, posting writes interrupted) must be shown to procurement and warehouse management on the same pending list, and silent retries are prohibited only in the technical group.

During peak season when platform pressure is high, it’s better to narrow the mandatory scope to strategic suppliers than to use 'unload first and then reorder' to make the detail coverage appear green—that kind of green will explode simultaneously with material shortages and reconciliation week next week. The sign that the procurement relay can be withdrawn is simple: during material shortages, you no longer need to open three chat windows at the same time to comment on the same line status.

What to do next

Before next week's material shortage meeting, randomly pick ten orders labeled 'Supplier says it has shipped': check if there is a shipping plan in the system, if there is a detailed entry for this shipment, and if there is an actual receipt timestamp. If all three are empty, it indicates the 'telephone game' mode is still in operation. Then have the supplier log in or open the link to see if they can view the actual receipt results — if not, it still means procurement is acting as the intermediary. First, stabilize the four-step process with strategic suppliers for two weeks, then expand to the next batch of the list.

• SRM Supply Solution: Order and Delivery Collaboration
• Order Confirmation, Modification, and Feedback
• Arrival Appointment and Receiving Rhythm
• OTIF Definition and Delivery Timestamp
• How to reconcile actual received payments