Operations
One export order, many purchase orders: back-to-back ordering explained
How to raise every supplier order from the export order, so nothing is missed and every purchase is tied to a sale.
Contents
- For merchant exporters and made-to-order goods, one export order often needs many supplier orders.
- If one supplier order is missed or late, the whole shipment waits.
- Back-to-back ordering ties every purchase to the export order it serves, so you see what is open and what it costs.
One order, many suppliers
A buyer confirms an order for twelve products. You make none of them yourself, or only some. Five come from one supplier, four from another, and three from a third. Packing material comes from a fourth.
That is one export order and at least four purchase orders. Each has its own price, quantity and delivery date. The shipment can only leave when every one of them has arrived.
Now imagine twenty export orders running at once.
Where it goes wrong
A purchase is missed. The export order changes, a line is added, and nobody raises the matching supplier order. You find out when packing starts.
Quantities do not match. The buyer increased a quantity, but the supplier order still shows the old number.
Goods are bought without a sale. A supplier order is raised from memory or habit, for an export order that was reduced or cancelled. The stock sits in your warehouse.
Costs are invisible. Supplier orders are kept separately from export orders, so nobody can easily see what the goods for one export order actually cost.
Late deliveries surprise you. A supplier slips by a week. Nobody connects that date to the vessel booking until it is too late.
What back-to-back ordering means
Back-to-back ordering is a simple rule: every purchase order is raised from, and linked to, the export order it serves.
In practice:
- The export order is confirmed.
- For each line, the team chooses the supplier and raises a purchase order from the export order, carrying across the product, quantity and specifications.
- Each purchase order stays linked to its export order.
- When the export order changes, the linked purchase orders show what needs to change too.
What you gain as owner
Nothing is missed. For any export order, you can see which lines have supplier orders and which do not.
Nothing is bought without a sale. Every purchase has a reason you can see.
Margin is visible early. As supplier orders are placed at their actual prices, you see the cost and margin of the export order before the goods ship, not after.
Dates line up. Each supplier's promised delivery date sits next to the export ship date. Late suppliers stand out while there is still time to act.
How Expodite helps. In Expodite, purchase order lines are added straight from confirmed sales orders and stay linked to them. One PO line can serve several export orders, and each order shows how much of it is already bought and on which POs. An alert tells you when a supplier delivery is overdue.
See back-to-back ordering in ExpoditeQuestions to ask your team
- For our next shipment, which supplier orders are still open?
- How do we know every line of an export order has a supplier order?
- When a buyer changes a quantity, how does the supplier find out?
- What did the goods for our last export order actually cost, line by line?
- Which supplier was late most often this year?
Quick answers
- What is back-to-back ordering in exports?
- Raising each supplier purchase order from the export order it serves, and keeping the two linked, so purchases match the sale.
- Who needs back-to-back ordering?
- Merchant exporters, and manufacturers who buy components or finished goods for specific export orders.
