We’re back at our cookie manufacturer HQ.

You’ve received a quote from a supplier for 10 tons of chocolate at a fantastic price and great lead time (e. g. 3 weeks).

It’s time to cut a PO.

First, we spend 8 minutes copy and pasting the quote details (quantity, price, delivery schedule) into the ERP.

Then the PO gets submitted for approval in the ERP.

Hopefully Steve sees the notification and approves it.

A day, or if we’re lucky – a few hours, later it’s approved! Time to send it to the supplier.

The supplier responds with an order acknowledgment.

The order acknowledgement is supposed to match your PO.

Only it doesn’t—there’s an error stating 100 tons of chocolate instead of 10.

You send an email referencing the previously sent PO number, specify it’s only 10 tons, could they please update the acknowledgment?

The supplier sends back a revised order acknowledgment, and this time: it’s correct!

You confirm it looks good and now the supplier sends an invoice.

Being the savvy chocolate company that we are, we check that the PO and order acknowledgment match the invoice.

Great! Everything matches, so we submit the invoice for payment.

When will the order arrive?

The quote said three weeks, but you know how unpredictable the chocolate business can be—it’s a bit rich.

We’ll send an email every week asking for updates on production and shipping timelines and pray to the supply chain gods that it arrives in time to fill that big cookie order.

Once the order ships, we hope the supplier provides tracking details.

If they don’t that’s another email we’ll need to send.

The goods arrive, and it’s time to inspect, check the good receipts note that came with the chocolate against our PO and invoice.

Then we log the invoice in our ERP.

Finally, we assess the quality and document feedback for future orders.

Maybe we’ll use this vendor again, maybe we won’t.