How do you pin down what was agreed with the client before the truck leaves?
The order form: draft, “Issue” that freezes the document, a PDF e-mailed with the address and date, acceptance, cancellation with a reason, and its number in the invoice form.
What you get
- No more arguing about what was agreed.
- A document that does not change after the fact.
- E-mail sending from the form, with address and date.
Transcript
An order form is the sheet you send the client before the truck leaves: where from and where to, what cargo, on which trailer and when it loads, the agreed price and the payment term. It is there so that, a month later, nobody has to argue about what was agreed.
While the form is a draft, you can edit it as much as you like, and the sheet itself says in large letters that it has not been issued. One click on “Issue”, and the document is frozen: the “Edit” button is gone. The form keeps its own copy of everything printed on it, so a year from now the PDF will look exactly the same, even if the client’s card has changed since.
The PDF is produced by the product itself, with your company’s name and ICE and the client’s ICE, and it goes out by e-mail straight from here. Under the form you can see which address it went to, and when. The client agrees, and the form is marked accepted.
Cancelling a form takes a reason: the paper is already with the client, and they will ask. The reason stays under the form and is printed on the document itself, and the form keeps its number.
And when it is time to invoice, the form’s number sits next to the trip in the invoice form: the agreement is always at hand.
The agreement on paper, before departure, and it will not change after the fact.