247 purchase orders, all by email and WeChat. No PO system.
An EU brand whose stock moved from China into the Netherlands, then on to Germany for FBA, selling through bol and Amazon. Before any forecast, the work was getting the buying and the costs into one place.
The buying lived in two inboxes.
247 purchase orders, every one placed by email or WeChat, with no PO system behind them. 39 suppliers on the books. A PO tracker built so each order's state became a field, not a message thread.
Pulled back out of the invoices.
A third-party logistics bill rebuilt into a cost model across 1,871 orders and 94 SKUs, and the actual rates extracted: EUR 1.25 per order plus EUR 0.42 per item picked, EUR 2.25 per return, with storage, packaging and postage itemised. Reconciled line by line against an invoice of EUR 19,398.30.
Two lanes, four countries, every unit checked.
A four-node map: China, the Netherlands, Germany, France. One third-party warehouse and three freight forwarders.
Cross-border shipments on two lanes: China into the Netherlands, and the Netherlands on to Germany for FBA.
Quality checks.
Transfers between locations.
Six tools, none of them a planning tool.
ClickUp, Slack, Shopify, the 3PL's portal, bol's logistics and Google Sheets.
The catalogue, in one category, tiered A to D. The cost model held 94 of them, and a pallet calculator 30.
Ran on top: forecasting, the PO tracker, spare-parts forecasting, and the invoice breakdown.
If your purchase orders live in an inbox, start there.
Twenty minutes on how your orders, suppliers and lanes fit together. If it is a fit, we book a 45-minute call next, and a free written 90-day read follows once your data is in.