Solutions · Procurement
Procurement, the way you actually buy.
Contracts, the gate, quality, receipt and invoice as one chain, including the supplier who arrives with no contract. Built with you, around your suppliers and your rules, and yours to build on.
One delivery, as stored
- 12 SepBargain createdPaddy straw bales, transport included in the rate
- 14 SepBargain activatedAfter the plant's approval chain
- 05:52Gate entry recorded3 Oct · trolley attached to the bargain
- 06:21Gross weight recordedLocked until the quality checks were done14,820 kg
- 07:34Quality breach decidedSet by the first approver2% deduction
- 07:41Tare weight recordedNet weight 8,580 kg6,240 kg
- 07:48Purchase invoice parkedDeduction already applied
- 4 OctInvoice postedBy the plant accountant, from the review queue
Event names from the fuel procurement system that runs at a multi-plant power producer. A bargain is a purchase contract. Dates, weights and the deduction are invented.
Running it today
Very little of your buying looks like a purchase order.
If you head procurement for an operation that buys from farmers, traders or small vendors, the formal path is the exception. At a biomass power company, a farmer could arrive at one in the morning with a loaded trolley and no contract. A broker might already have paid him in cash at a published open rate. Weighbridge slips carried handwritten moisture readings and rubber stamps. Lab results went to a WhatsApp group, one message per sample. On the spreadsheet of purchases the contract number was blank on most rows, so a delivery could not be tied to what had been agreed. In peak season staff could not raise one invoice per trolley by hand.
At a spares business, who had been asked to buy what was agreed aloud, and goods a vendor sent straight to a client left no record. At a maker of industrial packaging, material that has left a vendor and not reached the plant is invisible until it arrives.
None of this is carelessness. It is what happens when the system covers the order and nothing on either side of it.
Why own it
The rules that decide what you pay should not sit in a vendor's queue.
Packaged procurement software is built around one path: requisition, order, receipt, match. It covers what every buyer has in common, and it works where every supplier is a registered company and every delivery matches an order line.
Yours is the buying that falls outside that path. A quality reading that changes the price. A rate that must not drift from the deal it was quoted on. A wet season that needs a different policy for certain plants. In rented software these become free-text fields and side spreadsheets, or a change request that waits its turn.
Buying rules change with the season and the market. If you own the system, a new policy is approved and takes effect when you decide. Not on a vendor roadmap, not through a change request queue, not whatever the contract happens to cover.
What an owned system records
Each checkpoint is an event, with a time and a person.
A system built on Phlo stores each step as it happens: the contract approved, the vehicle at the gate, the weight, the quality reading, the decision on a breach, the invoice. The chain beside the headline is one delivery from start to finish. Nothing in it is overwritten.
That changes what the record can be used for:
- Trace. An invoice opens into the delivery, its weights and readings, the contract it ran under and everyone who approved along the way.
- Correct without overwriting. A corrected weight, time or rate is a new event with a reason. The original and the correction are both kept.
- Reports that draw on history. Deductions by supplier, time spent at each checkpoint and what is still owed on a contract come from the record itself.
Already handled
The hard parts, already built once.
Each of these is a case that real buying throws up, modelled in the system built for the client named above it.
Multi-plant power producer: Informal procurement case study
The supplier with no contract
A trolley arrives at night with no bargain. The gate operator attaches the aggregator's standing direct bargain, at a published rate that was approved before it took effect, and the trip runs like any other.
Multi-plant power producer: Informal procurement case study
Quality that changes the price
Deductions for moisture and dust are slabs in a policy, set per material and plant. A reading outside policy raises a breach. The approver sets the deduction, and the invoice carries it.
Multi-plant power producer: Informal procurement case study
A weight that waits for quality
The gross weight cannot be recorded until the required quality checks are done, so a load cannot be weighed before its readings exist.
Multi-plant power producer: Informal procurement case study
An invoice for every trolley
The purchase invoice is parked by the system with the deduction already applied. The plant accountant posts it from a review queue.
Engineering group: Request to invoice case study
A rate that drifts from the deal
A purchase order rate that departs from the rate the quotation was priced on is blocked unless the user holds a special permission.
Engineering group: Request to invoice case study
Raising is not approving
Raising a purchase order and approving it are separate permissions. A revised order needs approval again.
Engineering group: Request to invoice case study
Goods that never touch the warehouse
At receipt each line is routed into the warehouse or marked as shipped direct to the customer, so a direct shipment still leaves a record against the order.
Industrial packaging manufacturer: Production management case study
Material in transit
Each inbound consignment moves through five stages, from dispatched to received, with time measured in each stage. A stage time can be corrected with a reason, and both the original and the correction are kept.
Industrial packaging manufacturer: Production management case study
A receipt that does not match
A received quantity outside the tolerance flags the goods receipt for review. Posting the receipt updates stock and the status of the purchase order together.
The first build
The first build describes how you buy, exceptions first.
The first build is where your operation gets described, and for procurement the description is found at the gate, the weighbridge and the stores, not in the policy document. We start with the cases your current system cannot name.
Entities
The things your operation keeps track of.
- Your supplier types, and what each must carry
- Your contract types and rates
- Your checkpoints, and which lock the next
- Your materials and quality measures
Events
What happens to them, in your words.
- Contract created and approved
- Arrival, weight and quality recorded
- Breach decided, and by whom
- Receipt and invoice, in your layout
Exceptions
What happens when it does not go to plan.
- The delivery with no contract
- The load that fails quality, or arrives short
- A rate or quantity outside tolerance
- A temporary policy for a season or a site
What carries forward from the foundation
The event log, roles and permissions, approval chains set per site, and reporting are already written. In the systems built so far, files for the accounts package are exported and uploaded by a person. There is no live link, and we do not promise one before we have seen yours.
What comes after
The next site inherits the rules, not just the screens.
Once deliveries are on record, the processes around them have something to stand on: stock by location, payment proposals, vendor onboarding, a second plant with its own approval chain. Each is added to the same history. It extends without a migration.
After the first build the framework becomes available to you. Your own engineers and product people can build the next system on it, or we carry on building for you. Both stay open, and the terms are settled in the first conversation, scoped to the engagement.
Get started
Tell us about the supplier your system cannot describe.
The one with no contract, the load that fails quality, the rate agreed on the phone. The first conversation is about how you buy, not a demo.
coffee@jetbro.inWhatsApp +91 90999 62227