Glossary
Purchase order expediting: how to expedite the right orders
Purchase order expediting: Purchase order expediting is following up with a supplier to secure or accelerate an open order, usually because the part behind it will run short before the order arrives.
By Roufaida Bouchamha, founder
The definition
Expediting covers every action taken to make an open purchase order arrive on time or earlier: calling or emailing the supplier, asking for a partial shipment, paying for faster freight, or moving the order up the supplier's queue. It is different from routine follow-up, which only checks that dates are still valid.
The real question: which orders to expedite
Expediting costs money and goodwill. Premium freight is expensive, and a supplier asked to rush everything rushes nothing. The orders worth expediting are the ones where the part will run out before the order arrives, the shortage risks, not the ones that are most days late.
A simple method
- Start from late and undated open lines (see past-due purchase order).
- Compute [days of cover](/resources/glossary/days-of-cover) for the part behind each line.
- Keep the lines where cover runs out before the order arrives.
- Sort by cover, shortest first: that is your chase list.
- Choose the cheapest action that works: a call before a partial shipment, a partial shipment before premium freight.
Illustrative example, not a customer result
Three late orders compete for premium freight. One is for a part with 40 days of cover, one for a part with 12, one for a part with 2 and no other open order. Only the third justifies paying for speed this week. The second needs a firm date from the supplier; the first can wait.
Track the cause
Tag every premium shipment with its cause: supplier late, lead time wrong in the ERP, demand spike, internal error. After a quarter, the tags show whether expediting is fixing supplier problems or planning problems.
How WERISCO uses it
WERISCO shows which late or undated supplier orders will leave a part short before they arrive, ranked by severity, with each part's days of cover shown as evidence, so your team expedites the right orders. It recommends; a person approves. Nothing is sent to suppliers and nothing is written back to your ERP. See the supplier escalation playbook.
Questions people ask
- Is expediting the same as chasing?
- Chasing is following up an order; expediting usually means taking an action to speed it up. Both should start from the same ranked list.
- Who should pay for premium freight when a supplier is late?
- It depends on your terms with the supplier. Recording the cause of each premium shipment gives you the facts for that discussion.
- How do I reduce expediting over time?
- Fix the causes that keep coming back: wrong lead times, reorder points set too low, and suppliers that keep missing dates.
