Our shop runs very differently today than it ever has before. At least, I’d like to think it does. We are far better at monitoring the flow of parts that both enter and leave the shop, more inclined to deal with both the “devil” and the “details.”
We document and monitor just about everything we can and reference each event by date, invoice number and initials. Every part is accounted for as is every return and every credit. What used to be managed “by guess” or “by golly” is now entered into the computer and recorded complete with an unending litany of reports that ensure no part, credit or return will ever find its way to the place the one sock goes...the one that mysteriously goes missing with every load of wash that finds its way into the dryer.
On a recent Friday, we found ourselves immersed in a desperate search for that one sock. Only in this case, it was a battery. Our quest began with an invoice from one of our suppliers for a battery that was unsubstantiated in our system. That means that while our supplier could produce an invoice, the purchase did not appear anywhere in our records.
It wasn’t posted to the vendor’s account. It didn’t appear on a work order or an invoice. It didn’t turn up after an exhaustive audit of that whole week’s business. As far as our computer was concerned, it never happened.
The purchase was made more than three weeks before we received the invoice, which would have made it difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct for far too many shops. Three weeks is a lot of cars, a lot of parts and a lot of invoices for anyone to wade through. But, the fact that we have a system and a way to check and cross-reference every purchase and every sale made it a little less impossible for us.
The copy of the invoice we received was dated Sept. 12, 2005. That was a Monday and Mondays can be a little hectic around here. While checking every invoice and every work order that was written that week, we noticed the copy we received from our vendor had no signature. We requested the signed copy of the invoice because all of our vendors know that we will not pay an invoice without both a signature and a purchase order number. When it arrived, we noticed that it had no purchase order number, the signature was unrecognizable and it was dated Sept. 10, which was a Saturday, and we’re closed on Saturdays.
Needless to say, the battery was sold to a different company, not us. And, it will have to be paid for by a different company, not us. But what would have happened if we didn’t have the policies and procedures in place to keep that one “sock” from slipping through the cracks at your end of the sales equation? The same thing that probably happened in the past: We would have unknowingly paid for someone else’s part.
This time the system did what it was supposed to do and I feel pretty good about that. But, because one of my suppliers didn’t have a similar system in place, two people had to spend more than four hours searching for something that wasn’t ours to find, and I know I don’t feel “pretty good” about that!
