How to organise a flower shop's orders (and leave the notebook)
A flower shop's orders come in by phone, by WhatsApp, through the door and from the website, and end up in a notebook, in a chat and in someone's head. It works until the first peak day, when the same peonies get promised twice or the eleven o'clock bouquet is forgotten. This is a method for organising them that works on paper and works better with software.
One list, per day
Every order, wherever it came from, goes into the same list, sorted by delivery or pickup date. Not "the web ones" in one place and "the phone ones" in another. If today has fourteen deliveries and six pickups, today's list has twenty lines, and anyone on the team knows what to do by looking at it.
The seven details of every order
- Type: pickup in shop or delivery.
- Date and time (or window) of delivery.
- Address of the recipient, who is almost never the payer.
- What it holds: flowers, bouquet (made or to build), add-ons, services.
- Who ordered: name and phone, to notify them and for the invoice.
- Notes: the card message, "no carnations", "call first".
- Payment: how much, how and whether it is paid.
An order missing one of the seven is a call that will have to be made later.
Status and payment, apart
An order can be delivered and unpaid, or paid and not yet made. Keep them separately: the status (new, confirmed, delivered, cancelled) says where the work is; the payment (unpaid, partly paid, paid) says what has been collected. At closing, the unpaid list comes out by itself and the day's cash adds up without searching.
Stock is reserved when the order is taken, not when it is built
If the eleven o'clock order has twelve red roses, those twelve roses are no longer available for the ten o'clock walk-in sale. On paper it is a sum nobody does; with software, the order deducts its stems on creation, web orders too, and two people cannot promise the same last bunch.
Notify the customer before they call
Three notices are enough: order confirmed, order ready (or on its way), order delivered. By WhatsApp or email, to the person who ordered, not the recipient, so the surprise is not spoiled. Every notice is a call that does not come in.
How it holds up on a peak day
On Valentine's Day or Mother's Day the method is the same, with three additions: take the orders early in the same list, compare what all open orders need with what is in the cooler to buy what is missing days ahead, and set the day's delivery windows so as not to promise what cannot be delivered.
How Priroda does it
In Priroda every order is a record with those seven details, in a list per day the whole team sees on the iPad and the web; status and payment are kept apart; stock is deducted on creation; notices go out by email or with WhatsApp templates from the shop's sender; and stock requirements compare open orders with the cooler before a peak day. It is told in Order management for florists.
Frequently asked questions
What if I stay on paper?
The same method works: one list per day, the seven columns, and one mark for status and another for payment. What paper does not do is reserve the stock or notify the customer.
How do I take a WhatsApp order without losing it?
Move it to the list at once, with the seven details, and reply to the customer with the confirmed notice. An order that lives in the chat does not exist for the rest of the team.
What do I do with orders that are not collected?
A "cancelled" status with the reason, and the payment refunded or not as the case may be. The discounts and cancellations report says how many there are a month.