BlogRunning the place, updated
Sell each plant once
The worst call in wholesale is the one where you tell a landscaper that plants you confirmed last week are not there after all. It rarely happens because anybody was careless, and it is worth knowing how it does happen, because the causes are the same in a two-person yard and a nursery with a sales team.
Why the same plants get sold twice
The commonest cause is two people selling from one number. The count says two hundred, one person takes an order for eighty on the phone, another sells a hundred and fifty at the counter, and both were right about the count when they looked. Nothing was wrong with the number except that it described what was on the bench rather than what was still free.
The second cause is a count that changes after the order went in. Frost, a spray that went wrong or a grade-out takes thirty plants off a block that was already promised, and nobody connects the dump with the order until the truck is being loaded. The third is location. The plants were in the back house, or half were, and the order was taken against the sales yard.
Keeping promised and free apart
The fix works in any system, including paper. A plant on an order is committed. It stays on the bench until it is pulled, but it is no longer free to sell, move or dump, and anyone taking an order should see the free figure, never the physical one.
Three habits keep it honest. When a count comes in below what is already committed, someone has to be told that day, because an order somewhere is now short. Decide the order your locations are pulled from, so the sales yard empties before anyone walks to the back field, and mark a quarantine house or a block still growing on as not for sale. Then pull from a pick list sorted by location, so the crew walks the yard once and nobody guesses where the plants are.
The cost of getting it wrong is rarely the lost line. A landscaper plans a job around your plants, and after one short delivery they start splitting orders between you and somebody else, which costs you far more than the eighty plants did. On a small yard committed stock mostly protects you from your own memory. With several people taking orders it is the only thing standing between them.
How Sprout keeps them apart
In Sprout a plant on an open order is committed, and every screen shows the difference, so whoever takes the next order sees what is actually free. If a count comes in lower than what is committed, Sprout warns you before accepting it. Stock is kept by location, one order line can draw from several, and the order of your locations in Settings is the order orders fill from, with any location able to be marked not for sale. One click prints a pick ticket sorted by location, size and plant, with a box to tick on each row and no prices, so it can travel on the truck. If a posted order has to change, unposting puts the plants back on the exact lots they came from.