Skip to content

Overdue Purchase Order Chase Runner

Example prompt: "Every morning at 9am, find every purchase order in our Google Sheet past its expected arrival date. Draft a polite chase email to each supplier and post a one-line summary in #purchasing on Slack, flagging anything we've already chased that still hasn't landed."

The Problem

The chase email is the bit of procurement nobody owns until something stops the line. The buyer knows the POs that are late in the way they know which suppliers are normally late, but the formal chase — written down, sent on time, logged so the next chase does not duplicate the first — slips down the priority list every day until the warehouse phones to say a fixings order from three weeks ago has still not arrived. The chase log, when there is one, is usually a half-finished tab on the inventory sheet that nobody trusts.

How GloriaMundo Solves It

We build a workflow that runs at 9am every working day. An integration step reads the purchase orders sheet and finds rows past their expected arrival. A code step does the most important thing first — re-checks the goods received log so we never chase a supplier who has actually delivered but whose receipt has not propagated to the PO row. The remaining overdue lines are grouped by supplier so one supplier gets one email even when several lines on the same PO are outstanding. Another code step checks the chase log to avoid drafting a second chase within three working days of the first; those POs go to the Slack summary as 'second chase needed' so the buyer can decide to phone instead. An integration step drafts the chase emails in Gmail, writes the chase log rows, and posts the summary in #purchasing. Glass Box preview shows every draft email and every chase log row before anything is created.

Example Workflow Steps

  1. Trigger (schedule): Every working day at 09:00.
  2. Step 1 (integration): Read the 'Purchase Orders' tab and pull rows with status 'Sent' or 'Partially received' where expected_arrival was more than two working days ago.
  3. Step 2 (code): For each candidate line, re-check the 'Goods Received Log' for receipts since last_synced_at; refresh the PO row's status and remaining_quantity; drop lines that are no longer overdue.
  4. Step 3 (code): Group still-overdue lines by (po_number, supplier_email); apply the three-working-day dedup against the 'PO Chase Log' so a PO with chase_sent_at inside that window is silently suppressed (no redraft, no Slack noise), and separately collect POs whose most recent chase_sent_at is more than three working days ago and that are still outstanding into the 'Second chase needed' bucket for the Slack summary.
  5. Step 4 (integration): For each remaining group, draft a Gmail to the supplier in our voice with the outstanding lines and a polite ask for a revised dispatch date.
  6. Step 5 (integration): Append a row to the 'PO Chase Log' tab with chase_round, the draft link, and chase_status 'Drafted'; on send-detection, update chase_status to 'Sent' and stamp last_chased_at on every still-outstanding line on the same PO.
  7. Step 6 (integration): At 09:30 post the chase summary in #purchasing on Slack — new chases drafted, second-chase-needed POs, and Partially-received POs more than five working days past expected_arrival for the outstanding balance.

Integrations Used

  • Google Sheets — the Purchase Orders, Goods Received Log, and PO Chase Log tabs
  • Gmail — drafts the chase email to each supplier and detects the send from the Sent folder
  • Slack — the #purchasing morning summary the buyer reads with their coffee

Who This Is For

The buyer at a small manufacturer or distributor — the person who reads the inventory sheet every morning, knows which suppliers ship when they say they will, and resents writing the same chase email over and over to the supplier who is always a week late. The workflow does the writing; the buyer does the relationship.

Time & Cost Saved

A working buyer chasing suppliers properly is half a morning a week on the chase emails alone and a worse half-morning when something has fallen through and the line stops. This workflow turns the daily chase into a five-minute review of drafts and a glance at the Slack summary. The bigger gain is the chases that actually go out the day the PO becomes overdue rather than three days later when the buyer next has the time.