Standing orders for wholesale customers: how to manage them without the chaos

Most small wholesale businesses run on standing orders, even if they don't call them that. The café that takes eight sourdough every weekday. The restaurant that has potatoes, onions and a box of salad every morning. The office that gets four bottles every fortnight. Standing orders are what make a delivery round predictable, and predictable is profitable.

The trouble is the changes. A standing order that never changes is easy. A standing order with an extra on Friday, a skip for a staff holiday, a new product being trialled and a price rise from next month is where things go wrong. This guide covers how to set up standing orders so that changes don't break them.

What a standing order should contain

A good standing order answers four questions for each customer:

• What they get: products and quantities.
• When: which days of the week, or how often (every week, every two weeks, every four weeks).
• At what price: your standard price or their own agreed price.
• How they're billed: per delivery, weekly or monthly, and how they pay.

The key design choice is to set quantities per weekday, not one quantity for every day. Most food businesses have different weekend trade. A café that takes 8 loaves Monday to Friday and 14 on Saturday has one standing order with two different day quantities, not two separate orders.

Keep changes separate from the standing order

The single most useful rule: never edit the standing order to handle a one-off. If a café wants 12 loaves this Friday instead of 8, record a change for that date only. Don't change Friday to 12 and try to remember to change it back.

Think of it as two layers:

1. The standing order: what normally happens.
2. Changes for specific dates on top: extras, reductions, skips and holiday pauses.

On any given day, what goes on the van is the standing order for that weekday plus any changes for that date. When the date has passed, the change has done its job and the standing order carries on as normal. This one habit removes most "why did they get 12 again?" mistakes.

Holidays work the same way. "Closed 22 December to 2 January" is a pause with a start and an end date, not a deleted customer you'll have to set up again in January.

Set a cut-off time and stick to it

A cut-off is the latest point a customer can change an order for a given day. Without one, you get changes at midnight for a 5am delivery, after you've already baked, bought or picked.

Choose your cut-off from your own process, working backwards:

Business	Typical constraint	Sensible cut-off
Wholesale bakery	Doughs mixed the afternoon before	Early afternoon the day before
Fruit and veg	Market buying in the early hours	Evening the day before
Coffee roaster	Roast day before delivery	The day before roast day
Water coolers	Stock loaded the night before	Afternoon the day before

These are examples, not rules. Pick the latest time you can genuinely work with, tell customers clearly, and then be consistent. If you accept late changes from everyone, you don't have a cut-off. It's fine to make exceptions for a good customer in a pinch, as long as it's an exception.

Let customers change their own orders

Most small suppliers act as a human switchboard. Customers message, you copy the change into a spreadsheet or notebook, and you hope you didn't miss one. The obvious fix is to let customers make the change themselves, in a place you both see.

What works for busy chefs and café owners:

• A link, not an app. Nobody wants to download an app or remember a password for their bread order. A private link they can bookmark is enough.
• Show what's already coming. They should see their standing order for the next delivery and change only what's different.
• Lock at the cut-off. After the cut-off the link should say "too late to change online, call us", so the rule enforces itself.

Our guide on moving customers off WhatsApp orders covers how to introduce this without annoying anyone.

Turn standing orders into a daily list

The payoff from well-kept standing orders is that tomorrow's work can be calculated, not assembled. For any date you should be able to get:

• A total per product: what to bake, buy, roast or load.
• A per-customer list: what goes in each crate or bag.
• A drop list: who gets a delivery, ready for route planning.

If producing these takes you more than a few minutes, the standing orders are probably living in too many places. Our free templates include a simple standing order sheet if you want to start with a spreadsheet.

Prices and price rises

Keep a default price per product and record any customer-specific prices separately. When you put prices up, give notice in writing with a date, then change the price from that date. Past deliveries should keep the price they were delivered at, so old invoices don't change under you.

Review standing orders regularly

Standing orders drift. A café that changes its Friday order every single week has a wrong standing order. Once a month, look for customers whose changes are always the same and update the standing order itself. Also look for customers who skip more often than not. They may be quietly moving to another supplier, and a quick call now is cheaper than finding out later.

A simple setup checklist

1. List every customer with their address, access notes and billing preference.
2. For each, record quantities per product per weekday.
3. Record any customer-specific prices.
4. Set and announce a cut-off time.
5. Record one-off changes against dates, never by editing the standing order.
6. Generate the daily totals and drop list from the standing orders plus changes.
7. Review monthly.

RoundSorted is built around exactly this model: standing orders by weekday, dated changes on top, a cut-off that customers' links respect, and daily load lists and runs worked out from both. It's free for up to five customers, so you can try it on a few accounts first. See pricing.