How to follow up with suppliers without becoming the company’s "any updates?" person

Anyone who has handled purchasing knows the scene. The supplier promised Friday. Friday comes, and you send it again: "Any updates?" They answer, "Let me check and get back to you." On Monday, you ask again. Meanwhile, customer service wants a date to give the customer.

I’ve asked that question more times than I’d like. And I learned that "any updates?" is the easiest question to ignore. It doesn’t ask for a date, doesn’t ask for a decision and doesn’t say what happens if no answer comes. You can do better, and almost nothing that follows depends on software. A spreadsheet handles most of it.

1. One list, with one row per purchase

The first problem is almost never the supplier. It’s not knowing, in one place, what’s still pending. Build a list, in a spreadsheet or on a task board, with one row per purchase and these columns:

• the supplier and what was ordered;
• the promised date, and where the promise was made: email, phone call or WhatsApp;
• next contact, the day you’ll reach out again;
• who is tracking this purchase;
• which customer orders depend on it.

The last column is the one most often missing. In a fictional example, if the linen from Têxtil Norte runs late, Lume Casa needs to know right away that it’s holding up orders #1842 and #1851, and who will tell each customer.

2. Swap "any updates?" for a closed question

An open question gets a vague answer. A closed question gets a date. Compare:

• Before: "Hi, any updates on the order?"
• After: "Hi, Rodrigo. Can you confirm the 40 pieces of linen ship on Friday the 2nd? If that changed, what’s the new date?"

The second message says what was ordered, which date is at stake and what you need back. It’s easy to answer and hard to dodge.

3. Set the next check-in before you hang up

Every conversation with a supplier should end with a follow-up date: "If I don’t have the invoice by noon Thursday, I’ll call you." Put that date on the list. That way, you only reach out when you said you would, and the supplier knows when to expect you.

4. A good promise is a written promise

Agreed on something over the phone? Follow up right away with a short email: "Rodrigo, as we discussed, the 40 pieces ship Friday the 2nd, with the invoice." It takes a minute. When the date changes, you have the source, and nobody argues about what was agreed.

5. Fifteen minutes a day, always at the same time

Following up with suppliers doesn’t have to eat your morning. Set aside fifteen minutes, always at the same time, and look at just two things: what has a check-in scheduled for today and what’s already past its promised date. Everything else waits for its day.

6. Have a rule for when the answer doesn’t come

Decide ahead of time, calmly, what to do when a supplier goes quiet. For example: one day with no answer, a second message; two days, a phone call; three days, the call comes from whoever makes the purchasing decision. With the rule agreed, nobody has to decide in the heat of the moment whether it’s time to escalate.

7. Note how each supplier behaves

A notes column helps a lot: who answers fast, who’s always a little late, who warns you before they’re late. At the next negotiation, that history is worth more than any gut feeling.

Where Will comes in

All of this works with a spreadsheet and some discipline. What wears you out is the finding, gathering and chasing: tracking down the right email, seeing which orders depend on which purchase, writing the same message again. That part, Will does. At Lume Casa, a fictional example, it looks like this:

• Will reads the emails and WhatsApp chats with suppliers and finds every promised date, along with the message it came from.
• It links each purchase in Bling to the customer orders in Nuvemshop and Mercado Livre, so it knows who’s affected when a date changes.
• It follows up with the closed question, with the order and the date, on Gmail or WhatsApp, and follows up again on the agreed day.
• When a date changes, it updates the purchase in Bling, lets customer service know on the ClickUp card and tells you what changed.
• It keeps each supplier’s history: who answers fast, who runs late and what was agreed, with the emails as the source.

Negotiating prices and lead times, or switching suppliers, is still up to you. You decide what Will does on its own and what it brings to you, and every message sent gets a receipt.

For the step-by-step, read Follow up with suppliers. If this is what eats up most of your day, that’s the place to start with Will.