Sending an order

Once an order is approved, it goes to the supplier by email from within SmarteBuild — which means the sent order is recorded against the job rather than sitting in someone’s mailbox.

An order must be approved before it can be sent

SmarteBuild will not email an unapproved order. If you try, you get:

Approve this order before sending it to the supplier.

This applies everywhere — the orders page, the orders list, the call-up sheet, and re-sending from the mobile app. A purchase order is a commitment, and approval is the step that records that somebody accepted it.

If you are looking at an order you cannot send, check the Approved line under About on the order’s details. Approving is one button on the toolbar, and you need the Approve Orders permission to use it.

Re-sending from the phone

The mobile app can only re-send an order that has already been sent once from the desktop, and now only if it is still approved. An order that was unapproved after being sent will refuse to re-send until it is approved again.

Unlock puts it back

Unlock on the toolbar reverses an approval, and is how you edit an approved order — its details are read-only until you do.

An unlocked order cannot be sent. If you unlock one to correct a quantity, approve it again before sending, or the send is refused with the message above.

Sending

The send dialog carries:

Field	Notes
From	The address the order is sent from
To	The supplier contact
CC	Separate multiple addresses with ;
BCC	Same, and see below
Attach Files	Anything attached to the order

CC and BCC

Use ; between addresses, not commas.

CC is the right choice for the site supervisor, so they know what has been ordered and when it is due.

BCC to your own office address is worth doing as a habit. It gives you a copy in your normal mail system, which is occasionally what you need when a supplier claims they never received something.

CC the supervisor, every time

The most common cause of a delivery arriving with nobody expecting it is that the person on site was never told it was coming. It costs one address in a field you are already filling in.

Attachments

Attach Files sends the documents attached to the order alongside it — drawings, details, colour schedules, site access notes.

Attach the drawing the order refers to. A subcontractor with the order but not the detail rings the office; one with both starts work.

Shortcodes

The subject and body understand $Token$ placeholders, replaced with the real values as the email goes out. The menu beside the body lists every one it knows.

Use them in a saved template and one wording serves every order — “Hi $RepFirstName$, please find order $OrderCode$ for $ProjectName$” comes out addressed properly each time.

Group	Tokens
This order	$OrderName$, $OrderCode$
Supplier	$RepFirstName$, $RepLastName$, $RepFulName$
Project	$ProjectName$, $CostingName$, $ProjectAddress$, $ProjectAddress1$, $ProjectAddress2$
Supervisor	$SupervisorFullName$, $SupervisorFirstName$, $SupervisorLastName$, $SupervisorEmail$, $SupervisorPhone$
You	$UserFullName$, $UserFirstName$, $UserLastName$, $Signature$
Your company	$CompanyName$, $CompanyAddress$, $CompanyAddress1$

$RepFulName$ is spelt with one l

That is not a typo in this page. The token really is $RepFulName$, and the correctly spelt version does nothing. Pick it from the menu rather than typing it and the question does not arise.

A token that is not recognised is left exactly as you typed it, so a misspelling reaches the supplier as $OrderNumber$ in the middle of a sentence. Insert from the menu and that cannot happen.

While it sends

Sending runs in the background. The page watches for it to finish, but you can leave the tab or move to another order and the send carries on.

An order that has already gone shows when it was sent, and the button becomes Send again — which delivers another copy rather than doing nothing.

Check before you send

Six things, in about twenty seconds:

1. It is approved. Otherwise the send is refused — see above.
2. The contact. Addressed to a person, not just a company.
3. Hide Prices. Correct for this supplier — see Order details.
4. The dates. Particularly if the order was duplicated from an earlier one.
5. Invoicing requirements. If you need this supplier to invoice a particular way, it prints on the order — see Order details.
6. The site address. It comes from the project, and a blank one produces a phone call.

Exporting instead

Export produces the order as a document without sending it.

Use it when a supplier wants orders through their own portal, when you need a copy for a file, or when the order is going out with a batch of other paperwork.

Exporting does not mark the order as sent, so if your process relies on that status, note it somewhere. An exported-but-not-sent order looks identical to one nobody has actioned yet.

Xero

Export order to Xero pushes the order into Xero, if the connection is set up under Integrations.

This is separate from sending it to the supplier. Sending tells the supplier what you want; exporting to Xero tells your accounting system what you have committed. Most builders do both.

Re-sending a changed order

If an order changes after it has gone out — a quantity revised, an item added — send it again, and say so in the covering email.

A supplier who receives a second order with the same number and no explanation usually assumes it is a duplicate and ignores it. One who is told “revised — the mesh quantity has increased” acts on it.

For work that is no longer going ahead at all, void the order rather than sending a revision. See Voiding, trashing and deleting.