Your customer needs to know where the materials in each order come from, starting from the finished product and going all the way back to raw material, and needs documents that prove it. With these documents, you can prove to your customer where each order was actually produced, so they can answer regulators, auditors or their own customers.

Order Tracing is where you do that, order by order. You receive your customer's order with a list of the documents they need from you, link the orders you placed with your own suppliers, and upload your documents in one place. No more back-and-forth emails to collect files and clarify details for every order. Complete traces help your customer's orders stay on schedule and show that you are a supplier they can rely on.

Your Company Profile shows who you are. Order Tracing adds what your profile alone can't show: which suppliers, tier by tier, worked on one specific order, with the documents for each step attached. Every order you trace also adds to your foundation in Retraced. The suppliers you connect stay in your network, the components you create stay in Retraced, and your company-level documents, such as business licenses, declarations and policies, are kept in your profile. Over time, your traced orders build a documented record of how and where your products are made.

Every order needs two things in Retraced: the component you are buying, and the supplier you are buying it from, connected in your network. Set both up once, and you can create orders with them from then on.

Add your suppliers to your network. Go to Network → My Network, click + Add, search the supplier's official name and click Connect. If they're not found, create a new company profile for them and invite a user, so they are notified of your orders. If you have already mapped your supply chain in Retraced, your suppliers are likely in your network already. (Full guide: Build your network)

Create your components. For an order you place yourself, create the component you are buying in your Components list. (Full guide: Creating your first component) For an order you record on someone else's behalf, create it inside that order with + Create new style.

🎥 [Video: Creating components] Prefer to watch? This video shows how to create components, in your Components list and inside an order.

Prefer to watch? This video covers every step below, from opening the Sales Order to checking that nothing is missing: https://emails.retraced.com/hubfs/Supplier%20Help%20Center%20Videos/Respond%20SO%20and%20trace%20to%20Raw%20Material.mp4

Get notified. Your customer's purchase order arrives in Retraced as your Sales Order, and you receive an email; click the button to open it. Always judge from your own seat: if you sell it, it's a Sales Order; if you buy it, it's a Purchase Order. All your customer orders are under Traceability → Orders → Sales Orders. (Full guide: Sales Order: How to process a Sales order received from your Buyer? )

Check what's requested. Open the order. Your customer's document template is already attached, so the order tells you which documents you need to provide.

Add the order you placed with your supplier. In the Tracing tab, click + on your company node and choose Add order. Select your supplier, enter your PO number and the product, and create the order. If different parts of the product come from different suppliers, such as fabric, trims or packaging, add one order for each.

Continue the trace to raw material. There are two ways to complete the rest of the chain:

A tracing map with several branches from one product to raw material.

Upload your documents as they arrive. You don't need documents to create an order; some, like invoices or bills of lading, only exist later. Upload each document on the order it belongs to by clicking the connection between two companies. (Full guide: Uploading and deleting documents in orders) If one document applies to several orders, upload it once to all of them. (Full guide: Bulk-uploading the same documents to multiple orders)

Check that nothing is missing:

A ⚠️ means documents are still outstanding; it's your to-do list, not a system error.

A ✅ means all mandatory documents for that order are in. The order overview shows how many documents are still due and how far the order is traced.

Prefer to watch? This video shows how to create multiple purchase orders from Excel: https://emails.retraced.com/hubfs/Supplier%20Help%20Center%20Videos/Bulk%20Upload%20Purchase%20Orders.mp4

When you need to create many purchase orders, for example because one Sales Order is made from several orders with your suppliers, or because you handle several Sales Orders at the same time, you can create them in bulk from Excel instead of adding each one from the tracing view, and then link them (see 3.4).

Check your customer's template first. Open one of your customer's Sales Orders and note which document template it uses. Your purchase orders must use the same template, or they can't be linked.

Create purchase orders in bulk. In the Purchase Orders tab, click Import Data and download the Excel template. Fill in one row per purchase order, including your customer's template name, then upload the file, confirm the template in the matching step and complete the import. (Full guide: Purchase Order: Place an order to your supplier)

Prefer to watch? This video shows both ways to link your purchase orders to your customer's Sales Orders: https://emails.retraced.com/hubfs/Supplier%20Help%20Center%20Videos/Retraced_OrderTracing_Link_a_Purchase_Order.mp4

Purchase orders you create outside the tracing view, one by one or in bulk, need to be linked to your customer's Sales Orders to appear in their trace. A purchase order can only be linked to Sales Orders that use the same document template. There are two ways to link them:

Once linked, each purchase order appears in your customer's tracing map, just as if you had added it from the tracing view.

Prefer to watch? This video shows how to update an order, and how archiving and deleting a purchase order differ: https://emails.retraced.com/hubfs/Supplier%20Help%20Center%20Videos/Edit%20Order%20Information.mp4

Only the company that created an order can edit, archive or delete it. For other orders, ask the company that created them.

Update an order. In the Tracing tab, click the connection between the two companies. In Transaction Details, click the PO ID to open the order, then edit the information directly on its Overview page, such as the delivery date, order number, product or quantity. Your changes are saved automatically. To change the supplier of a purchase order, it must not be linked to a Sales Order yet. (Full guide: Editing order information)

Remove a purchase order. Check which option you need before you click (Full guide: Removing a purchase order):

Once your orders are linked and your documents uploaded, your customer sees the traced supply chain for their order, with the documents attached to each step. Only your customer for that order sees the full chain; your suppliers only see the order you placed with them. (Full guide: Tracing Key Terms and Concepts)

Your customer uses those documents in several ways: to support compliance with product regulations such as the EU General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), to prepare Digital Product Passports, to prove chemical compliance with test reports and letters of guarantee, and to make environmental calculations more accurate.

It also saves you time. You see what's missing before your customer asks. One purchase order can be linked to several Sales Orders, so you create it and upload its documents only once. When your suppliers trace their own tier, you don't need to collect every upstream document yourself, and company-level documents in your profile can sync into future orders automatically.

A completed tracing map with ✅ on every transaction line.

A tracing only helps your customer while it matches what actually happened. Update an order as soon as something changes: a different supplier, quantity or delivery date, or a document that is replaced. Check your order overview regularly for orders with missing documents or an incomplete trace, and close those gaps before your customer reviews them.