Knowing these terms makes it easier to process your buyer’s orders and trace your supply chain.
1. Why these terms matter to you
Your buyer sends you a sales order to find out where their product comes from. You upload the documents they need and place orders with your upstream suppliers, so each step of the supply chain is traced.
2. Your orders
You find all orders under Traceability → Orders.
Term | What it means for you |
Sales Order (SO) | An order from your buyer. You get an email when a new one arrives. |
Purchase Order (PO) | An order you place with your upstream supplier to continue the tracing. |
Internal Order | An order within your own company. We don’t recommend using it, because its details can’t be changed once created. To trace several of your own steps, see [Adding your company multiple times in the same supply chain]. |
3. Documents
Term | What it means for you |
Attachment template | The list of documents your buyer requires for an order. |
Mandatory / Optional | Upload all mandatory documents. Optional ones are welcome but not required. Click the ℹ️ icon next to Add files to see what a document type means. |
4. Linking
Linking connects your PO to your buyer’s SO, so your buyer can see the supply chain behind their order. You can only link orders that use the same attachment template. See [Linking purchase orders and sales orders].
5. Tracking progress
Column | What it shows |
Order Docs | How many required documents are uploaded for this order, for example 1/9. |
Tracing Depth | How far back the supply chain is traced. |
Tracing File Completion | How complete the documents are across the whole traced supply chain. |
💡 To update these numbers, select the orders and click Refresh calculation.
6. The tracing map
On the ‘Tracing’ tab you see the supply chain as a map.
✅ Green check on a line: all mandatory documents for that order are uploaded.
⚠️ Yellow warning: documents are still missing. Click the line to upload them.
+ on your company: click Add order to place a PO with your upstream supplier.
7. Who sees what
Each company sees its direct buyer and the full supply chain upstream from it, within the same chain.
Your buyer sees you and everything you trace upstream.
Your upstream supplier sees you as their buyer, plus everything they trace further upstream. They don’t see your buyer or anyone before you.
Other branches of the supply chain that a company isn’t part of stay hidden from them.
8. What to do next
Process the sales order you received from your buyer → [Sales Order: How to process a sales order received from your buyer]
Place an order with your upstream supplier → [Purchase Order: Place an order to your supplier]
Upload your documents → [Uploading and deleting documents in orders]
Link your orders → [Linking purchase orders and sales orders]