The person who knows a station is out of adhesive is the assembler standing at it. The person who knows the shop is down to its last box of P180 discs is the prep tech. The person who can spend money is a supervisor, a buyer or the shop owner. Between them is a requisition, an email or a shout across the floor, and work slows while it gets sorted out.
The app lets the people who know what is needed order it, while managers keep control.
Managers approve, budgets hold
Each user on an account can be set up with the right level of control:
- A user can be marked as a manager for the account.
- The account can have a monthly budget, or none if left blank.
- With approval required on, every order goes to the manager first.
- With it off, only orders that push the calendar month past the budget are held.
- Held orders go to the manager by email and text with approve and decline buttons.
So a second-shift lead can scan the label for nozzles and cartridges and place the order. If it fits the month's budget, it goes through. If not, the supervisor gets a text and approves it from his phone. Budgets suit consumables well, because a body shop or maintenance department usually knows roughly what it spends on discs, tape and sprays each month.
You can also choose what each account can do. Quotes-only mode suits an OEM's engineering group that requests pricing on new adhesives and tapes for a design, while purchasing places the production orders.
Master accounts for plants and shop groups
A manufacturer with three plants, or a collision group with a dozen shops, does not want a dozen setups. A master account holds the price file, the customer's part numbers and the terms for all its locations. No orders are placed on the master. Each location inherits its price file, discount and part-number cross references, and anything set on a location overrides the master.
That fits how these customers standardize. Corporate engineering approves one structural adhesive and one mounting tape for a product. A shop group settles on one disc system and one masking tape across every location. Set it on the master and it applies everywhere. You can block an item on the master and name what they should order instead. The buyer is told at checkout and every location underneath follows the rule. That matters most on production adhesives, where an unapproved product on the line can become a quality problem.
Bins work the same way. Load every bin on the master with each location's account number in the Location column. Each shop or plant sees only its own stock while the head office sees them all.
Why it matters to you
Approval chains are often why larger accounts keep calling instead of ordering online. Once they trust that budgets and approvals hold, more people can order, and more of the spend goes through your store. A master account across several plants or shops, with their part numbers, standards and bins, is very hard for a competitor to undo.
For a large enough customer, private label gives them the app under their own name and logo while they keep ordering from you. Their shops or plants see their company's store; you see the orders.
Set approvals up with the customer, not for them. Sit down with the supervisor or shop manager and the buyer, agree who approves what and at what budget, and make sure both have the app on their phones. Once they approve a held order from a text, the rest of the team usually follows.
Want to walk through it with your own assembly, maintenance and body shop customers? Book a demo.