The short version- Commit stock, do not just note itAn accepted order should reserve its materials immediately, otherwise you sell the same flour twice.
- Check the shortfall, not the totalYou rarely need everything. You need the two or three lines that come up short.
- Work backwards from the due dateShortfall plus supplier lead time tells you the last safe day to order.
- Say no early, not lateDeclining on day one keeps a customer. Declining the day before pickup loses one.
Takeaway. Every yes should be backed by materials that are already accounted for.
A worked example: the 25 cake order
A customer asks for 25 chocolate cakes for Saturday. Your BOM says each cake needs 4 eggs, 300 g flour, 120 g butter, 200 g sugar and 75 g cocoa, so the order needs 100 eggs, 7.5 kg flour, 3 kg butter, 5 kg sugar and 1.9 kg cocoa.
Now compare against uncommitted stock, not the shelf total. The shelf holds 60 eggs and 8 kg of flour, but 30 of those eggs and 3 kg of that flour are already reserved for two earlier orders. Your real position is 30 eggs against 100 needed: a shortfall of 70 eggs. Flour is short 2.5 kg. Butter, sugar and cocoa cover the order.
The decision is now concrete: say yes, and place one order for 90 eggs and 3 kg of flour by Wednesday at the latest, given your supplier's two day lead time. You answered in minutes, and the answer came with its own shopping list.
Why committed stock is the whole game
The classic small-producer failure is selling the same materials twice. The flour on the shelf looks like plenty, until two accepted orders both assumed it was theirs. Neither customer knew, and the maker finds out on bake day.
The fix is mechanical: the moment you accept an order, deduct its BOM from available stock and hold it in a committed column. Every later decision reads from available, not from the shelf. When the order ships, committed stock becomes consumed stock, and the audit trail shows exactly where every gram went.
This is also what makes partial answers possible. Instead of a flat no, you can say: I can do 15 of the 25 by Saturday with what I have, all 25 by the following Friday. Customers almost always prefer an honest option to a confident guess.
Work backwards from the due date
Every shortfall has a deadline hiding inside it. If the order is due Saturday, production happens Friday, materials must be on the shelf Friday morning, and with a two day supplier lead time the purchase order must go out Wednesday. That Wednesday date is the real answer to can I accept this.
Build the habit of stating the deadline when you accept: yes, and I am ordering materials today. If the supplier misses, you learn it on Thursday with a day to recover, not on Saturday with a customer at the door.
Rush orders flip the arithmetic. When the due date is inside the lead time, the only honest answers are yes from existing stock, or no. Pricing a rush premium does not change the physics of a delivery truck.
For information and estimates only. Makeable's formulas, batch limits and margin calculations are mathematical estimates based on your inputs. They are not certified accounting, financial, pricing or tax advice. You are solely responsible for setting your own wholesale and retail prices, ensuring profitability, and checking cost calculations before committing money.
Common questions
What should I check before accepting a custom order?
Three things: whether uncommitted stock covers the order's full bill of materials, whether the due date leaves enough time to buy any shortfall given supplier lead times, and whether the production days fit around work you have already accepted. All three come from the same stock and order data.
Is it better to decline an order or buy materials to cover it?
If the shortfall can be bought and delivered before the production date with margin intact, accepting and buying is almost always right. Decline when the due date is inside your supplier's lead time, when the materials would arrive as dead stock you cannot use, or when the order only works at a loss.
How do I handle two orders competing for the same stock?
First accepted, first committed. Deduct each order's materials from available stock the moment you say yes, so the second order is checked against what genuinely remains. If it comes up short, offer the achievable quantity or a later date rather than hoping the numbers work out.
