You stop chasing suppliers for delivery dates by getting the date committed when the PO is placed instead of asking for it later. Put a confirm-by date in your PO terms, give every open PO one owner, time follow-ups to the need date, ask for replies in a fixed format, escalate before the date with the impact stated, score suppliers on it, and close each PO only on receipt.
Morsa publishes this guide and appears in it. Every vendor fact was read on the vendor’s own site on 12 October 2026.
Why do buyers end up chasing suppliers?
Because the date was never really committed, nobody owns the follow-up, and the follow-up runs on memory. A PO goes out with a requested date. The supplier never confirms it, or confirms it by email that never reaches the ERP. Three weeks later someone asks where the parts are, and the chase starts after the problem has already formed.
Slower supply makes this worse. The Institute for Supply Management’s September 2026 report, issued 1 October 2026, says supplier deliveries slowed “for the 10th month in a row,” with the Supplier Deliveries Index at 59%, production materials averaging an 84-day lead time and MRO supplies 49 days. Twelve manufacturing industries reported slower deliveries, and “increasing lead times” came up in 21% of negative comments. The longer an order is open, the more chances its date has to move without anyone noticing.
Patrick Knight, president and CEO of the Industry Data Exchange Association, described the result in the electrical channel in June 2026: “Right now, tracking material across the electrical supply chain means phone calls, emails, and spreadsheet chasing.” Chasing is a symptom. The causes are a missing commitment, a missing owner and a missing schedule.
How do you stop chasing suppliers, step by step?
These seven steps work in a spreadsheet, in your ERP, or with software. They move the work from reacting to late orders to running every open PO on rules.
Write a confirm-by date into your PO terms. State that the supplier must acknowledge each PO and confirm a ship date within a set window, for example two business days. SourceDay puts it plainly: “A purchase order without acknowledgment is not a commitment.”
Give every open PO one owner. One buyer per PO line, by name, not “purchasing.” When everyone owns a late order, nobody chases it until it is a crisis.
Time follow-ups to the need date, not the order date. A part needed in 84 days does not need a weekly email from day one. Example cadence: chase the acknowledgment when the confirm-by date passes, reconfirm 10 business days before the need date, again 3 days before, then daily once it is late.
Ask for replies in a fixed format. PO number, line, confirmed ship date, quantity. One question per message. A one-line answer can go straight into the ERP; a paragraph cannot.
Escalate before the date, with the impact stated. If the owner gets no answer by a set time, the case goes up one level with what it puts at risk: which work order, which line, which customer shipment.
Score suppliers on it. Track acknowledgment rate, time to respond and on-time delivery per supplier, and share the scores at each business review. The scores show which suppliers cause most of the chasing.
Close on receipt, not on a reply. “It shipped” is a promise. The PO line closes when the goods receipt posts in the ERP.
The supplier side of steps 1 and 6 (terms, acknowledgment rules, scorecards) is covered in how to get suppliers to confirm ship dates.
What can software automate?
Steps 3 to 7 are rule-based, so software can run them. The tools differ in where suppliers reply.
SourceDay‘s Open Order Chaser “automatically follows up on open purchase orders, confirmations, delivery dates, and late shipments.” SourceDay says Viking Yachts raised its supplier acknowledgment rate to 96%.
Leverage AI sends reminders that “can be configured by supplier, item, or even PO priority” and reads replies from email, PDF or Excel.
Coupa and SAP Business Network give suppliers a free portal account to confirm dates; Coupa plans “roughly 3-4 months to get suppliers fully connected.”
Microsoft’s Procurement Agent in Dynamics 365 finds unconfirmed or late POs and drafts a vendor email for the buyer to review.
Didero runs agents across purchasing, logistics and accounts payable.
Morsa chases in the channels a team already uses and ties each late PO to the orders and customers it affects.
Pick by where your suppliers will answer and what you already run. The full comparison, with prices and ERPs, is in the best PO expediting software for 2026. How triggers and replies work in detail is in how to automate supplier follow-up on open purchase orders.
What does a chase look like when it runs this way?
Here is one material commitment at J4S, a 120-person glass manufacturing plant, with Morsa running the follow-up. This is manufacturing proof, and the times are illustrative per the J4S story; the mechanism is what runs there.
When | What happened | Step it shows |
|---|---|---|
Mon 21:10 | Stores posts “6 mm clear stock enough till Wednesday.” Morsa finds 3 open orders on Line 2 dispatching Thu and Fri, and creates work owned by the purchasing head, due Tue 12:00 | One owner, a due date set by the need |
Tue 10:00 | No reply. Morsa nudges purchasing: two hours left, three orders depend on it | Follow-up timed to the need date |
Tue 13:00 | Still quiet. Morsa escalates to the Production Head: 1,200 pieces of Friday dispatch at risk | Escalate before the date, impact stated |
Tue 15:20 | Supplier confirms Wednesday delivery. The due date moves, with who moved it and why | A committed date on record |
Wed 11:40 | Goods receipt posts in the ERP. Morsa closes the work | Close on receipt |
Across its first four weeks, J4S went from about 30% to about 75% of roughly 900 operational commitments completed on time.
Where does Morsa fit, and when is it the wrong choice?
Morsa fits when the chasing is not only a purchasing problem. It reads the signal wherever it shows up: a supplier email, a stores message, a moved date in the ERP. It connects that signal to the open orders, lines and customers it affects, assigns one owner and a due date within your rules, nudges and escalates in the channel each person already uses (email, Teams, WhatsApp, phone or others), and closes on the goods receipt. It connects to systems such as SAP Business One, Dynamics 365, NetSuite and Odoo, and to others through an API, a database, an export or an email trail. Sunil K Verma, Plant Head at J4S: “I used to spend the first hour of every morning reconstructing yesterday. Now the chasing happens in the WhatsApp groups my supervisors already use, whether or not I remember.”
Morsa is the wrong choice if you want suppliers to confirm in a portal with built-in scorecards (SourceDay, Coupa or SAP fit better), you need a full procure-to-pay suite, or you want a distribution reference today: Morsa is built and proven in manufacturing, now onboarding its first distributors. Book a demo: https://cal.com/morsa
Sources
Institute for Supply Management, Manufacturing PMI at 54.5%; September 2026 ISM Manufacturing PMI Report, 1 October 2026, read 12 October 2026, prnewswire.com
David Gordon, ProjectNexus: Key Takeaways from NAED 2026, Electrical Trends, 1 June 2026, read 12 October 2026, electricaltrends.com
SourceDay, How to Improve Promise Date Accuracy in ERP (17 June 2026), AI Agents and Supplier Portal, read 12 October 2026, sourceday.com/blog, sourceday.com/ai-agents
Leverage AI, Purchase Order Automation, read 12 October 2026, tryleverage.ai
Coupa, Supply Chain Collaboration, read 12 October 2026, coupa.com
Microsoft Learn, Follow up on purchase orders by using the Procurement Agent, read 12 October 2026, learn.microsoft.com
Didero, homepage, read 12 October 2026, didero.ai
Morsa, J4S customer story, read 12 October 2026, /customers/j4s
Changelog
12 October 2026: first published.
