Last, but certainly not least, customer orders must be accurate. They usually are and, for that reason, we’ve listed them last. However, since the customer comes first, we’d better make sure that our customer order files match their purchase orders. Not usually a problem, but at a minimum take a spot check to ensure that everything’s okay with what may be the most important set of data in the entire company.
The process of checking is usually simple. The customer service people pull a small sample, maybe 50 or 100 orders, call the customers and verify product, quantity, date, and anything else that may be important. If this audit turns up problems, the process may need to be expanded to a complete verification of the entire order file.