Your Clean Handover Score

What the score is

You coordinate purchase orders: you chase production, check quality, gather the paperwork, and get finished goods into the hands of the shipping agent. The score measures the only thing all of that adds up to — did the goods reach the handover point on time, complete, checked, and with their papers in order?

Each purchase order either achieves a clean handover or it doesn't. There is no partial credit. The score for a quarter is:

CHS = value of POs handed over clean ÷ value of all POs scheduled that quarter × 100

It is weighted by value, not by counting orders. One large order handled badly costs you more than three small ones handled well — because that is also how it costs the buyer.

The four tests

A purchase order counts as a clean handover only when all four are true:

1. On time. Handed over to the shipping agent within seven calendar days after the approved ready date — the date you proposed and the buyer approved in writing. Once approved, that date is locked.
2. Complete. The quantity is within the order's written tolerance, or the full ordered quantity if no tolerance was agreed.
3. Checked. The goods passed the agreed quality-control process, recorded before handover.
4. Documented. The compliance pack and shipping documents were complete at the moment of handover — not promised, not following by email next week.

Fail any one test and the whole order's value falls out of the clean side for that quarter. The goods still get shipped, you are still paid the base commission on accepted goods — but the order does not help your score.

The quarter is fixed by the ready date

Each order belongs to the quarter containing its approved ready date. A delayed order counts as a failure in the quarter it was supposed to be ready — it cannot slide into the next quarter and become a success there. This closes the oldest trick in performance measurement: making a bad month look good by moving it.

What your score is worth

The typical arrangement ties your commission rate to the quarterly score:

Your own agreement is the authority on the exact rates and thresholds — the dashboard shows the bands so you always know where the quarter stands, without waiting for the statement.

A persistently low score is also, in most agreements, grounds for ending the arrangement. The dashboard exists so that this never comes as a surprise: you see the same number the buyer sees, every day.

Exclusions — when it genuinely wasn't your fault

Some failures are not yours: the buyer changed the order late, approved a scope change, or a genuine force majeure event (an earthquake, not a slow sub-supplier) stopped everything. Those orders are excluded from the score entirely — they don't count against you, and they don't count for you either. They simply leave the calculation.

Two things to know about exclusions:

• Only the buyer can grant one, in writing, with a reason. Ordinary production problems, capacity shortages, supplier excuses and communication failures are not excludable — managing those is precisely the job the score measures.
• Ask early, with evidence. An exclusion requested the day the goods are late, with photographs and correspondence attached, is easy to grant. One requested at quarter end looks like score management, and will be read that way.

Let's be frank: what you record and what you don't

Two inputs start with you. You record the handover date: the day the goods reached the shipping agent, from the Handed over button on the order's stages. Everything else — the approved ready date, the QC result, the compliance confirmation, the exclusions — is recorded by the buying company's staff. The score itself is calculated; your dashboard is a window, not a form.

The handover date is yours because you are the one standing at the handover. It is not a free pass. Each date shows who recorded it and when, a date more than a day in the past asks for a reason that stays in the order's history, and the buyer checks it against the shipping agent's receipt and can correct it. A handover date that does not match the receipt is worse for you than a late one: the value of your 85% is that everyone can trust how it was recorded.

The other input that starts with you is the proposed ready date — proposing realistic dates is your expertise. But the score runs off the approved date, and approval belongs to the buyer. Note that padding proposals to make the seven-day window easy is visible on the buyer's side: the gap between what you propose and what gets approved is tracked, and a pattern of generous proposals reads exactly like what it is.

How to keep the number high

Nothing on this list is a trick; the score is designed so that the only way to game it is to do the job:

• Propose ready dates you believe. A realistic date you hit beats an optimistic date you miss, every quarter.
• Flag trouble the day you see it. A delay reported early can become a documented, excludable event or a renegotiated date. A delay reported late is just a failed test.
• Close the paperwork before the goods move. The most common way to fail is test four: goods physically ready, compliance pack chasing them by email. An order handed over without its papers is not clean, even if everything arrives eventually.
• Record the handover on the day. If you handed goods to the shipping agent on Tuesday, press Handed over on Tuesday and keep the receipt to hand for when the buyer asks. A handover recorded days later asks you for a reason, and reads like one.