A good process, held together by memory.
Every Altwater order followed the same route. A customer emails a purchase order as a PDF. Someone opens it, reads off the PO number, quantities, delivery address and date, and types them into a Google Sheets tracker. About a week before delivery, they message the spring on WhatsApp to check stock. Once stock is confirmed they email the freight carrier — a different one depending on which spring the water is coming from — then confirm the delivery date with the customer.
Then a pallet label is built by hand in Google Docs, exported to PDF and emailed to the spring. When the pallet is collected, two columns in the spreadsheet get updated. When it's delivered, an invoice is built manually in Xero using that customer's negotiated prices and payment terms, emailed with the PO number in the body, and two more columns get updated. When payment lands, two more.
None of it was broken. It was just fifteen separate steps across five separate tools, with nothing telling you which order needed what today, what was overdue, or what was quietly stuck waiting for someone.
The original flow, as documented by Altwater: fifteen steps, five apps, and a spreadsheet that only knows what someone remembered to type into it.
One system that knows where every order is.
Three pieces, working together. Nothing that Altwater has to log in to somewhere else to use.
The workflow engine
Seven connected workflows in n8n that carry each order from "received" to "paid". Every stage has rules about what has to be true before the next one can start.
- Reads incoming purchase orders and drafts the order
- Rejects duplicates automatically
- Picks the right freight carrier for the right spring
- Runs a daily 08:00 check for anything due, overdue or blocked
- Logs every change, by whom, and when
The one-page dashboard
Everything live, on one screen. Pending orders, stock checks, deliveries and invoices, each showing the customer, PO, the relevant date, the next action, and whether it's overdue or blocked.
- Record a new order in one form, multiple product lines included
- Log the spring's stock reply, freight booking, collection date
- Mark shipped, delivered, invoiced, paid — two clicks each
- Nearly 800 historical orders imported from the old tracker
Documents, generated for you
The three things that used to be typed up by hand for every order are now one click from the order card, pre-filled from the tracker.
- Freight email draft — address, date, cases, pallet weight and size, special requests, addressed to the right carrier
- Pallet label — print-ready, same layout as the old Google Doc
- Invoice prep sheet — exactly what to enter in Xero: contact, PO, lines, verified prices, VAT, due date
Same stages. The system does the remembering.
For each stage: what the automation handles, and what stays in Altwater's hands.
Order received
Stock check
Freight booking
Customer confirmation
Pallet label
Shipped, then delivered
Invoice and payment
Open one page. Know what today needs.
Seven live counts at the top, then the four sections Altwater asked for — with each order showing its next action and a button to take it.
ALTWATER · ORDER OPERATIONS
Thu 24 Sep 2026 · outbound email off · Xero prep-only2 · Stock checks / production scheduling 2
3 · Pending deliveries (freight → label → ship → confirm) 3
4a · Pending invoices — to create / send 1
Illustrative view of the live dashboard. Customer names and figures are examples; layout, sections, statuses and actions are as built.
Automate the admin. Keep the relationships.
Altwater was clear about one thing early on: an automated WhatsApp to the spring owner would be weird. We agreed. So the system is built to prompt, prepare and record, not to speak on anyone's behalf.
The parts that were pure typing
- Pulling order details out of the email into the tracker
- Spotting duplicate purchase orders
- Knowing which freight carrier goes with which spring
- Writing the freight email, the customer confirmation, the pallet label
- Working out line totals, VAT and due dates from each customer's real terms
- Remembering what's due in seven days, three days, today
- Flagging anything overdue or blocked
- Keeping an audit log of every change
- Exporting the whole tracker back to Excel on demand
The parts that are judgement or relationship
- The WhatsApp conversation with the spring
- Pressing send on every email — freight, customer, label
- Checking the PO PDF against what the system read
- Entering and approving the invoice in Xero
- Confirming a delivery actually happened, and how they know
- Verifying each customer's prices and payment terms, once
Rules the spreadsheet couldn't enforce.
Nothing is ever assumed
No customer defaults to 30-day terms. No price is invented. Until a customer's terms, VAT rate and prices are verified, their invoices are blocked and the dashboard says so.
Shipped is not delivered
Marking an order fulfilled never triggers an invoice. Delivery has to be confirmed separately, with a named source, before invoicing unlocks.
Labels before lorries
An order can't be marked shipped until the pallet label is marked sent. The label is flagged due three days before collection and overdue after.
Prices locked per order
The price and terms agreed at the time are stored on the order itself, so changing a customer's rate later never quietly rewrites an old invoice.
No duplicates, no double-sends
The same PO from the same customer is rejected on entry. Retries can't create a second order, message or invoice.
Everything is logged and backed up
Every action is recorded with who, what and when. The tracker is a single file that's trivial to back up — and the original spreadsheet was kept untouched.
Built to go further, switched on together.
We shipped the system with every outbound action turned off. Altwater can test everything with real orders and zero risk. Each of these is already wired — it goes live when they say so, not before.
Dashboard, tracker, documents, reminders
Live now. Every order, every stage, every draft, every flag.
Automatic order intake from the orders inbox
Reads new purchase orders as they arrive and creates the draft. Needs mailbox access; until then, the intake form takes seconds.
Daily 08:00 email digest
The reminder list already on the dashboard, delivered to the inbox each morning.
Send freight, customer and label emails directly
The drafts are already written. A single setting turns copy-paste into one click.
Create invoices in Xero automatically
The prep sheet already has every field. Connecting Xero removes the retyping — once Altwater trusts the numbers.
The process Altwater already had, minus the part where someone has to remember it.
Instead of cross-checking the inbox, the spreadsheet and Xero, the day starts with one page and a list of what's due.
Stock checks, labels, deliveries and payments are flagged before they're late, and marked overdue if they slip.
Nearly 800 past orders came across with their original columns preserved, and the tracker can be exported back to Excel any time.
No message, invoice or email leaves without a person choosing to send it. The automation prepares; Altwater decides.
Admin that used to be scattered across five apps — typing, copying, chasing — now handled in one place.
Got a process that lives in five apps and one person's head?
That's exactly where we start. We'll map how the work actually happens, find the steps worth automating, and build the version that fits.