A bag of adhesive is missing in the morning. The person who ordered last time is on leave. The number is saved on their phone, with no supplier name, under a call from yesterday. By the time someone finds who knows the yard, the crew has already lost an hour. The supplier did not disappear. The number did.
Every job has its own suppliers: rough materials, tile, plumbing, electrical, haul-off, tool hire. They are not a general list of everyone you have ever used. They are the people for this apartment, with what was ordered from them.
What you keep on each supplier
- Business name and the name of the person who answers
- Phone, and a second phone if the first is the driver
- What they bring to this job
- Where they unload, and whether the building needs entry approval
- Short payment terms: cash, end of month, or only after an invoice
Do not copy every contact from the phone. Only people who actually serve this project. The tile supplier for Herzl does not have to be the tile supplier for Bialik, if the color was ordered somewhere else. The job address on the card stops a delivery to the wrong apartment.
When you order
The order is written next to the supplier: what, how much, which apartment, and which day. A spoken message to the driver does not stay. If someone else has to chase the delivery tomorrow, they see the number and what was promised, without calling you from the ladder.
An invoice that arrives with no supplier name on the project is hard to tie. When the name is already there, save the invoice on that supplier and on that budget line. At month end you see how much you paid them, not only how much left the account.
When someone leaves the site
A worker who holds every number and then leaves takes with them the ability to order tomorrow. So the number does not wait for the leaving day. It is written on the day of the first order. If a supplier changed mid-job, the old one stays on the note with a line not to order, so nobody calls them out of habit.
Once a week, at the Friday close, check whether a number is missing for someone who should come next week. One minute. You do not rebuild the whole list.
A personal phone is convenient for the person who holds it. The job needs the number when that person is not there.