Inspiration
After several emails, a buyer and seller may believe they have agreed on an order—even when key terms still mean different things to each side.
The same date might mean arrival to the buyer and pickup to the seller. Different messages may refer to different sample versions. An attachment mentioned by the buyer may never have been included in the seller’s quotation.
For small exporters, discovering these gaps after production or shipment can lead to rework and disputes. We created OrderCheck to help surface them before the seller sends an order confirmation or pro forma invoice.
What it does
OrderCheck is an order clarification workspace for salespeople and order managers at small export businesses.
It helps users review the materials for a single order, identify unresolved terms, and connect every finding to its original source.
The workflow supports five steps:
- Find unresolved terms. Surface contradictions, missing information, and terms that still need explicit agreement.
- Review the evidence. Open an issue to see the original wording, the gap, and a suggested clarification question.
- Prepare a clarification email. Collect selected questions into an editable English email for the seller to review before sending.
- Evaluate the reply. Update the relevant issues when the buyer responds. Vague reassurance should leave an issue open.
- Summarize the agreement. Separate confirmed terms, unresolved items, and explicitly accepted risks without implying that the order has already been fulfilled.
In our demo, Lin, an exporter, uses OrderCheck to clarify an order with Emma, a buyer in the UK.
How we approached the build
We organized the experience around individual order issues. Each issue connects the source evidence, the unresolved question, the suggested next step, and its current status.
This structure keeps the review actionable: the seller can inspect a finding, decide what to ask, and follow that issue through the buyer’s response.
The scope is deliberately limited to the order materials the user provides. OrderCheck does not read private mailbox history or infer agreements from unrelated orders. Sending clarification messages remains a deliberate user action.
Challenges
The central challenge is distinguishing a plausible interpretation from an explicit agreement.
A date alone does not establish whether it refers to dispatch, pickup, or arrival. A friendly reply does not necessarily resolve a specific question. A newer message may clarify one term while leaving the others unanswered.
Our design therefore emphasizes source evidence and issue-specific updates. Uncertainty needs to remain visible until the relevant parties explicitly resolve it or accept the risk.
Accomplishments
The project brings evidence review, clarification drafting, and agreement tracking into one focused workflow.
Its most important design principle is traceability: users should be able to inspect the basis for a finding before acting on it. The final summary also preserves the distinction between what has been agreed, what remains open, and what risk has been accepted.
What we learned
The useful output is more than an email summary. Sellers need to understand what remains unresolved, why it matters, and what to ask next.
We also learned that agreement and fulfillment must remain separate. Confirming a delivery term does not establish that delivery has occurred.
What's next
Next, we want to evaluate OrderCheck against a wider range of order conversations and document formats, improve the handling of conflicting revisions, and refine how it recognizes explicit acceptance.
The goal is to help small exporters reach clearer, traceable agreements before committing an order to production or shipment.
Built With
- css
- next.js
- node.js
- react
- tailwind
- typescript
- vercel
- zod
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