# Chasing suppliers

Chasing a supplier is the follow-up machinery pointed outward: a dated commitment with a reason, drained on email or phone under the same gates as any other outbound, with the transcript or the send evidence as the record of what was promised. The commercial decision at the end of a chase — accept, escalate, go elsewhere — is not one Connect makes.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **Channels:** email, phone, whatsapp
- **In the app:** #/follow-ups, #/companies, #/support
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/use-cases/supplier-chasing/

## The chase as a record, not a reminder

A calendar reminder tells you to chase somebody. A follow-up in Connect carries the reason, attaches to the Person and Company, and can drain itself on the channel you chose. The reason is the field that matters: a commitment without one is not useful to whoever inherits it, and supplier chases are inherited more often than customer ones because they outlive the project that started them.

- Channels are `email`, `whatsapp`, `sms`, `phone`, `any` and `task`. The `task` channel is work for a person and no drain ever sends it.
- Duplicate protection is real: a follow-up with the same due time for the same person is a duplicate, so two people chasing the same delivery do not produce two messages.
- `snooze`, `attempted`, `complete`, `cancel`, `stop_for_thread` and `stop_for_person` are all distinct acts, and the distinction between *attempted* and *complete* is what stops a chase quietly disappearing.
- Overdue rows are visible rather than silently rolled forward.

## What drains itself, and what expires

Phone follow-ups drain from the engine tick — **two per tick** — through the same gates as any outbound call, and each attempt is recorded as a call placed, an approval awaited, or a refusal with its reason. A line that is not ready is retried in an hour.

> **Careful** A phone follow-up more than **24 hours** late is closed as missed and never rung. That is deliberate — a very late call-back is worse than none — and it means a chase you needed made on Tuesday does not surface as a surprise call on Thursday. If a chase matters more than tidiness, watch the overdue list rather than trusting the drain.

| Outcome | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Call placed | It rang and a call record exists | Read the transcript and the summary |
| Awaiting approval | Autonomy on the voice channel requires a human yes | Approve in Needs You, or widen the scope |
| Refused | A gate declined — budget, readiness, a directive | The reason is recorded; it is not a silent failure |
| Missed | More than 24 hours late; closed without ringing | Re-create it if it still matters |

## What the record actually proves

**A sent chase** — A message is reported as sent only when the provider has acknowledged it. There is a third state — uncertain — shown as uncertain rather than guessed either way, because re-sending on a maybe is how a supplier receives the same chase twice.
**What was said on a call** — The transcript and the summary. Recording is foundation and not enabled on the live carrier, so there is no audio of the supplier agreeing a date — the transcript is your record.
**When it was decided to escalate** — The decision log holds what was decided, under which rule, and what happened, including refusals.
**A pattern of failures** — A support case can hold the history of a supplier who keeps missing dates, which is a better artefact for a review meeting than a scroll through a mailbox.

## Where a person has to take over

Everything commercial. Accepting a revised date, agreeing a credit, threatening to move the business, invoking a term — `safe_sales` refuses commercial terms Knowledge does not support and escalates, and the same logic applies pointing outward: committing your business to a supplier's revised terms is a decision with a person's name on it.

The clean pattern is a `task` follow-up created at the moment the chase stops being routine, carrying the thread and the reason. It appears as work for a person on the follow-ups screen, no drain will send it, and the decision that follows is recorded against whoever made it.

## Where the money goes

Almost nothing, if the chase stays in writing. An email chase is one small model call against a thread that is already loaded. Phone chases are the expensive path — audio tokens at four times the text input rate, roughly 2.7× on output, the session re-billed for its whole context every turn, and a duration charge even where no tokens are reported — and `budget_refusal` is asked before each one is placed. Outbound SMS, which would be the cheap nudge, does not run on the live carrier at all.

## Questions

### Will Connect keep chasing until somebody replies?

It chases on the schedule you set, and each follow-up is one dated commitment rather than an open-ended sequence. Phone chases expire after 24 hours late and are closed as missed rather than rung. Escalating from chase to consequence is not automatic, and it should not be.

### How do I prove a supplier agreed a delivery date on the phone?

With the transcript and the call summary, which are held in the workspace. There is no audio — recording is foundation and not enabled on the live carrier — so if a signed record of a commitment matters, get it in writing on the thread as well; a sent email carries the provider's own acknowledgement behind it.

### Can it chase by text message?

Not on the live carrier, which carries no SMS. Inbound SMS, STOP and suppression all work, so the channel exists but is one-directional here. WhatsApp is the practical alternative where the workspace has a provider and the session-window rules allow an outbound message; in India, SMS would additionally require DLT registration with the operators.

## Related

- [Executing a follow-up](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/follow-ups/execution/)
- [Overdue follow-ups](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/follow-ups/overdue/)
- [Executing phone follow-ups](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/phone/phone-followup-drain/)
- [Proof that a message was sent](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/email/send-evidence/)
- [Working with partners and suppliers](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/use-cases/partner-communication/)
- [Support cases](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/support/cases/)

## What this page is based on

- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §7 — the phone follow-up drain and its outcomes
- docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md §1 and §7 — the send boundary and follow-ups
- docs-source/sources/PHONE.md §4 and §12 — budget refusal, recording, SMS
- Connect capability registry (docs-source/facts.py)