Honest OTIF
Your supplier scorecard says 95%. Against which promise date?
Every time a supplier slips a date and you accept the new one, standard OTIF quietly resets the clock. Honest OTIF scores every delivery against the original promise date too — so a slipped-then-reconfirmed PO doesn't count as on-time.
Ungated. No email required.
How a chronically late supplier scores 95%+
The gaming pattern is simple, and it isn't even malicious — it's baked into how most ERPs store dates. There's one promise-date field, and every accepted change overwrites it:
- 1The supplier commits to the 5th. A week before, they email: "we're going to need until the 19th."
- 2Your buyer accepts — what else can they do? — and the promise date in the ERP becomes the 19th.
- 3The shipment arrives on the 19th. The scorecard compares receipt date to promise date: on time.
- 4Repeat every month. The supplier who slips every single PO scores 95%+ — because the metric measures against a date they picked after they knew they'd miss the first one.
Lean practitioners have a name for metrics like this: watermelon KPIs — green on the outside, red inside. The dashboard says the supply base is fine while the shop floor expedites around it.
It also explains a gap you may have argued about in a supplier review: it's commonly observed that suppliers' self-reported on-time numbers run several points above their customers' scorecards. Neither side is lying — they're measuring against different dates (original vs. revised promise) and different timestamps (ship date vs. receipt date). Until you agree on which date and which clock, the argument is unwinnable.
The numbers — and what they're actually measuring
Commonly cited OTIF benchmarks (reference points, not our measurements): 95%+ as a generic target, 90–94% typical for mid-market manufacturing, and 98%+ expected in automotive. But a benchmark is only as honest as the date it's measured against — which is why the definitions matter:
OTD vs. OTIF vs. DIFOT
OTD (On Time Delivery) checks the date only. OTIF (On Time In Full) requires the date AND the full quantity. DIFOT (Delivered In Full, On Time) is the same metric under a different acronym. If a supplier ships 180 of 200 units on the promised day, OTD passes and OTIF fails.
Orders vs. lines vs. units
Scoring by order is the harshest (one late line fails the whole PO); by line is the most common and most actionable; by unit is the most forgiving. Pick one, state it on the scorecard, and don't let each buyer compute it differently.
Grace periods
Some teams count a delivery within ±2 days as on-time; some count early as late (it's inventory you didn't want yet). Neither is wrong — but the window must be explicit, or every supplier dispute becomes an argument about arithmetic.
Which promise date
The one dimension almost no scorecard states: original promise or current promise? This choice moves scores more than any grace period does — and it's the whole difference between standard and honest OTIF.
A 96% standard OTIF measured against renegotiated dates can sit on top of an honest OTIF in the 70s. The spread between the two is the renegotiation tax — and it's invisible until you track both dates.
Honest OTIF needs the original date to survive. Here's how it does.
1. Every PO goes out with a magic link
Suppliers confirm, propose date or price changes, split lines, or attach ship notices — from an email, zero login, no account, free forever.
2. The original promise date is captured — and kept
Because every acknowledgment and date-change proposal flows through the platform, the first committed date survives. A renegotiation adds a new date; it never erases the old one.
3. Changes are written back to your ERP and verified
Accepted date changes land in your ERP automatically, then get read back to verify they landed. Your ERP shows the current promise; ERPlisity remembers the original.
4. Scorecards show both numbers, side by side
Honest OTIF (vs. the original promise) next to standard OTIF (vs. the current promise). The spread between them is the renegotiation tax — how much of a supplier's score comes from moving the goalposts.
Free supplier scorecard template (Excel)
Start tracking honest OTIF today, in a spreadsheet, before you buy anything. The template computes both numbers side by side:
- Honest OTIF (vs. original promise) and standard OTIF (vs. current promise) in dual columns
- Lines-vs-orders toggle guidance so your team scores one way
- A grace-period setting you set once, explicitly
Ungated — no email, no form. It's an .xlsx file.
The spreadsheet works. The hard part is feeding it.
Honest OTIF only works if the original promise date is captured the moment a supplier commits — not reconstructed from email threads at quarter end. ERPlisity captures it automatically, because supplier responses flow through the platform on their way to your ERP.
Dual-date supplier scorecards
Every supplier scored against the original promise and the renegotiated one. A slipped-then-reconfirmed PO never scores as on-time.
Zero-login supplier responses
Confirmations and date changes come through magic links — so promise dates are captured at the source, not reconstructed from inbox archaeology.
Verified ERP write-back
Epicor Kinetic, Infor SyteLine, Infor VISUAL, NetSuite, Acumatica, Dynamics 365 Business Central, Katana, and Odoo. Written back, then read back to verify.
AI order agents
Agents chase unacknowledged POs, read supplier replies, and recommend actions — so the promise date exists to measure in the first place.
EDI on the same rail
Inbound 855/856/865/810 and outbound 850/860 included in the price. EDI acknowledgments feed the same dual-date scorecard as email responses.
Priced by active suppliers
Never per seat, never per document. SMB Cloud at $399/mo; mid-market from $15k/yr — published on the pricing page.
Published pricing, by active suppliers — never per seat or per document. See the pricing page. Design partners: 50% off year one for the first 5 customers.
OTIF questions, answered straight
What is OTIF?
OTIF (On Time In Full) measures whether a supplier delivered by the promised date AND in the full promised quantity — both conditions must hold for a delivery to count. It's stricter than OTD (On Time Delivery), which only checks the date, and it's essentially the same metric as DIFOT (Delivered In Full, On Time). Commonly cited benchmarks put 95%+ as a generic target, 90–94% as typical for mid-market manufacturing, and 98%+ as the expectation in automotive supply chains.
What is honest OTIF?
Honest OTIF scores each delivery against the ORIGINAL promise date — the first date the supplier committed to — instead of the most recently renegotiated one. Standard OTIF resets whenever a buyer accepts a new date, so a supplier who slips every PO but hits the revised dates can score 95%+. Honest OTIF closes that loophole: a slipped-then-reconfirmed PO doesn't score as on-time. The gap between honest and standard OTIF is the renegotiation tax.
Which date should OTIF use — the original promise date or the revised one?
Track both. The revised (current) promise date measures execution against the latest plan and is what your MRP runs on. The original promise date measures whether commitments hold — which is what you actually want to know when choosing suppliers. Scoring only against the revised date rewards suppliers who renegotiate often; scoring only against the original ignores legitimate, buyer-driven changes. Showing them side by side makes the spread — the renegotiation tax — visible per supplier.
What is a good OTIF percentage?
Commonly cited benchmarks: 95%+ as a generic target across industries, 90–94% typical for mid-market manufacturing, and 98%+ expected in automotive. Treat these as reference points, not our measurements — and note that any benchmark is only meaningful if you know which promise date it was measured against. A 96% standard OTIF measured against renegotiated dates can hide an honest OTIF in the 70s.
See your renegotiation tax per supplier.
ERPlisity captures every original promise date automatically and shows honest OTIF next to standard OTIF for every supplier — written back to your ERP and verified.