Custom app for batch origin on site and in the warehouse
Chain of custody rarely breaks in the paperwork and almost always on the site. A load arrives, is unloaded beside a stack already there, and from that moment no one can say which plank comes from which batch. Whatever the system shows afterwards is a reconstruction.
Why the moment of unloading is decisive
Chain of custody follows certified material through the supply chain. With physical segregation you keep certified and non-certified material apart; with the percentage and credit methods you calculate with shares and credits. All three methods assume you know what has come in and what has been done with it.
That knowledge is created at receipt and nowhere else. A batch not registered at unloading cannot be distinguished from the rest an hour later. With physical segregation that is immediately fatal, because the segregation has then disappeared; with percentage or credit the calculation still balances on paper while no one can point to where the material came from.
On top of that comes the deforestation regulation. It requires origin down to plot level, and that is information that belongs to the incoming party. If you don't record it on receipt, you can only request it later from the supplier, and by then you're talking about a shipment from months ago. Those conversations rarely go well.
How we build this
Receipt is the unit here. If what comes in and where it goes is recorded at that point, the rest of the chain is just paperwork.
We look at how much time there is per delivery, who is on site and where the paperwork ends up. That shapes the design more than any standard does.
Scan the delivery note, confirm the batch, assign a location. Anything beyond that gets skipped when it's raining and time is short.
Locations and stacks get a marking that matches the system. Without that, physical separation is an agreement rather than a fact.
We test not the data entry but the retrieval: someone picks up a board and needs to know the batch. That scenario exposes faults that remain invisible at receipt.
What the app does in practice
The app records what comes in, where it is stored and what goes out. Which components you need depends on your method and on how your yard is set up.
Receipt with batch and origin
Scan or record the consignment note, confirm the batch and link the supplier and certificate. This is the only moment at which provenance is still free to establish; after that, it means chasing it up.
Location and separation recorded
Where this batch is and what sits next to it. For physical separation this is the core; the system warns when certified material is moved to a mixed location.
Check at dispatch
When issuing stock, the app shows which batch is being drawn on and which claim depends on it. That way the link between incoming and outgoing batches is made at the moment it happens.
Photo of delivery and marking
An image of the batch as it arrived, with time and place. When mixing or marking is disputed, this is the fastest evidence available.
Report deviations immediately
A delivery without a valid certificate, a missing geolocation, a marking that doesn't match. The report is assigned an owner on the spot, because a delivery that has been unloaded can no longer be separated.
Fully offline operation
Receipt and issue continue without a connection and sync later, with a clear indication per action of whether it succeeded. On an outdoor yard or in a warehouse, that is the normal situation.
Who we build for
How the yard is set up determines how much this weighs. Four situations.
Timber trade and building materials
Outdoor yard, changing stock and customers who load for themselves. Here the location of a batch matters as much as its paperwork, because what is mixed up has been mixed up.
Production and processing
As soon as material goes into the machine, the batch boundary disappears. Recording what went in determines whether the outgoing batch can still carry a claim.
Packaging, paper and print
Small batches, many changeovers and customers who request a claim per order. The administrative load per order is higher here than the volume suggests.
Delivery to a project
In tenders a claim is requested per delivery. What is delivered on the building site must therefore be traceable to the batch, and that requires recording at loading, not at invoicing.
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The app is the field side of your chain-of-custody administration, not a second stock system. What it records flows into the register that keeps track of batches, claims and origin.
Why Appfront
At receipt or never
A batch that isn't recorded at the moment of unloading can't be told apart later. That's why we focus all our attention on that one moment.
Separation is a state, not an agreement
We make visible what is stored where, and warn when materials are mixed, because an agreement you can't see gets broken under time pressure.
There's no signal on site
Warehouses, outdoor yards and concrete halls. Offline is the starting point; an app that stalls there gets bypassed, and then the reconstruction problem returns.
One register, no second inventory
The app writes to the same register as the office side, via integrations. That side sits on chain-of-custody software.
Security and privacy
The data on this device is less sensitive than in a staff app, but commercially interesting: suppliers, volumes and provenance details together give a picture of your purchasing. On a yard where external drivers and customers also come, a device is also quickly left unattended. We therefore tie permissions to the user, limit offline storage to open actions, and make sure a device can be unlinked remotely.
On the evidence side, the requirement that makes this administration distinctive applies: what was recorded at receipt must still be defensible years later against the standard version that applied at the time. Photo, timestamp and employee should therefore be unalterable, and a correction should be a visible correction rather than an edit. A system in which a receipt can quietly be updated after the fact undermines the very claim it is meant to support. How we handle security ourselves is set out in our information security policy; reports from outside go through our CVD policy.
Frequently asked questions about the batch provenance app
A delivery note tells you what was delivered, not where it was placed or what sits next to it. With physical separation, that location is the evidence, and for percentage or credit claims you need to be able to show which incoming batch sits in which outgoing batch. Paper in the office doesn't provide that, even if it's neatly filed.
Yes, that's the starting point. Receipts, locations and issues are stored locally and synchronised as soon as there is a connection, with each transaction showing whether it succeeded. Without that, you miss exactly the points where the batches come in.
That's possible, but the issue must be recorded somewhere, otherwise the link between incoming and outgoing batches is lost. In practice, a brief confirmation at the point of issue works better than a ban on self-loading, because the latter gets bypassed anyway.
Then the separation is gone, and no claim based on physical separation can be made for that material. Depending on your method there is sometimes still a route via percentage or credit; that is a question for your certifying body. What the app does is prevent it from happening again by warning when mixing occurs.
The geolocation comes from your supplier and belongs to the incoming batch. On receipt, the app records whether that data is present and flags it if it's missing, at the point when you can still do something about it. The requesting and assessment itself takes place in the register; see EUDR software.
Often, yes. If you already scan for stock, batch and claim tracking can be added as a layer on top, so your people don't have to do the same thing twice. Whether that's possible depends on the system behind your current scanner; we integrate via integrations where that's feasible.
This app is the field side: receipt, location, issue. The registry side calculates the claims, monitors supplier certificates and retains the supporting evidence for audit. They share a single data source but not the same users.
That depends on the number of receiving and issuing points, whether location tracking is needed, and which stock system needs to be integrated with. Receiving with batch and location is usually quick to put to use; issue integration and wider integration cost more. We'll give you a reasoned estimate after the discovery phase.
Recording provenance where it arrives?
Go to the site, pick up any plank at random and ask which batch it came from. How long that takes is exactly what an auditor measures. We build this as a standalone app and as part of a wider custom app development or custom software development project.