Weekly Overdue Chase Sheet
One row per item that is past its due date and not yet back. Sort oldest first, not by value. Work down the list for fifteen minutes; anything you do not reach stays on top of next week's sheet.
Week ending: ______________________
Run by: ______________________
STOP — read before you fill this in. An item with a blank due-back date will NEVER appear on this list. If the due date is empty, fill it in now — a blank there removes the item from your recovery process entirely, it does not make it flexible.
| # |
Item |
Who has it |
Date out |
Due backNever blank |
Days over |
Step1–4 |
Action taken today |
OutcomeReturned / Still out / Written off |
The four steps, in order.
1 — days one to seven, the neutral ask. One message, to the person, no cc. Offer the innocent explanation first: is it still with you, or did it go back?
2 — week two, locate the object, not the person. Ask what job it went to and whether it is in a truck. In many shops the overdue items are misfiled, not missing.
3 — week three, put a date on it. "Can you bring it Friday, or should I order a replacement?" Say it once, without heat.
4 — week four, decide and close. It comes back or it is written off. What you do not do is leave it open.
Stop-chasing rule: ________ weeks, or when chasing costs more than the item.
Write-off threshold: $____________ — below this, close at week two with no escalation.
Exception: anything with a certificate, a calibration date or a serial number on a compliance record is escalated separately and never written off quietly.
Sort by age, not by value. Value tempts you to chase the expensive thing and ignore the four cheap ones, and it is the cheap ones that bleed you, because nobody ever chases them. And keep the sheet short by closing items — recovered or written off — rather than by letting them accumulate: nobody reads a list they cannot finish.
Write-Off Log
When you close an item as lost, write down four things: what it was, who had it last, how long the chase ran, and roughly what replacing it costs. Thirty seconds a line.
Quarter: ______________________
Reviewed by: ______________________
| # |
Date closed |
Item |
Last held byCopy from your sign-out sheet |
Job or site |
Weeks chased |
Replacement cost |
Notes |
Where "last held by" comes from. Copy this from your sign-out sheet, or from the item's stock movement history if you keep one in software — the Returned line keeps the borrower's name, and so does the activity log's Issued To column. What no ledger will tell you is who adjusted a quantity by hand; that has no name attached to it anywhere.
Review this page once a quarter. Losses are almost never spread evenly — look for one crew, one site, or one item type. That pattern is the thing worth fixing; individual chasing will not touch it. If the same item type disappears from the same site repeatedly, you have a storage problem or a handover problem, and no amount of chasing individuals will touch it.