School procurement, tracked from quote to delivery
Chasing a supplier for a delivery date. Digging through an inbox for a quote from March. Explaining to the business manager — again — where that purchase order actually is. School IT procurement shouldn’t work like that, and for the schools we support, it doesn’t.
AIT Ordering is our procurement tracking platform, built for schools and trusts across the UK. Every quote, purchase order and delivery for your school sits in one place, with a live status you can check any time — no phone calls, no chasing, no guesswork.
And because we’re a school IT support provider first, not a software company, AIT Ordering is included with our service — not sold on top.
Trusted by schools across the UK
Procurement shouldn’t live in an inbox
Most schools run IT purchasing through a scatter of emails, spreadsheets and supplier portals. That creates the same problems everywhere we go:
No single view
The quote is in one inbox, the PO is in the finance system, and the delivery update is a phone call someone took last Tuesday. Nobody can see the whole picture.
Chasing eats time
Business managers and IT leads spend hours a term just asking "where is it?" — time that should go on running the school.
Audit trails are patchy
When governors or auditors ask what was ordered, when, and against which quote, the answer is a reconstruction job rather than a report.
Deadlines get missed
Devices that were meant to arrive before September land in October, because nobody saw the delay coming until it was too late to act.
AIT Ordering was built to remove every one of those problems — for the schools and trusts we already support with managed IT support, installations and connectivity every day.
From quote to PO to delivery — one status, always current
AIT Ordering follows every purchase through the same clear journey, so your school always knows exactly where things stand:
Quote
We prepare your quote in AIT Ordering with education pricing. You can review it, ask questions and approve it in the platform — the full specification and price are recorded from day one, so there's never a dispute about what was agreed.
Purchase order
When your school raises a PO, it's matched to the quote in the platform. Finance teams can see quote and PO side by side, which makes month-end reconciliation and audit checks straightforward instead of forensic.
Delivery
From the moment the order is placed with the supplier, its status updates as it moves: ordered, confirmed, dispatched, delivered. If a lead time slips, you see it early — with enough notice to plan around it, not react to it.
Every stage is timestamped, so the whole journey becomes a permanent, searchable record for your school. When someone asks “when did those Chromebooks actually arrive?”, the answer is one search away.
Example (illustrative): a secondary school orders 60 devices in June for a September rollout. The head of IT watches the order move from PO-matched to dispatched without sending a single chasing email — and when one line of the order shows a longer lead time, the school and our team re-plan the imaging schedule two weeks early instead of two days late.
A catalogue built for schools, not consumers
The catalogue in AIT Ordering isn’t a public webshop — it’s a curated range of hardware and software we specify, supply and support for schools:
Education-appropriate kit
Devices, screens, networking and peripherals chosen because they hold up in classrooms, not because they're this month's retail special.
Education pricing
Quotes reflect the education and framework pricing available to schools — not consumer list prices.
Standards you've already agreed
If your school or trust has standardised on a device build, the catalogue reflects it, so every order keeps your estate consistent and supportable.
Supported, not just supplied
Everything in the catalogue is kit our 75-strong team installs, images and supports. You're never buying hardware from one company and begging another to make it work.
Planning a 1:1 scheme or a large refresh? Start with our device procurement and leasing service — AIT Ordering is the platform that then tracks every device from quote to classroom.
Supplier management, handled for you
Behind every school order sits a supplier — and managing them well is where procurement is won or lost. AIT Ordering includes supplier management as standard:
We hold the supplier relationships
Distributors, vendors and service partners are managed by our team inside the platform, so your school deals with one point of contact: us.
Lead times are tracked, not assumed
Supplier confirmations and dispatch updates are logged against the order, so the status your school sees reflects what the supplier has actually committed to.
Problems are ours to chase
Short shipment? Wrong item? Damaged in transit? The exception is logged on the order and our team resolves it with the supplier — your business manager never joins a returns queue.
For a multi-academy trust, this matters at scale: central teams can see orders across every school in one place, applying the same suppliers, standards and pricing trust-wide. See how this fits into our support for multi-academy trusts.
Procurement data that feeds your budget — via AIT Horizon
Ordering well is only half the job; planning spend is the other half. That’s why AIT Ordering works alongside AIT Horizon, our leadership platform for school IT.
What your school buys through AIT Ordering informs Horizon’s IT Finance module: your 5-year projections, your hardware refresh plan and your software licensing picture are grounded in what was actually purchased, not a best guess from an old spreadsheet. When a bursar opens Horizon’s Schools view, the refresh forecast reflects real orders — so the conversation with governors is about the next five years, not about reconstructing the last two.
Example (illustrative): a school replaces a third of its device fleet this year through AIT Ordering. Horizon’s IT Finance view rolls that purchase into the 5-year projection, showing the next refresh peak in year four — so the budget line is planned three budgets early, instead of arriving as a surprise.
One provider, one joined-up picture: support, procurement and strategy that actually talk to each other.
Illustrative demo data
Who AIT Ordering is for
Primary schools
small teams, no procurement department. AIT Ordering gives a school business manager the whole purchasing picture in minutes a week.
Secondary schools
bigger estates, bigger orders. Network heads track device rollouts, suite refreshes and AV projects without spreadsheet archaeology.
Multi-academy trusts
central visibility of every order across every school, with consistent suppliers, standards and pricing trust-wide.
Independent schools
clean quote-to-PO-to-delivery records that stand up to bursar scrutiny and support leasing and procurement governance.
Included with our service — not sold on top
AIT Ordering is one of four platforms we’ve built for the schools we support — alongside AIT Horizon, Helpdesk Reporting and AIT Atlas. None of them are products with a price tag; they’re how we prove our service is different.
There’s no licence fee, no per-user charge and no module upsell. If AITN supports your school, AIT Ordering is part of the service — because we think you shouldn’t have to pay extra to see where your own orders are.
You’ll find it in the Customer Portal, your single login to all four platforms.
Illustrative demo data
What you’ll see when you log in
All figures below are illustrative examples, not live data.
One screen. Every order. No chasing.
See it with your own orders on it — call 0115 9170 197 or book a walkthrough.
| Order | Stage | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 32 × classroom devices | Delivery | Dispatched — arriving Thu |
| Interactive screen, Hall | Purchase order | PO matched to quote |
| Wireless AP refresh (Phase 2) | Quote | Awaiting school approval |
| MIS server licence renewal | Delivery | Delivered — 4 Aug |
Frequently asked questions
No. AIT Ordering isn't a public shop — it's the procurement platform for schools we support. The catalogue is curated for education, quotes use education pricing, and every order is placed and managed with our team. That's deliberate: schools told us they wanted procurement handled properly, not another checkout page.
Nothing on top of your support agreement. AIT Ordering — like AIT Horizon, Helpdesk Reporting and AIT Atlas — is included with our service, not sold on top. If AITN supports your school, it's part of how we work with you.
Whoever you choose. Typically the IT lead and the school business manager have access, and in trusts a central team can see orders across all schools. Access is managed through the Customer Portal, the single login hub for all four of our platforms.
Yes. AIT Ordering doesn't replace your finance system — it tracks the procurement journey around it. Your school raises POs exactly as it does today; the platform matches them to quotes and follows the order through to delivery, giving finance a clean, timestamped record for reconciliation and audit.
You see it early. Supplier confirmations and dispatch updates are logged against the order, so a slipping lead time shows in the status rather than surfacing on the day the kit was due. Our team chases the supplier and, where it matters — a September rollout, a summer installation — we re-plan the work with you before the delay becomes a problem.
Ready to stop chasing orders?
Since 2000, AITN has supported schools and trusts across the UK — 249 schools, 20 trusts, and a 75-strong team behind every ticket, installation and order. AIT Ordering is one more reason schools stay with us.
Call 0115 9170 197 or get in touch to see AIT Ordering as part of a support service built entirely for education.