An industrial waste business differs from an ordinary product business in one respect. What the contract fixes is not a number of items but a weight to be collected and disposed of within a period, and the collection happens over many rounds across the life of the contract. So the question that has to be answerable every day is a single one: how much has been collected against this contract, and how much is left.

Many business owners have been in the same situation. You ask a salesperson whether the customer you discussed last month has replied, and the answer is that they will check. Two days later the answer still has not arrived, and when it does, it comes from one person's memory.