Order processing
In many trade businesses the order still arrives as an email with a PDF attached, and somebody types it into the order system before the cut-off. This role does the typing and the checking: codes, quantities, prices, delivery details. Your sales office gets orders ready to release and a short list of the ones that need a decision.
The role in brief
Keys every emailed or PDF order into your order system as a held order, and queries anything that does not match.
Your orders mailbox and your order system, for example Sage 200, Business Central or a transport system such as Mandata.
The sales office manager or transport planner. They release every order, and credit limits, price differences, short stock and unclear lines go to them.
Orders keyed before the cut-off, orders released without correction, and queries open at cut-off.
Who keys the orders today
A sales administrator or sales office clerk keys them, between phone calls. Each order is opened, read and retyped line by line into Sage 200, Business Central or the transport system, with the customer's own product codes translated into yours. On a busy morning the inbox outruns the keying, and the orders closest to the cut-off are the ones typed fastest.
The wrong pack size goes out
A customer orders 10 and means cases. The order is keyed as 10 singles, picked, delivered and rejected. Now there is a return to collect, a credit note to raise, a second delivery to make and a customer who has started checking your work.
An order nobody opened in time
An order that sits unread in the shared inbox past the cut-off ships a day late. The person who keys orders was on the phone, at lunch or on leave, and the customer finds out when the van does not come.
Old prices and stopped accounts
The customer's order quotes last year's price, or the account went on stop on Friday. If the person keying does not catch it, the business gives the margin away or delivers to a customer who is not paying, and finds out at invoice time.
How an order moves from inbox to release
Phone orders stay with your people, who also release every order and decide every exception. The agent reads and keys each order, checking its lines against each customer's price list and translating their product codes to a table agreed with you.
Read
Opens each order in the orders mailbox, whatever its layout, and picks out the customer, order number, lines, quantities, prices and delivery details.
Nothing.
Match
Finds the account, translates the customer's product codes into yours, and checks each line against that customer's price list, the pack size and the stock shown.
Any line with no clear match.
Key
Enters the order as held, with the customer's order number and the original document attached, and lists every difference it found beside the line.
Release of the order. Credit limits, stopped accounts, price differences and substitutes are a person's decision.
Confirm
Sends the acknowledgement only for the lines, prices and delivery date a person has released, and files it against the order.
Any acknowledgement where a line, price or date differs from what the customer asked for.
Orders keyed before the cut-off
The share of orders received before your cut-off that were keyed and waiting for release before it. Reviewed with you each month.
Orders released without correction
The share of keyed orders your team released as they stood, with no line, price or quantity changed by hand.
Queries open at cut-off
How many orders were still waiting on an answer from the customer or from your team when the day's cut-off passed, and who each was waiting on.
Wholesale and distribution
Purchase orders emailed as PDFs in the customer's own codes, keyed against their price list and held for your sales office to release.
Manufacturing
The customer's purchase order checked against your quotation, part numbers and drawing revision, then held for the sales office and production planner to accept.
Logistics, freight and removals
Job bookings from emails and customer spreadsheets keyed into the transport management system: addresses, pallets, weights and time slots, for a planner to release.
Questions owners ask
Can it read orders that arrive as PDFs and spreadsheets?
That is what the role is for: PDFs, spreadsheets and orders written in the body of an email, each in the customer's own layout, keyed into Sage 200, Business Central or the order system you run. Handwritten orders that cannot be read reliably, and orders taken by phone, stay with your sales office.
What happens when it is not sure about a line?
It stops on that line and asks. An unknown product code, a quantity that looks like cases keyed as singles, or a price that differs from the price list is shown to your team beside the original document. It never fills a gap with a guess.
Does it release orders to the warehouse?
Not to begin with. Every order is keyed as held, and a person releases it. Later you can set a standing rule for routine orders, such as repeat orders under a value you choose from accounts inside their credit limit. Everything outside that rule still waits for a person.
We already have EDI with our biggest customers. Is this the same?
No. EDI suits the few large customers who send orders in a fixed electronic format. The agent keys the orders from the other customers, who will only ever send an email, a PDF from their own system or a spreadsheet. The two sit side by side.