How to get emailed orders into your order system without retyping them

To stop retyping emailed orders, separate the two things your sales office does with every order: reading it and deciding on it. Reading a PDF, translating the customer's product codes and keying the lines is copying, and software can do it. Deciding whether to release the order, at what price and with which substitute is judgement, and it stays with your people. Most of what goes wrong with an emailed order goes wrong in the copying.

What starts the job, and who does it today

A customer's purchase order arrives by email: a PDF from their own system, a spreadsheet, or a few lines typed in the message. The largest customers may send orders by EDI; this guide covers the rest. A sales office administrator opens it, opens Sage 200, Business Central, OrderWise or whatever you run, and types.

The six checks behind every emailed order

1. Whose order is it, and have we had it already? Find the account and the delivery address, then look for the customer's order number on the system. The buyer who emails an order and then sends it again "to confirm" is how the same pallet goes out twice.

2. Which of our products do they mean? Customers order in their own codes and descriptions. The cross-reference from theirs to yours is the most valuable thing in the sales office, and it is often in one person's head.

3. How many, in what unit? "12" is twelve cases to one customer and twelve singles to another. Check the quantity against the pack size and against what that account usually orders.

4. At what price? The price on their order against the price on their price list. A difference is either their old list or your missed update, and somebody has to say which before the invoice does.

5. Can we supply it, and when? The stock shown, the delivery day for that postcode, and what happens to a line that is short.

6. Is the account good for it? Inside its credit limit and not on stop.

Only after those six does anyone key the order, send the acknowledgement and release it to the warehouse.

Five things you can change tomorrow

• One address for orders. Orders sent to reps' own inboxes wait for the rep. Give customers one orders mailbox and forward the strays.

• Write the cross-reference down. A sheet per customer: their code, your code, the unit. Start with the ten accounts that send the most lines.

• Send your codes to them. A buyer given your price list as a spreadsheet with your codes on it may well order from it.

• Always key the customer's order number, in the same field, so a duplicate can be found.

• Keep a tally of corrections. For two weeks, note every order that had to be changed after it was keyed and why. The list tells you which check is failing.

Where the emailed order sits among the sales office's other work is on our wholesale and distribution page.

Which steps can an AI worker take on?

An AI worker can take on the copying, with a written job and a named person in the sales office it reports to. In this job it can do the reading and the look-ups. It can open each order in the orders mailbox, find the account, look for the customer's order number among existing orders, translate each line through the cross-reference, and compare quantity, unit and price with the price list and the stock shown. It can key the order as a held order, with the original attached and each mismatch written beside its line: "customer's price is last year's", "ordered 12 singles, usual order is 12 cases", "code not in cross-reference". It can email the buyer about a line it cannot identify, in wording you approved, and send the acknowledgement once a person has released the order. The role's steps and measures are on the order processing page.

It works through the route the maker of your order system publishes. Business Central, Sage 200 and Unleashed each publish one; for any system, that route is confirmed with you and the maker at the start. The stock, price and delivery questions that interrupt the keying can be answered in writing by a separate role, first-line client support.

What waits for a person, and why?

• Release. Releasing an order commits stock and a delivery. One of your people does it, until you set a standing rule for the orders you are content to let through, such as repeat orders from accounts in good standing below a value you choose.

• Any line with no clear match. The agent does not guess a product. A wrong guess is a wrong delivery, a collection and a credit note.

• Price differences and special prices. Whether to honour the customer's figure is a commercial decision.

• Substitutes and shortages. Only someone who knows the customer knows whether they will take the alternative or want to wait.

• Credit. An order over the limit or from a stopped account goes to your credit controller.

• Orders by phone. They stay with whoever takes the call.

What to have ready

• The orders mailbox.

• The cross-reference, even if incomplete: the gaps become the agent's first questions.

• Current price lists by customer.

• Your pack sizes and units.

• The cut-off and delivery days.

• Your credit rules.

• A count of one week's orders by how they arrived, so you know how many lines the email column holds.

What that count means for growth is in how to scale a wholesale business without hiring more staff.

Your sales office would release every order, and an AI worker would read, check and key each one as held and list the mismatches. Is your team still typing orders at the cut-off? Talk to our agent.