Order Intake
Order entry automation for the customers EDI was never going to cover.
Order Intake is order processing automation for the long tail of customers who send PDFs, spreadsheets, portal releases, and email orders. It reads each order, checks it against your records, and enters a clean sales order in your ERP.
What it does
EDI works for your biggest trading partners. Everyone else sends what they send: a PO PDF attached to an email, a spreadsheet with its own column order, a release posted to a customer portal every Monday, or an order typed into the body of a message. Someone on your team opens each one, finds the account, checks part numbers and quantities, and keys the sales order into the ERP by hand.
Order Intake is order entry automation for those orders. It picks up each order from email, a portal download, or a shared folder and pulls out the customer, ship-to, lines, quantities, prices, and dates. It matches the customer and items to your ERP records, converts their part numbers and units into yours, and checks each line against price lists, contracts, open orders, and that customer's history. Clean orders are entered in the ERP under rules you set, with the source document attached.
Anything that doesn't match waits for your order-entry lead, with the reason and the source line side by side. Prices that don't match the contract, credit holds, new ship-to addresses, substitutions, and expedites all go to a person. You choose which clean orders enter on their own and which always get a look, and you can tighten that per customer.
What it handles
Purchase order automation for every format your customers use.
Emailed purchase orders
Order Intake reads PDF and Word POs attached to an email, along with orders typed straight into the message. It reads each customer's layout as it is, so there's no template to maintain per sender. The source email and attachment stay with the sales order it creates.
Spreadsheet orders
Excel and CSV files arrive with every customer's own columns, units, and part numbers. Order Intake translates their part numbers into yours and turns a line like four 25 kg drums into your unit of measure. A line it can't match to one of your items waits for your order-entry lead.
Portal releases
Recurring releases downloaded from customer portals are compared with the last release from that customer. Only what changed is entered, so your team stops adjusting open orders line by line. Pushed-out dates and dropped quantities are flagged for a planner to review before anything changes.
Alongside your EDI
Your EDI partners keep flowing through EDI exactly as they do today. Order Intake covers everyone else and writes into the same ERP, so a sales order looks the same however it arrived. It works as an EDI alternative for the small accounts that will never trade with you over EDI.
Checked before entry
Every line is checked against your price lists, contracts, open orders, and that customer's order history before it reaches the ERP. A transposed part number, the wrong unit of measure, or last quarter's price gets caught at the line where it happened.
Exceptions to a person
A price change, a new ship-to, or an unknown part waits for your order-entry lead. The reason and the source line sit side by side, so the decision takes a glance instead of a re-read. Your team spends the day on the expedite, the price that doesn't match, and the customer who needs a call back.
See it working
Who it's for
FAQ
Order Intake questions
What is sales order processing?
Sales order processing is everything between a customer's order arriving and a confirmed sales order in your ERP. That means reading the PO, matching the customer and items, checking prices and dates, entering the lines, and acknowledging the order. Order Intake automates the reading, matching, checking, and entry, and leaves the judgment calls to your team.
Is Order Intake an EDI alternative?
For the customers who will never set up EDI with you, yes. Your EDI partners keep flowing through EDI, and Order Intake handles the PDFs, spreadsheets, portal releases, and email orders from everyone else. Small accounts keep ordering the way they do today, and their orders land in the same ERP as your EDI orders.
How does it reduce order entry errors?
Most order entry errors come from retyping, such as a transposed part number, the wrong unit of measure, or last quarter's price. Order Intake reads the source document instead of retyping it and checks every line against your price lists, contracts, and the customer's history. Anything that doesn't match is held for a person, with the source line beside it.
Is Order Intake purchase order automation for the POs we send or the ones we receive?
The ones you receive. Order Intake is customer-side PO automation. It reads the purchase orders your customers send and turns them into sales orders in your ERP, for manufacturers and distributors whose B2B order management still runs through inboxes, portals, and spreadsheets.
Can it automate order entry from email when every customer's PO looks different?
Yes. It reads PDF and Word attachments, and orders typed into the message, in each customer's own layout. Clean orders enter your ERP under rules you set, with the source attached. Anything unusual waits for your order-entry lead with the reason beside it, so nobody has to open every email to find the one that needs a call.
Does it replace our ERP or order management software?
No. Order Intake is the order capture step in front of them, the front end of order-to-cash. It writes clean sales orders into the system you already run, so a sales order looks the same however it arrived. Your price lists, contracts, and customer records stay where they are, and Order Intake reads from them.
What happens when a new customer sends an order format you haven't seen?
A new customer's format starts with a handful of their sample orders, which we set up the same way as the orders in your prototype. Until you decide a new account's orders can enter on their own, each one is shown to your order-entry lead, with the source attached, before anything reaches the ERP.
How does an Order Intake project get started?
We start with a handful of your real orders and watch how your team enters them today. Then we show you a prototype entering them on sample data, and once you approve it, we connect it to your ERP and go live. Typically, that takes about six weeks from kickoff to go-live, though the timeline depends on your order formats and systems.
You know AI could help. Let’s build it.
Bring us a task you have in mind, or just a hunch. We’ll help you find the right place to start and build it around the way your business works.