Order Entry Automation for Growing B2B Distributors
Turn messy inbound orders into review-ready drafts — without asking customers to change how they order.
What is order entry automation?
Order entry automation converts incoming customer orders from email, WhatsApp, PDFs, phone calls and other channels into structured orders ready for review and entry into your accounting or ERP system.
For distributors, it replaces repetitive manual work such as identifying products, matching customer-specific information, entering quantities and preparing orders for processing.
Why order entry is harder than it looks
Distributor orders rarely arrive in a standard format. A customer might send a spreadsheet by email, a PDF purchase order, a WhatsApp message or a list of products by phone.
The difficult part isn't simply reading the order. It's understanding which customer is ordering, which products they mean, what those products are called in your system, what pricing or terms apply, and where the order belongs in your workflow.
That gets to the real problem.
And it sets up Ordlie beautifully.
How Ordlie automates inbound order entry
An order arrives. Ordlie reads it, applies what it knows about that customer, and shows a draft to your team. Approve, edit, or reject. Once approved, the order goes where it belongs.
Ordlie reads inbound customer orders regardless of format: email, WhatsApp, PDFs, photos, or other unstructured formats.
Ordlie applies customer-specific preferences, product terminology, substitutions, delivery instructions, and other relevant knowledge it has learned about that customer.
Ordlie creates a draft, review-ready order. Your team reviews and approves it before anything moves forward. Nothing is ever auto-sent.
Once approved, the order goes to your accounting system. Today, that's QuickBooks, where the approved order can automatically generate an invoice.
What types of customer orders can Ordlie process?
Ordlie can process customer orders received through email, WhatsApp, PDFs and phone calls, including orders that don't follow a standard format. Buyers keep ordering the way they always have. Ordlie structures what arrives on your side.
Ordlie learns your customers' ordering patterns
Customers don't always use the same product names, descriptions or formats. Ordlie keeps track of the customer-specific information your team has established, so future orders can be interpreted in context.
Order entry automation vs. OCR
OCR extracts text and fields from a document. That is useful work, and it is only part of order entry. OCR does not apply customer knowledge, does not produce a review-ready order for your team, and does not know what a given customer usually orders or how they phrase it.
Ordlie's job starts where OCR's job ends: structure the order, apply what you already know about the customer, put a draft in front of a human, and send the approved result to accounting.
OCR extracts text. Order entry automation turns an order into an actionable transaction.
Order entry automation vs. customer portals
A customer portal gives buyers a new place to place orders. Order entry automation works with the channels they already use.
That distinction matters for distributors whose customers still order by email, WhatsApp, PDF or phone. Instead of asking customers to change their ordering habits, Ordlie automates what happens after the order arrives.
Don't change how your customers order. Automate what happens next.
Built for distributors managing orders across multiple channels
Ordlie is designed for distributors that receive recurring customer orders through email, WhatsApp, PDFs and other channels—and want to reduce the manual work between receiving an order and getting it into their accounting system.