Every order that gets keyed in by hand is a chance to key it in wrong. For builders merchants, manual order entry is one of the biggest hidden drains on counter and back office time, and one of the easiest to fix without ripping out your ERP.
The real cost of manual order entry
A typical merchant takes orders across every channel at once: emails from site managers, PDFs from quantity surveyors, phone calls to the trade counter, texts, and the occasional handwritten fax. Someone then re types each of those into Kerridge K8, Intact iQ, Ibcos Gold or whatever system you run. That re typing is slow, and it introduces errors, wrong product codes, wrong quantities, the wrong delivery address, that only surface when the load turns up on site.
The knock on costs are bigger than the keystrokes: chasing clarifications, re picking wrong orders, credit notes, and customers who quietly move spend to a merchant who got it right first time.
What OptiFlow does
OptiFlow is an AI layer that reads incoming orders, email, PDF, attachment or message, and turns them into a structured, ready to confirm order inside your existing system. It matches free text descriptions and customer part numbers to your actual product catalogue, pulls the right account and pricing, flags anything ambiguous for a human to check, and writes the order straight into your ERP.
Your team stops being typists and becomes checkers: they review and approve rather than re key. Nothing gets rewritten, nothing gets migrated, OptiFlow sits on top of the system you already use.
How it works, step by step
- Capture, OptiFlow ingests orders from a monitored mailbox, uploads, or the channels you already receive on.
- Understand, it extracts line items, quantities, units and delivery details, even from messy free text or a photo of a written order.
- Match, each line is mapped to your catalogue and the customer’s account and pricing, using your data.
- Check, low confidence matches, unusual quantities or unknown products are flagged for a person, so mistakes are caught before they cost money.
- Confirm, the approved order is written into your ERP and an acknowledgement can go back to the customer.
Works with your ERP, no rip and replace
OptiFlow is built to layer on top of the software you already run rather than replace it. There is no migration project and no need to retrain your whole team on a new platform. If you run Kerridge K8, Intact iQ or Ibcos Gold, OptiFlow connects to it. See the full picture on our AI for builders merchants page.
We can run a short proof of concept against a sample of your real order traffic. Get a quote →
Order entry is where speed and accuracy meet at the trade counter. Related reading: automating stock and price enquiries and how OptiFlow integrates with your systems.
Related pages: results and ROI, implementation and go live.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to replace my ERP to automate order entry?
No. OptiFlow is an AI layer that sits on top of your existing system, Kerridge K8, Intact iQ, Ibcos Gold or others. There is no migration and no rip and replace; orders are written into the software you already use.
What order formats can OptiFlow read?
Emails, PDF attachments, spreadsheets, scanned or photographed written orders, and free text messages. It extracts line items, quantities and delivery details even when the format is inconsistent.
How does it avoid entering the wrong product?
Every line is matched against your own catalogue and the customer account. Anything the AI is not confident about, an unknown code, an unusual quantity, is flagged for a person to check before the order is confirmed, so errors are caught before they reach site.
How quickly can it go live?
Because there is no system replacement, most merchants are live in weeks, not months. We typically start with a proof of concept against a sample of your real order traffic.