One order, typed four times
The customer's PO arrives as a PDF attached to an email from their procurement system. Someone in your sales support team opens it, finds the matching quote in the CRM, checks the lines agree, then logs into the distributor portal and types the order: product codes, quantities, term, end-user details, the deal registration number. Then they create the sales order in your accounts system. Then the invoice.
On a quiet day it is tedious. At the end of a vendor quarter, with forty orders in an afternoon, it is where mistakes happen: a twelve month term ordered as thirty-six, fifty seats typed as fifteen, an invoice raised to the wrong entity.
Why the handoffs stay manual
Each system in the chain is good at its own job and none of them talk to each other. The CRM holds quotes. The distributor portal holds orders. The accounts package holds invoices. The customer's PO is a document with its own numbering and its own way of describing your products, which rarely matches your quote line for line.
Nobody built the joins because each step only takes a few minutes. Multiplied across every order and every person, those minutes are a large part of what your sales support team does.
| Document | System | Typed by |
|---|---|---|
| Quote | CRM or quoting tool | Account manager |
| Customer PO | Customer's procurement system | Customer |
| Distributor order | Distributor portal | Sales support |
| Sales order and invoice | Accounts package | Sales support or finance |
What the rekeying is costing
Errors cost the most. A wrong term or quantity on a software order can be hard to reverse once the vendor has provisioned it, and cancellation rules on some subscriptions leave very little room. A missing registration number costs margin. An invoice that does not match the customer's PO sits unpaid until someone spots the difference.
Speed matters too. Customers ordering at the last minute before a renewal date need the order placed today, and orders queue behind the person who types them.
The quote to order flow we build
- PO intake: purchase orders arriving by email are read from a shared inbox, and the PO number, customer, lines, values and delivery or end-user details are extracted.
- Quote match: the PO is matched to the open quote by reference, customer and value, and each PO line is lined up with a quote line even when the customer described it in their own words.
- Difference check: quantities, terms, prices and totals are compared, and anything that differs goes to an exception queue with the difference highlighted.
- Distributor order: a matched PO creates the distributor order through the distributor's API or order file format, with product codes, term, end-user details and registration or special bid numbers carried from the quote.
- Sales order and invoice: the same lines create the sales order and invoice in Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or your accounts package, with the customer's PO number on the invoice.
- Order tracking: distributor confirmations and licence fulfilment emails are matched back to the order so everyone can see its status.
A person still approves orders over a value you set, and anything with a difference, before it goes to the distributor.
What changes for sales support
Sales support stops being a typing pool. They work an exception queue: the PO that asked for forty seats against a quote for fifty, the PO sent to an old quote version, the customer who forgot their own PO number. Matched orders flow through with a check and an approval.
Account managers can see order status without asking. Finance sees invoices that match POs first time.
Signs quote to order is costing you
- The same order is entered into three or more systems.
- You have ordered the wrong term or quantity from a distributor in the last year.
- Invoices get queried because they do not match the customer's PO.
- Orders pile up at vendor quarter end waiting for one person.
- Registration or special bid numbers go missing between quote and order.