Order entry automation
Order entry automation for emailed purchase orders
Order entry automation turns the purchase orders that arrive by email into draft sales orders in your ERP, so nobody has to retype them. Kestrel’s agent is designed to read each PO, match the customer and items, draft the order in a system like NetSuite, and send anything unusual to a person for review.
Why order entry is still manual
Large customers often send orders through EDI or a supplier portal. Many of the rest still arrive as a PDF, a spreadsheet or a plain email. Someone opens each one, copies the lines into a spreadsheet or straight into the ERP, checks prices and quantities, and moves on to the next. The work is careful, and it repeats with every order.
- Part numbers, quantities and dates retyped line by line
- Prices checked against the customer’s price level or contract
- New ship-to addresses and unfamiliar items caught by eye
- Orders that arrive in bursts at the end of a week or a month
How Kestrel’s agent is designed to automate order entry
- Connect
You authorize the order inbox, any spreadsheet the team uses, and the ERP. The agent reaches nothing else, and you can revoke its access at any time.
- Learn
It maps how an order moves today: who receives it, what gets checked, which fields go where, and where the work changes hands.
- Find
It shows where the time goes, such as the retyping, using the volumes in your own records.
- Automate
It drafts the automation. Each PO becomes a draft sales order, and anything unusual goes to a person. Nothing runs until your team switches it on, and every run is logged.
What stays with a person
The agent drafts. People decide. These go to someone on your team instead of straight into the ERP:
- Prices that differ from the customer’s agreed price
- Items, customers or ship-to addresses that don’t exist yet
- Credit holds and unusual terms
- Anything your team marks for review
An example with fictional data
- PO arrives in Outlook
- Agent reads the PO
- Draft sales order in NetSuite
- Exceptions to a person
About 40 purchase orders a week arrive by email. Two people copy them into a spreadsheet and key them into NetSuite, about 4 hours a week. With the automation switched on, 38 orders a week arrive in NetSuite as drafts ready to approve, 2 with price differences go to a person, and nobody retypes an order.
Illustrative numbers, not a customer result. It’s the example in How it works.
Where this work usually lives
Order entry usually moves through email such as Outlook or Gmail, spreadsheets such as Excel or Google Sheets, and an ERP or accounting system such as NetSuite, QuickBooks or Microsoft Dynamics 365. Those names are examples of tools companies use, not a list of integrations. The agent is in development.
In St. Louis
Kestrel is based in St. Louis, and early access is open to companies across Greater St. Louis, from Clayton and Earth City to the Metro East. We can meet your team in person to agree what the agent may access and which steps stay with people. More about Kestrel in St. Louis.
Questions
Common questions
Early access
Start with one workflow.
Tell us which software your team uses and where the repetitive work is. Our agent is in development, and the founders read every request.