“We have to type web orders in by hand”: why it happens and how to stop
It usually starts as a stopgap. You launch a webshop or a B2B ordering portal, the first orders trickle in, and someone prints them off and keys them into the main system. It takes ten minutes a day. Nobody thinks twice.
Then the web channel works. Ten orders becomes fifty, then a few hundred at peak. The ten-minute job turns into somebody's whole morning, and that person becomes the bottleneck between a customer clicking "buy" and the warehouse seeing a pick.
If that sounds familiar, you're not doing anything wrong. You've grown.
Why it happens
Most order and stock systems in UK wholesale and distribution were chosen for the business as it was at the time. Trade customers phoned, faxed or emailed orders, reps took orders on the road, and invoices went out on account. The system was built around that, and it did the job well.
Ecommerce arrived later, often on a separate platform picked by a different person for different reasons. The two were never designed to talk. Sometimes there's a connector, but it only handles some order types, or it breaks whenever a product code changes, so the team falls back to keying orders in by hand because at least that's predictable.
What it really costs
Typing orders in by hand looks cheap because nobody gets an invoice for it. The cost turns up elsewhere:
- Time. Every web order handled twice, plus the time spent checking it.
- Errors. Wrong quantity, wrong pack size, wrong delivery address. Each one means a return, a credit note or an annoyed customer.
- Delay. Orders wait until someone gets round to them, so same-day cut-offs slip.
- Stock you can't trust. If web orders only reach the system hours later, the website can sell stock you've already sold over the phone.
- Growth on hold. You hesitate to push the web channel or add a marketplace, because more orders means more typing.
The last one matters most. A manual process quietly caps how fast you can grow.
What changing looks like
The fix isn't another clever spreadsheet. It's putting every channel's orders into one queue in the same system that holds your stock and runs your warehouse.
In practice:
- One order pipeline. Web, B2B portal, marketplace, phone and rep orders all land in the same place, in the same format.
- Live stock back out. As stock is picked or received, availability updates on the channels, so you stop overselling.
- Picking straight from the order. The warehouse sees new orders as they arrive, not when the office has caught up.
- Accounts kept in step. Invoices and payments sync to Xero, so finance isn't re-keying either.
You don't have to change everything at once. Many businesses start by connecting the channel that hurts most, run it alongside the current process for a while, then move across when the team is confident.
A quick self-check
You're probably ready to look at this properly if:
- someone's job description now includes "enter web orders"
- you've had to apologise for selling stock you didn't have
- you've put off adding a channel because of the admin
FAQs
Can't we just add a connector to our current system? Sometimes, and it's worth asking your current supplier first. Connectors work well when order types are simple. They get fragile when you need custom pricing, pack sizes or several channels.
Do we have to replace our webshop? Not necessarily. The aim is to join the webshop up with order processing and stock, not to start your ecommerce again.
Will our accountant need to change anything? If you use Xero, invoices and payments can sync automatically, so there's less to re-key, not more.
Where should we start? Count how many orders a week are keyed in by hand, and how many errors came from it last month. That number usually makes the case on its own.
Software that moves as fast as your business. If typing orders in by hand is holding you back, talk to us about where your business is going.