Your customers can keep ordering by email. Your team can stop typing it in.
ManualOut reads customer orders from the email body, PDF, Excel or CSV attachment, matches every line to your product list, checks your rules and creates the sales order in your ERP. Your customers do not need a new portal — they keep sending orders the way they already do.
From inbox to ERP
“Hi, please send 10 cases of Sparkling Water 500ml and 6 cases of Orange Juice for Thursday.”
- Customer matched
- Products matched
- Quantities extracted
- Pack sizes checked
- Delivery date captured
- Pricing and order rules checked
Sales order created in your ERP
The inbox is not the problem. Typing every order twice is.
A customer sends an order by email. Someone opens it, reads the attachment, finds the customer in the ERP, looks up the products, checks the pack sizes, types the quantities, checks the price, warehouse and delivery date — then moves on to the next email. It works, until the inbox gets busy.
ManualOut handles the repetitive part between the customer's email and the ERP, so your team only gets involved when something actually needs a decision.
What is email order automation?
Email order automation is the process of turning orders received by email into structured sales orders without somebody manually retyping them.
ManualOut watches the order inboxes you connect. When an order arrives, it reads the email and its attachments, identifies the customer, extracts the products and quantities, and matches them against the data in your business. Then it checks the order against your rules before creating it in your ERP. The original email stays with the order, so your team can always see what the customer actually sent.
Email orders rarely arrive in one neat format
One customer writes everything in the email. Another attaches a PDF. Another sends the Excel sheet they have used for eight years. ManualOut is built for that variation.
Order in the email body
The customer types the products and quantities directly into the message. ManualOut reads the text and turns the order into structured lines.
PDF purchase orders
The PO can have the customer's own layout, descriptions and references. ManualOut extracts the order details and matches the lines to your products.
Excel and CSV attachments
Customers can keep sending their existing spreadsheets. ManualOut reads the rows, identifies the order lines and maps them to the products in your system.
Customer descriptions and codes
The name the customer uses is not always the name in your ERP. ManualOut matches customer descriptions, item references and pack sizes to your own product records before the order moves forward.
How email order automation works
- 1
The email arrives
Connect the inbox your customers already order from. The order can be in the email itself or attached as a PDF, Excel or CSV file. Nothing changes for the customer.
- 2
The AI reads the order
ManualOut extracts the customer, products, quantities, pack sizes, references and delivery information it can find, and matches each line against your product data. If something cannot be matched confidently, it is flagged instead of silently choosing an item.
- 3
Your rules are checked
Reading the order is only half the job. ManualOut checks the things your order desk normally checks before an order goes into the ERP — and the rules come from your business, not a generic template:
- Customer pricing
- Units of measure and pack sizes
- Minimum order values
- Delivery charges
- Order cutoff times
- Company or legal entity
- Warehouse or location
- Delivery dates
- 4
The sales order goes into your ERP
ManualOut creates the sales order in the ERP your team already uses, with products, quantities, customer details and the other required fields. The ERP order number comes back into ManualOut, so the original email and the order created from it stay connected.
- 5
Your team handles what is left
A clean order does not need someone to approve every field just because AI was involved. But not every order is clean — a product may not match, a customer may order below the minimum, a quantity may be unclear, the ERP may reject something. Those are the orders your team sees. The routine ones keep moving.
The difficult part is not reading the PDF
Extracting a product name and a quantity is useful, but it is not enough to create a reliable sales order. A distributor also needs to resolve:
Which product does the customer mean?
They may write “Coke 24”, while your ERP knows the product by an item number and a specific unit of measure.
Which price applies?
Two customers ordering the same product may sit on different price lists or discounts.
Which warehouse supplies it?
The same item may exist in several locations, and the order has to point at the right one.
Does it meet the minimum — and the cutoff?
Some customers have different minimum-order rules or delivery charges, and a missed cutoff can change the delivery date. ManualOut resolves these before the order reaches your ERP.
From the email inbox to the ERP you already run
Email order automation should not create another system your order team copies data from. The order needs to finish where the rest of your business already works. ManualOut writes sales orders into the ERPs distributors run — mapping the information it extracts to the records and fields your ERP expects during setup:
- Microsoft Dynamics 365
- Dynamics 365 Business Central
- SAP
- SAP Business One
- Oracle
- NetSuite
- Epicor Prophet 21
- Odoo
- Acumatica
- Sage
- QuickBooks
- Custom & in-house ERP
Works with the inbox your customers already use
You do not need to forward every order manually into another system. ManualOut connects to the business mailboxes where orders already arrive — your customers see the same email address, your order desk sees less typing:
Built for distribution orders, not generic document processing
A purchase order is not just a document full of fields. For a distributor, every line carries business context: a case is not the same as a piece, a customer's description may not match yours, a product can exist in more than one warehouse, and one account may have a different minimum order or price list from the customer before it.
ManualOut is built around those distribution rules. It reads the order, but it also works out what that order means inside your business — the difference between reading an email and actually automating order entry.
What happens when the AI is not sure?
It does not pretend it is sure. If ManualOut cannot confidently match a product, or finds something that needs attention, the order is held for review. Your team sees the original email beside the extracted order, checks what the customer actually asked for, fixes the problem and continues.
You do not need people checking every clean order just to catch the occasional difficult one. Automate the repetitive orders; keep your experienced staff on the exceptions, where their judgement matters — not where copying and pasting does.
Your customers do not need another ordering portal
Portals work when customers use them. But many buyers still prefer to email an order, because it is quick, familiar and already part of how they work. ManualOut does not try to change that behaviour — customers keep sending email orders, and the automation happens on your side.
That means you can modernise order processing without making every customer learn a new ordering process first.
See what ManualOut does with one of your own email orders
Send us a real order — an email with three lines in the body, a twenty-page PDF, the spreadsheet one customer refuses to stop using. We will show you what ManualOut reads, what it matches, what it flags, and what would reach your ERP.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is email order automation?
It turns customer orders received by email into structured sales orders without anyone retyping every line. ManualOut reads the email body and supported attachments, extracts the order, matches products, checks your business rules and sends the completed order to your ERP.
How do you automate orders received by email?
Connect the mailbox where customers already send orders. When a new order arrives, ManualOut reads the message and its attachments, identifies the customer, extracts the products and quantities, matches them against your product and customer data, checks your rules and creates the sales order in your ERP. Anything unclear is sent to your team for review.
How does automated email order processing work?
The flow is: email received → order extracted → products matched → rules checked → exceptions reviewed → ERP sales order created. The important part is what happens between extraction and ERP creation — product matching, pack sizes, pricing, customer rules and warehouse selection all have to be resolved before the sales order is ready.
Can AI read purchase orders attached to emails?
Yes. ManualOut processes orders in email attachments such as PDF, Excel and CSV files, and the extracted lines are matched against your own product data rather than simply copied as text from the document.
Can orders written directly in the email body be automated?
Yes. A customer does not need to attach a formal PO — ManualOut reads an order written straight into the body of the email and extracts the products, quantities and other order details.
Can email orders be sent directly to an ERP?
Yes. Once an order has been extracted, matched and checked, ManualOut creates the sales order in the connected ERP. The exact fields and workflow depend on your ERP and how your business has configured it.
Does ManualOut work with Outlook and Gmail?
Yes. ManualOut supports Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace order inboxes, as well as Outlook.com and Exchange environments, so your customers can keep sending orders to the addresses they already use.
What happens if ManualOut cannot understand an email order?
The order is not pushed into the ERP with a guess. Lines that cannot be confidently matched, or orders that fail one of your rules, are held for review — your team sees what needs attention, corrects it and continues the order.
Do customers need to change how they place orders?
No. Customers keep sending orders by email in the formats they already use. ManualOut works on the distributor's side of the process — there is no new customer portal to adopt just to automate your order entry.
See it run on one of your own orders
Send us a real order — the messiest one you can find. We will run it live and show you what happens when it works, and when it does not.