Our customers send voice notes. Can it really read those?

Yes. The recording is transcribed and turned into order lines, and the original audio stays attached to the order. When a chef says he asked for the extra virgin, you can listen rather than argue.

Chefs order by name, not by product code. Does that work?

That is most of the work. ManualOut matches what they call it to what your ERP calls it. Genuinely ambiguous requests — "the good olive oil" when you stock three — get flagged for a person instead of guessed at.

Can it handle standing orders that change slightly each week?

Yes, and the changes are the point. Repeat orders regenerate on schedule, and a variation from the usual is marked so it gets caught rather than missed.

Our cutoff is 4pm and orders arrive at 11pm. What then?

The order is read at 11pm and the cutoff rule is applied automatically, so it rolls to the correct delivery day. Nobody has to be at a keyboard for the book to be right in the morning.

Foodservice & HORECA

The chef sends a voice note at 11pm.

Restaurants, hotels and caterers order when their service ends, not when your office opens. They order by message and by phone. ManualOut reads those orders overnight and turns them into ERP sales orders.

The daily reality

What the order desk is actually dealing with

Your customer is a chef, not a buyer

They send a voice note when the kitchen closes. They will not log into a portal, and training will not change that — they do not sit at a desk.

The same order gets typed in every week

A hotel sends the same standing order every Monday. Someone retypes it every Monday. The one week they change two lines is the week it gets missed.

There are only hours between order and delivery

An order that lands at 4:02pm and gets keyed at 4:20 has already missed the van.

Chefs order by name, not by code

They ask for "a box of the good tomatoes". Your system calls it PLU 4087, Class 1, 6kg. Someone bridges that gap every single time.

Where ManualOut fits

What changes once orders read themselves

Voice notes and calls become orders

Spoken orders are transcribed and turned into order lines. The original recording stays attached, so you can settle any dispute by listening to it.

Standing orders repeat on their own

Weekly, monthly or custom schedules regenerate automatically. You can see the next run date before it happens, so a change gets caught in time.

Cutoff times applied by the system

Orders after your cutoff roll to the next working day automatically. The delivery date on the order is one the route can actually meet.

Their words mapped to your codes

ManualOut matches what the chef calls it to what your ERP calls it, and flags anything it is not sure about.

In the product

A foodservice & horeca order, read and checked

On the left is the message, as the customer sent it. On the right is what ManualOut made of it — and what it flagged for a person.

ManualOutPO #12031Need attention

Source · Voice23:04

Voice note · 0:34

"Hi, it's Danny at Palewood. For Friday — two cases of the plum tomatoes, four of the chopped, um... six bags of the 00 flour, three of the semolina. And can I get eight litres of the rapeseed. Oh and the good olive oil, two of those. That's it. Cheers."

The original message stays attached to the order — permanently.

Extracted itemsMeridian · NORTHGATE

Product	Unit	Qty	Line
Plum Tomatoes 2.5kg — 6pk	CTN	2	$36.80
Chopped Tomatoes 2.5kg — 6pk	CTN	4	$68.80
Flour Type 00 — 25kg	BAG	6	$135.00
Semolina — 25kg	BAG	3	$59.40
Rapeseed Oil 1L	LTR	8	$36.80
Olive Oil — extra virgin?"the good olive oil" — three products could match	LTR	2	—

Order value: $336.80
Minimum: $200.00
Status: Minimum met

Recorded at 11pm, read at 11pm. The recording stays attached to the order, so when Danny says he asked for the extra virgin, you can listen.

ERP sync summaryIn ERP

ERP order no.: SO-4471203
Synced by: Automatic
Synced at: 14 May 2026, 10:17 PM
Confidence: 94%

Order received
AI parsing completed
Validation completed
Inventory checked
Synced to ERP
Order confirmed

How orders arrive

The channel mix in this trade

Email still leads, but this is the trade where voice notes and WhatsApp really bite — and they arrive after service.

Email38%
WhatsApp32%
Voice22%
File upload8%

Illustrative — the typical shape of an order book in this trade, not measured data. Your own mix appears in the dashboard once orders start flowing.

Questions

What buyers in this trade ask

Our customers send voice notes. Can it really read those?: Yes. The recording is transcribed and turned into order lines, and the original audio stays attached to the order. When a chef says he asked for the extra virgin, you can listen rather than argue.
Chefs order by name, not by product code. Does that work?: That is most of the work. ManualOut matches what they call it to what your ERP calls it. Genuinely ambiguous requests — "the good olive oil" when you stock three — get flagged for a person instead of guessed at.
Can it handle standing orders that change slightly each week?: Yes, and the changes are the point. Repeat orders regenerate on schedule, and a variation from the usual is marked so it gets caught rather than missed.
Our cutoff is 4pm and orders arrive at 11pm. What then?: The order is read at 11pm and the cutoff rule is applied automatically, so it rolls to the correct delivery day. Nobody has to be at a keyboard for the book to be right in the morning.

Worth a few minutes

Why B2B orders still arrive as messages

Every distributor has tried to move customers onto a portal. Most have quietly given up. Here is why that keeps happening, and what to do instead.

6 min read

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.

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