Key terms in wholesale distribution, order automation, and AI for the order desk — defined clearly.
EDI and APIs both move business data between companies without manual rekeying, but they work differently. EDI sends sta…
Workflow rules for sales orders are the conditions a business sets to decide how each order is handled: which checks run…
A backorder is an order, or part of an order, that a supplier has accepted but cannot ship yet because the item is not c…
A customer order discrepancy is any difference between what a customer ordered and what was entered, shipped or invoiced…
A PO acknowledgement (purchase order acknowledgement) is a message a supplier sends to a buyer to confirm that it has re…
A purchase order (PO) is a document a buyer sends to a supplier to request goods or services. It lists what the buyer wa…
A sales order is a document created by the seller to record a customer’s order. It lists the products, quantities,…
A stockout happens when an item has no available inventory to meet demand. For a distributor, it means a customer has or…
An autonomous order desk is an order desk run by AI agents instead of people keying orders by hand. The agents receive o…
An order confirmation is the message a supplier sends to a customer to confirm an order has been accepted and to state e…
An order desk is the team or function inside a wholesale distributor that receives customer orders, checks them for accu…
Automated price validation is the use of software to check the prices on an incoming order against the prices you have a…
Exception-based processing is a way of running a workflow where transactions that meet set rules pass through automatica…
Line item data capture is the extraction of the detail from each individual row of a customer order: the product referen…
Omnichannel order capture is the practice of accepting customer orders through every channel they want to use and proces…
Order entry error prevention is the set of checks, processes and tools a business uses to stop mistakes from getting int…
Order entry is the task of recording a customer’s order in a business system, usually the ERP or order management …
Order fulfillment is the physical work of getting a confirmed order to the customer: allocating stock, picking it, packi…
Order processing is the set of steps a business follows to take a customer order from receipt to a confirmed, ready-to-f…
Order status automation is the automatic tracking and sharing of an order’s progress, so customers learn where the…
Order validation is the process of checking a customer order against your own data before it is accepted and entered int…
Product substitution is offering a customer an alternative item when the one they ordered is unavailable. In wholesale d…
Sales order entry automation is the use of software to turn incoming customer orders into sales orders in the ERP withou…
Sales order exception handling is the process of finding and fixing problems in customer orders that stop them from bein…
Straight-through processing (STP) is the completion of a transaction from start to finish with no manual intervention at…
Touchless order processing means an order travels from arrival to a completed sales order in the ERP without a person ha…
Unit of measure (UOM) conversion is translating the quantity on a customer order into the unit your systems actually sel…
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