What does each typed order cost you?
Order entry automation turns customer purchase orders, however they arrive, into checked draft sales orders in your ERP. The question that decides the business case is simple: what does one manually keyed order cost you today? Work it out below, then compare the ways to stop typing.
Enter your own figures. An agent typically takes the reading and keying; your team keeps the approval.
Default rate: $36.73 an hour, BLS average for office and administrative support, June 2026. A worked example we use puts a typical keyed order at about $8; vendors quote $12 or more once errors are counted.
| Option | Fits | Cost to run | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Central Sales Order Agent | Business Central online | About $0.13 to $0.17 per request in Copilot Credits | Matches customers by email only; quotes first |
| Document extraction plus a flow | Any ERP with an API | Azure Document Intelligence: $10 per 1,000 pages prebuilt, $30 custom | Needs rules for checks and exceptions |
| Custom order agent | Mixed formats, many customers, older ERPs | Model and hosting costs | Approval queue design |
| EDI or a B2B web store | Large or regular customers | VAN or portal fees | Customers must change how they order |
From Microsoft Learn and Azure pricing, October 2026. An X12 997 only confirms the file was readable, not that the order was accepted.
Do more than a third of orders arrive by email or PDF?
Do customers mostly use your item numbers or a known alias?
Are price lists and contracts in the ERP?
Is there one person who can approve drafts each day?
Does your ERP have an API for sales orders?
Answer the questions to see what fits.
Get prices into the ERP and an approver named before automating.
ERP integrationOrders a month times minutes per order times your loaded hourly cost, plus the cost of fixing errors. Our worked example comes to about $8 an order; vendor estimates run higher once errors are included. The calculator above uses your numbers.
One mailbox, draft-only, for 30 days: a week of rules and samples, two weeks of shadow running, then live drafts approved by the order desk.
Customer, ship-to, credit, duplicate PO, item numbers, price, unit of measure, stock or promise date and special terms.
Their first-time match rate on your real orders, how they handle customer part numbers and exceptions, whether anything posts without a person, ERP fit and per-order pricing.
Use the ERP's own warehouse features where they exist, or a mobile app writing through the ERP's API, as we did on SYSPRO for Flexible Metal.
Agents that read emailed orders and PDFs, a B2B web store (Business Central's Shopify connector supports B2B orders), or a standard spreadsheet template.
Facts on this page checked on 22 October 2026.
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