Free self-assessment

Is order entry costing you more than you think?

Six quick questions about how your team handles inbound purchase orders. At the end you get a personalized annual cost, a letter grade, and the one thing worth fixing first. Nothing to sign up for — it all runs right here.

Question 1 of 6

How many inbound POs does your team process per day?

Rough average across everyone who keys orders.

Question 2 of 6

About how long does one PO take, start to finish?

Reading it, looking up parts, checking pricing, keying the order, saving.

Under 5 minutes — clean, familiar orders 5–10 minutes — typical 10–18 minutes — lots of lookups 18+ minutes — messy formats, scanned PDFs

Question 3 of 6

What's a fully-loaded hourly rate for the people doing entry?

Wage plus benefits and overhead. A guess is fine.

$32

Question 4 of 6

How do most orders arrive?

Where the bulk of your volume comes in.

Mostly through a portal / EDI already Mostly emailed PDFs and email bodies A real mix — email, phone, fax, portals A lot of phone / voicemail orders

Question 5 of 6

How often does a wrong-part or wrong-price error slip through?

Transposed quantity, wrong SKU, billed under list — caught after the fact.

Rarely — we catch almost everything A few times a month Weekly, honestly Often enough that it costs us real money

Question 6 of 6

What happens when your order-entry person is out?

PTO, sick day, or they quit.

No problem — it's documented and shared It slows down but we cope Orders back up until they're back One person holds all of it in their head

Room to improve

Estimated annual cost of manual PO entry

Staff hours / year on entry

at your volume and pace

Recoverable with automation

labor time only — errors extra

Where to start

Start free — 75 POs/mo → Run the full calculator →

Estimates only, based on your inputs and common distributor benchmarks (about 250 working days a year). Your real numbers will vary. Nothing you enter leaves this page.