Moving from paper to digital orders

What goes wrong with paper orders

A typical day at a distributor using order books: salespeople write orders at dealer counters, photograph pages on WhatsApp in the evening, and the billing team types them into Tally the next morning. Along the way:

• Handwriting is misread — 12 becomes 17, a 1 kg pack becomes 1 litre.
• Item names do not match Tally names, so staff guess.
• Salespeople quote old rates or promise schemes that have ended.
• Nobody knows if the dealer is already over their credit limit.
• Orders sent on WhatsApp get buried and missed.
• The owner cannot see the day's orders until billing is done.

What a good digital order looks like

Before you start: clean the masters

Digital orders are only as good as the item and party lists behind them. Spend a week on this first:

1. Items: remove duplicates, fix names so a salesperson can find them, group them sensibly, and add photos for items that look alike.
2. Parties: merge duplicate customers, fill in mobile numbers, GSTIN and state.
3. Rates: agree the current price list and any dealer categories. See price list management for dealers.
4. Credit limits: decide limits for each customer, even roughly. See setting credit limits.

A four-week rollout plan

The firm end date in week 4 matters. If paper stays optional, some salespeople will never switch.

Handling phone and WhatsApp orders

Not every dealer will order through a salesperson. For orders that arrive by phone or WhatsApp, have one person in the office enter them as digital orders immediately, while the dealer is still on the line if possible. Read the order back with quantities and the total. For regular dealers, sharing an online catalogue link lets them pick items themselves and send an enquiry, which reduces back-and-forth. See catalogue sharing for B2B sales.

Approvals and billing

Decide which orders go straight to billing and which need approval: new customers, orders above the credit limit, special rates. Approved orders become sales orders in your accounting system, and then invoices when goods are dispatched. Partial dispatches should leave the balance open on the order, not forgotten. Billing staff should never retype an order that already exists digitally.

Measuring the change

• Time from order to invoice: from next day to same day is common once retyping stops.
• Order errors: count returns and corrections caused by wrong items or rates each month.
• Orders per salesperson per day: should not fall after the first two weeks.
• Orders over credit limit: should be caught before dispatch, not after.

Objections you will hear, and answers

• The dealer is in a hurry; writing is faster. True for the first week. Once salespeople learn to search by short names and repeat last orders, a phone is faster than a pad, and no evening is spent photographing pages.
• There is no network in the market. Plan for it: let salespeople note the order and enter it as soon as they have signal, and fix the areas where this happens often.
• Dealers want to negotiate rates. Keep that conversation, but route special rates through an approval instead of letting each salesperson decide.
• Billing staff fear losing their jobs. Their work shifts from typing to checking, dispatch planning and collections follow-up — usually more valuable work.

Digital orders with Tally and Cashflow OS

In Cashflow OS, salespeople pick customers and items (with photos) synced from Tally, rates fill from price lists by dealer type, and GST is worked out from the item and the party's state. Orders from frontline staff can need approval, and approved orders post to Tally as sales orders through the connector. Salespeople see their own customers, not the company's accounts. See sales orders to Tally.