Automating order entry into Unleashed: what to sync and what to leave alone

Unleashed is a popular inventory system with UK wholesalers and distributors, and it has a capable API. That makes it a good foundation for order automation. The question is not whether you can push orders into it automatically, but how to do it so the rest of your business doesn’t notice the difference.

Most of what follows applies to any ERP or inventory system, but we’ll use Unleashed as the example.

Principle: the ERP stays in charge

An automation platform should sit in front of your ERP, not replace it. Customers, products, prices, stock and delivery methods all live in Unleashed. The platform reads them, uses them to check incoming orders, and writes approved orders back.

That means your reports, your invoicing into Xero and your existing processes all carry on as before. If the platform were switched off tomorrow, your team could go back to keying orders by hand without anything else changing.

What to read from Unleashed

To check an incoming order properly, the platform needs current data for:

• Products, to confirm a product code exists and get its description and product group
• Stock on hand, to warn when an order can’t be fulfilled in full
• Customers, to match the sender to the right account and fill in default delivery details
• Prices, to compare the price on the customer’s PO with the price you’d normally charge them
• Delivery methods, so the reviewer picks from the same list your team already uses

What to write back

When an order is approved, we create a sales order in Unleashed:

• with the status set to Placed, ready for your normal processes
• with the customer’s PO number in the Customer Ref field, so it appears on paperwork and can be searched
• with lines at your Unleashed prices, not the price the customer wrote on the PO
• with the delivery method, delivery charge, required date and delivery address agreed at review

New customers can also be created from the review screen, so an order from a new account doesn’t need to wait while someone sets it up.

Prices: whose number wins?

This is the most common question. A customer’s PO says £42.10. Unleashed says £44.50. Which goes on the order?

Our default is that the line total uses the Unleashed price, and the difference is shown as a warning at review, with the PO total alongside the calculated total. The reviewer decides whether to honour the customer’s price, contact them, or adjust the account. The decision stays with a person, and it’s logged.

If you agree project prices through quotes, the platform can check incoming orders against the open quote for that customer instead of the standard price.

What to leave alone

It’s tempting to automate everything at once. We’d advise against touching:

• Invoicing. Let Unleashed raise invoices into Xero as it does today.
• Credit control and payments. These have their own processes and their own risks.
• Product and price maintenance. Keep these in Unleashed, where your team already manages them.

Keeping the two in step

Two details matter once orders are flowing:

• Changes after approval. If someone edits an order in Unleashed after it’s approved, the warehouse needs to see that. We refresh the order from Unleashed when it’s opened for picking.
• Orders entered directly. If your team sometimes keys orders straight into Unleashed, those won’t pass through the platform. If the warehouse works from the platform, all orders should be raised through it, including phone orders, which use the same form.

Other systems

The same pattern works with other ERP, inventory and accounts systems that have a reasonable API, including Linnworks, Cin7, Brightpearl, Sage and QuickBooks. The field names change; the principles don’t.

If you’re running Unleashed or something similar and want to talk through what an integration would involve, book a discovery call.