Trade POs and web shop orders in one queue for a trade supplier

The situation

A supplier sells to two very different kinds of customer. Consumers and small businesses buy through a Shopify store. Trade accounts send purchase orders by email, often with account-specific pricing and delivery instructions.

The two streams are handled separately. Shopify orders flow into the stock system, while trade orders are keyed in by the sales office. The warehouse ends up with two lists, two sets of paperwork and no single view of what needs to go out today.

What we’d build

One order platform that both streams flow through.

• Web orders from Shopify are already paid for and use the supplier’s own product codes, so they’re approved automatically and go straight to the warehouse queue, skipping review.
• Trade orders arriving by email are read by AI, checked against Cin7 for product codes, stock and the customer’s pricing, and parked for review.
• One warehouse queue on rugged devices shows both, sorted by delivery date, with DPD bookings and labels handled automatically once each order is packed.

How an order flows

1. A trade customer emails a spreadsheet of 30 lines.
2. The platform matches the sender to their trade account and checks each line. Two product codes are unrecognised because the customer used their own codes, so they’re flagged as Product not matched.
3. The reviewer picks the right products from a search of Cin7 and approves.
4. Meanwhile, a Shopify order arrives and goes straight to the warehouse.
5. Both orders sit in the same queue on the warehouse devices, ordered by delivery date.
6. Each is picked, packed, weighed and photographed, then booked with DPD with a label printed automatically.

What changes day to day

• The sales office reviews trade orders instead of typing them, and web orders need no office time at all.
• The warehouse has one queue, one process and one set of paperwork.
• Stock levels in Cin7 reflect both channels as soon as orders are approved, so there are fewer surprises when the same item sells on the website and to a trade account on the same day.

Typical scope

Order automation as the first phase, with the Shopify / WooCommerce orders add-on, followed by the warehouse and shipping phase. If trade customers tend to send their own product codes, a lookup of customer codes against your own is a sensible addition during specification. See pricing for indicative ranges.