What does a manually keyed order really cost?
The cost of order entry is more than typing time. A simple calculation any SME can do with its own numbers.
In most companies nobody knows exactly how much time goes into entering orders. Not because it’s a secret, but because it happens in fragments: between two phone calls, after lunch, on a Friday afternoon when “I’ll just key this one in”.
1. The direct time
For an experienced colleague, entering one email order typically takes 6–8 minutes: find the customer, look up the item codes, type the quantities, check the delivery address. If the order comes as a PDF or spreadsheet, or the customer writes free text (“same as last time”), it easily takes longer.
Run your own numbers:
- orders per day × minutes per order × 21 working days = minutes per month
- divide by 60 for hours, multiply by the hourly staff cost for money
At 25 orders a day and 7 minutes each, that is more than 60 hours a month – a week and a half spent on typing alone.
2. The cost of errors
A mistyped item code, a wrong quantity or an outdated address is rarely caught at entry. It surfaces at delivery, in a complaint, in a credit note – where it costs several people’s time. Try keeping a tally for a month of how many orders had to be corrected afterwards.
3. The hidden risk
If order entry depends on knowledge in one person’s head (“Peter’s usual is the M8 galvanised”), their holiday or departure becomes a business risk. It doesn’t show up in any spreadsheet, but everyone feels it when it happens.
What to take from this
Automation doesn’t pay off for everyone. With 3–4 orders a day, manual entry is perfectly fine. With dozens a day and many repeat customers, though, reviewing beats typing: the machine prepares, the person decides.
Try it with your own numbers in our ROI calculator.