My first thought is that it's the order taking end of the process that they should invest in automating. Then the orders would already be in a digital format instead of a PDF.

I think there are document management apps that let you email something to a certain email address to get them into the system. Perhaps DocStar?  Many such systems can have a template whereby the OCR knows where the customer name is, where the dollar amount is.  If it's hand written, though...

I was just down in Greenville SC at CIM Cloud Partner Huddle and Eric Alexander ( [email protected] ) demonstrated a customer portal where orders could be placed and the customer can review the status. That might be an option.

Another customer that I have receives the orders in an Excel spreadsheet and imports them to Sage Sales Order Entry using Visual Integrator. In this case, the people sending the orders are smaller unsophisticated customers so we didn't opt for a fully integrated solution.

Sue, data can be imported one of two ways. Through VI or BOI.  If the vendor can translate and import using VI then that is the way to go.

Sorry this is a bit of a late reply Sue but I was looking for a related thread and came across your post. Have a look at www.pdfdatanet.com which extracts the data form PDF sales orders, including line details, and then formats the extracted data into a file format for automatic importing into Sage.

Hello,

I have a requirement like, the users will get PO's (PDF files) through emails from different customers, so their requirement is, when ever they get PO mails they want to create a Sales Order automatically using that PDF files. They will place the PDF doc in presentation server, we have to read that PDF and create SO from that. official firstcallonline I have gone through many threads in SDN, but are not useful. Please help me out....

Hi Jameson, have a look at www.pdfdatanet.com - it's designed to convert PDF files from different customers/suppliers, extract the data and then create a data file for uploading into the target ERP system. 

If you send us a message from the website and one of the team will be in touch to take this forward with you.

Andrew - Are you available for Sage 100? I looked quickly at your site and it indicates X3 and Sage 200 which appears to be a non-North America product.

Hi Wayne - good spot! Our product extracts the data from the PDF and puts it into a format for processing by an integration layer. So yes we are available for Sage 100 and the integration layer could be something simple like Visual Integrator or we can build a whole automated sales order workflow using a product like www.codelessplatforms.com/connectors/sage-100-erp-integration . If you have a preferred integration product or you process EDI messages, web orders then we can format the data file to be in-line with the existing process.

I will ask our web team to add Sage 100 to the list....