Zero-Touch Purchase Order Automation Across Seven Supplier Channels
How Human Nexus helped one of Australia's largest award-winning online pet supply companies remove every manual touchpoint from purchase order processing.
Seven wholesale customers sent purchase orders in seven different formats. Every order was read, re-keyed, checked against stock, and entered into the ERP by hand. The work consumed about four and a half full-time staff every month.
Human Nexus built fourteen Power Automate flows that capture each order, read it with AI Builder or Office Scripts, match every product, check stock, and create the sales order in Cin7 with no human involved in the normal path. Today that same work takes about half of one full-time role, and it covers exceptions only.
From seven manual inboxes to one zero-touch pipeline
The retailer supplies pet products to national supermarkets, discount chains, grocery wholesalers, and specialty pet outlets. Each customer placed orders its own way, and every order was handled entirely by hand from inbox to ERP.
Human Nexus replaced that manual effort with fourteen connected Power Automate flows. The flows capture every order, read it automatically, match each product, check stock, create the Cin7 sales order, and reconcile the final total without a person in the loop.
Seven wholesale customers, seven different purchase order formats, captured and normalised by one automation layer.
Seven inbound processors read each order. Seven sync flows create and reconcile the matching sales order in Cin7.
Routine processing now runs with no human touch. The remaining half a role handles exceptions and special requests only.
Seven channels, no shared shape
Two major supermarket chains sent spreadsheets in case-pack quantities. A grocery wholesaler with eight distribution centres sent PDFs. A discount department store sent legacy Excel files. A specialty pet chain, a fresh-food grocer, and a regional distributor each sent something different again.
Staff opened each email, read the attachment, looked up every product code, worked out unit quantities from carton packs, checked stock, and typed the whole order into the ERP. Nothing was uniform, nothing was sequenced, and a single transposed number meant the order had to be unpicked and redone.
One automation layer over every channel
Human Nexus built fourteen Power Automate flows, a matched pair for each supplier plus shared services. Seven inbound processors turn raw attachments into clean order data. Seven sync flows move that data into Cin7 and keep the totals honest.
The work moves through three stages: capture, match, and reconcile.
Capture and read
Each inbound flow self-filters on the email subject, then reads the attachment. AI Builder handles the four PDF suppliers. Office Scripts parse the three spreadsheet suppliers, with Plumsail converting any legacy file first.
Match and stage
Every line is matched against the shared Product Master by code or barcode, case packs are expanded to unit quantities, stock is checked, and the order is staged as parent and child records in SharePoint.
Create and reconcile
A sync flow checks the supplier is active, creates the sales order in Cin7 through its REST API, waits for the ERP to calculate the total, compares it to the source order, and applies a surcharge or discount so the figures always agree.
How one order moves through the system
Scroll through six stages, from inbox to reconciled sales order. The panel on the left changes as the order moves down the pipeline.
Order arrives
A purchase order lands in the shared inbox. Each inbound flow watches for its own supplier using a subject-line keyword, so every order routes itself to the right processor with no sorting by hand.
Read the attachment
The flow opens the attachment and reads it. AI Builder extracts line items from the four PDF suppliers. Office Scripts parse the three spreadsheet suppliers, and Plumsail converts any legacy file to a readable format first.
Match every product
Each line is matched against the shared Product Master by product code or barcode. Case-pack orders are expanded to unit quantities by multiplying pack size by the units per carton held in the master.
Check stock and stage
The flow checks available stock, decrements it, and writes the order into SharePoint as a parent record with one child record per line. This gives finance a complete, ordered audit trail for the first time.
Create the sales order
A sync flow confirms the supplier is switched on, then creates the sales order in Cin7 through its REST API. No one types anything into the ERP.
Reconcile the total
The flow waits for Cin7 to calculate its own total, compares it to the figure on the source order, and applies a surcharge or discount line so the two always agree to the cent.
Seven formats, each handled its own way
Four suppliers send PDFs, read by their own AI Builder model. Three send spreadsheets, read by Office Scripts, with a converter in front for older files. Every channel ends in the same clean order shape, ready for Cin7.
Grocery wholesaler
Eight distribution centres, one PDF layout per centre.
PDF read by AI Builder
Distribution centre maps to the correct Cin7 member.
Specialty pet chain
National pet retailer with a fixed PDF order template.
PDF read by AI Builder
Member identifier applied per order.
Fresh-food grocer
Premium grocer sending PDF purchase orders.
PDF read by AI Builder
Own trained model handles its layout.
Regional distributor
Independent distributor with a distinct PDF format.
PDF read by AI Builder
Separate model and record path.
Discount department store
Legacy spreadsheet attachments, sometimes older file types.
Office Script, Plumsail convert
Custom parser reads the workbook.
National supermarket A
Spreadsheet orders priced in case packs.
Office Script, case-pack maths
Pack quantity expanded to units.
National supermarket B
Spreadsheet orders with a keyword in the subject.
Office Script, subject filter
Self-filters so only its flow runs.
Making the totals agree, every time
Pricing rules, rounding, and case-pack maths mean a supplier total and an ERP total rarely match to the cent on their own. Left alone, that gap creates disputes and manual credits later.
Each sync flow closes the gap automatically. It reads the figure Cin7 calculates, compares it to the figure on the source order, and posts a small surcharge or discount line so both records always match.
A control list holds an active flag for every supplier. Turning a supplier off pauses its sync instantly, with no code change and no risk to the other channels.
Three representative order paths
The same pipeline handles a PDF supplier, a spreadsheet supplier, and the reconciliation sync. Pick a path to follow it end to end.
A grocery wholesaler emails a PDF order for one of its eight distribution centres.
The order reaches the ERP correctly with no one reading or typing it.
- 01Subject keyword routes the email to the right flow
- 02AI Builder reads the line items from the PDF
- 03Each product is matched against the Product Master
- 04Stock is checked and the order is staged in SharePoint
- 05The sync flow creates the sales order in Cin7
- 06Totals are reconciled and the order is closed
Built to scale across channels and stay controllable
Flows handle the routine path. People handle the exceptions. A shared Product Master and a per-supplier control list keep the whole pipeline consistent and easy to govern.
Automate the repeatable
Reading, matching, staging, and ERP entry move into flows that run the same way every time.
Normalise the difference
Seven formats become one clean order shape, so downstream steps never care which supplier sent it.
Escalate the exception
Unmatched products, missing fields, or out-of-tolerance totals route to a person, not the bin.
Keep it switchable
An active flag per supplier means any channel can be paused or resumed without touching the others.
Four roles of capacity returned
The headline is the four full-time roles freed each month. The lasting value is a fast, accurate, fully auditable order pipeline that the business can trust and grow on.
Why this matters for high-volume retail
Wholesale order volume grows faster than the team that processes it. When every customer orders its own way, the cost of handling those orders by hand climbs with each new account and each busy season.
Automating the order pipeline changes that curve. New volume no longer means new headcount on data entry, and the people already there move to work that actually needs judgement, such as supplier relationships, range planning, and service.
Human Nexus gave the retailer a pipeline that scales with the business rather than against it, while keeping people in control of anything unusual.
Automation that survives real-world mess
The hard part was never one happy-path order. It was seven formats, legacy file types, case-pack pricing, distribution-centre mapping, and totals that never quite matched.
Human Nexus modelled the full order-to-cash path, built a matched pair of flows for each supplier, and handled the edge cases that usually break automation, from a legacy spreadsheet to a rounding gap in a final total.
The result is a zero-touch pipeline that one of Australia's largest online pet retailers runs on every day, with people free to focus on the work that grows the business.
Ready to remove the manual work from order processing?
This story shows how a Human Nexus build can take orders from many suppliers, in many formats, and turn them into clean, reconciled sales orders in your ERP with no manual handling. We can do the same across your channels.