Why emailed orders still get keyed by hand
In most Australian wholesale and distribution businesses running SAP Business One, EDI only covers a handful of national accounts. The rest of your customers email a PDF purchase order from their own system, type a list of part numbers in the body of an email, or forward a quote sheet with photos attached. A sales coordinator has to open the email, find the customer in SAP, match each customer SKU or description to your OITM item master or OSCN business-partner catalogue numbers, check warehouse stock, and key the order line by line.
Traditional OCR tools fail here because extracting text from a PDF is only half the job. The real work is checking whether the customer account is active, whether the ABN matches, which warehouse has stock, whether a quoted price overrides the price list, and—for technical or automotive distributors—whether the part actually fits the job or vehicle.
How BE One AI works the order and quoting mailboxes
| Step | What happens in code | What your team sees |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Mailbox intake | Polls your dedicated order and RFQ mailboxes over BE AgentMail every 60 seconds, reading email bodies, PDF attachments and attached photos. | Every inbound order or quote request appears in the intake queue within a minute of arrival. |
| 2. Customer & ABN check | Matches the sender domain, customer name and Australian ABN (verified with a deterministic modulo-89 checksum) against active SAP Business One OCRD customer records. | The matched CardCode, customer reference (NumAtCard) and branch warehouse are pre-filled. |
| 3. Line, SKU & fitment matching | Resolves item codes against OITM, customer cross-references (OSCN), UDFs (CUFD/UFD1) and—where configured—vehicle registration and fitment tables. | Matched lines show live on-hand, committed and available stock per warehouse alongside list and special prices. |
| 4. Drafted for Confirm | Creates a validated draft Sales Quotation or Sales Order preview. Nothing is written to SAP Business One automatically. | A staff member reviews the side-by-side email/PDF and SAP draft, adjusts any line if needed, and presses Confirm. |
Learning from staff edits
When a sales coordinator changes an item code or selects a different variant before pressing Confirm, BE One AI records that correction against the intake audit log. Combined with explicit taught facts ("Customer X always takes warehouse 02", "When a bodyshop writes L/H guard, map to..."), accuracy compounds week after week without a consultant rewriting rules.
Supplier AP invoices too
For inbound supplier bills, BE Capture sits in front of BE One AI: verifying line-item extensions, 10% GST arithmetic, modulo-89 ABNs, purchase-order quantities and flagging any change to a supplier's BSB or bank account number before an AP invoice draft reaches SAP Business One.