AI Sales Order Processing for Unleashed Inventory Management Software

Step 1: Document Identification and Classification

The processing sequence begins when an inbound message arrives on a monitored channel — an email inbox, a WhatsApp number, an EDI mailbox. The first step is determining what kind of document it is. For Unleashed operations, this matters because Unleashed distinguishes between sales orders (which reserve stock and drive fulfilment) and sales quotes (which do not reserve stock and require a separate creation workflow). Treating all inbound emails as orders creates noise in the Unleashed open orders report. Treating all inbound emails as quotes misses firm committed orders.

Classification looks at signals in the email simultaneously: the presence of a formal PO number, instructional language ('please supply', 'please dispatch'), whether the buyer included a delivery date and address, and the buyer's historical order pattern. Emails that are clearly firm orders proceed to step 2. Emails that are quote requests follow a different processing path — assembling quote data for import into Unleashed via CSV, since the Unleashed REST API does not currently support POST for sales quotes. Emails where classification is ambiguous are routed to a human reviewer.

Step 2: Header and Line-Item Field Extraction

For confirmed orders, the system extracts the structured order fields from the source document. Header fields include: buyer name or customer reference, PO number, requested delivery date, delivery address, and any special delivery instructions. Line-item fields include: product description or buyer product code, quantity, and submitted unit price if the buyer included one.

Extraction handles variation in document layout — a PDF purchase order with a formal table, an email body with a bulleted list of items, an attached spreadsheet with non-standard column headings. The system identifies the relevant fields from content and context rather than executing a fixed template pattern. Extraction failures (a field that cannot be read or found) are flagged before proceeding to the next step.

Step 3: Customer Record Matching in Unleashed

The buyer identified in the order header is matched against active customer records in Unleashed. Matching uses the company name from the order header, the sender's email domain, and any customer code or reference the buyer included. An exact or high-confidence match proceeds automatically. A partial match or multiple candidate matches routes to a human reviewer who selects the correct Unleashed customer record.

Once the Unleashed customer record is confirmed, the system reads the customer's currency, default warehouse (if configured), and pricing tier. These values carry forward through the rest of the processing sequence.

Step 4: Product Code Resolution Against the Unleashed Catalog

Each line item on the order contains a product reference from the buyer — a buyer SKU, a product description, a specification, or a colloquial name. These rarely match the Unleashed product code exactly. Step 4 resolves each buyer reference to the correct Unleashed product code using a per-customer alias map built from confirmed past orders.

For a buyer whose orders are fully mapped (an established customer who has been ordering for a year), nearly all references resolve automatically. For a new buyer whose references have never been seen, the system uses semantic matching against the Unleashed product catalog to identify the best candidate and confidence score. High-confidence matches proceed; low-confidence matches or ambiguous descriptions that could match two catalog entries route to a reviewer. The reviewer's confirmation is recorded as a new alias entry for that customer.

Step 5: Pricing Tier Validation Against the Customer's Unleashed Tier

Unleashed supports multiple customer pricing tiers — Price Tier A through to a configurable number of tiers. Each customer record in Unleashed has an assigned pricing tier, and the tier defines the unit price for each product the customer can order. In step 5, the system reads the customer's pricing tier from Unleashed and compares each line's submitted price against the tier price.

Lines where the buyer submitted a price that matches the Unleashed tier price (or falls within the configured tolerance) proceed automatically. Lines where the submitted price deviates by more than the configured threshold are flagged: the reviewer sees the submitted price, the Unleashed tier price, and the tier name. Common causes are an outdated buyer price list, a recently renegotiated rate not yet updated in Unleashed, or a pricing error on the buyer's side. Nothing posts to Unleashed until the deviation is resolved or accepted.

Step 6: Warehouse Assignment and Stock Availability Check

Unleashed supports multiple warehouse locations and exposes per-warehouse stock data via its API. In step 6, the system queries available quantity — on-hand minus already-committed stock — for each line item per warehouse. The distinction matters: on-hand stock in Unleashed includes units already committed to open sales orders. Quoting availability against on-hand rather than available quantity over-promises on busy days.

Warehouse assignment follows a routing rule configured for the operation. A UK-based distributor with warehouses in Surrey and the Netherlands might route UK buyers to Surrey first and European buyers to the Netherlands first, falling back to the other location if full stock is not available. The assigned warehouse code is recorded on the Unleashed sales order. Orders where full quantity is not available at any warehouse are flagged with the specific shortfall per line.

Step 7: Sales Order Creation via the Unleashed REST API

Orders that clear steps 1 through 6 are written to Unleashed via a POST request to the Unleashed REST API. The sales order record includes: the matched Unleashed customer code, the assigned warehouse code, each line with its resolved Unleashed product code, ordered quantity, and the validated unit price from the customer's pricing tier, the buyer's PO number in the order reference field, the requested delivery date, the delivery address, and any delivery instructions extracted from the source document.

Once created, the Unleashed sales order feeds the standard Unleashed fulfilment workflow: pick list generation, dispatch scheduling, and invoicing. The system does not change how Unleashed works for your warehouse and operations team — it only changes how orders arrive in Unleashed.