Order-to-dispatch automation gave a beverage distributor 22 hours a week back.

The challenge

Nine hundred retail outlets placed orders by phone calls and WhatsApp messages. Three back-office staff spent their days re-typing them into the billing system — a process that produced six to eight entry errors a week, each one a wrong dispatch, a credit note, and an argument.

Stock-outs of fast-moving SKUs were discovered only when a retailer complained, and the excise and GST paperwork that a licensed distributor lives under consumed every month-end.

The solution

We built an n8n-powered order pipeline: WhatsApp orders are captured, parsed, and validated against live stock and each outlet's credit status, then pushed into the ERP automatically — with only exceptions routed to a human for review.

Inventory now syncs continuously with reorder alerts on fast movers, retailers receive automated order confirmations and dispatch notifications, and the recurring excise and GST report data is compiled automatically for the accounts team to verify and file.

• WhatsApp order intake parsed and validated automatically
• Orders pushed straight to ERP — humans handle only exceptions
• Live inventory sync with reorder alerts on fast-moving SKUs
• Excise and GST report data compiled automatically each cycle