For UK distributors, wholesalers and manufacturers
EDI, API or email: how orders reach a UK supplier, and which to automate.
EDI and APIs pass an order from the customer's system into yours as data, with nothing to read, but each link is set up customer by customer, so they suit a few large accounts. Everyone else orders by portal, phone or email, and the orders worth automating first are the ones your team types, wherever they come from.
Or send us one order and see what we'd read and flag, by the end of the next working day.
What suppliers say
On their websites, UK suppliers ask for orders by portal, phone and email. Hardly any mention EDI.
101 of 209
UK supplier websites offer online ordering of some kind: a trade portal, a webshop or an app.
3 of 209
mention EDI or a direct link between systems as a way to order.
61 of 209
tell customers to order by phone, email or through a rep.
89 of 209
say nothing about how to order at all, most of them manufacturers.
From our study of 209 UK supplier websites, October 2026. It shows what suppliers tell customers, not how many orders arrive each way. Read the research note.
The routes
Four ways an order reaches you, and what each one asks.
| Route | How the order arrives | What it asks of the customer | What it asks of you |
|---|---|---|---|
| EDI | A structured message from the customer's purchasing system, in a format both sides agreed | An EDI-capable system, and testing with you | Mapping and testing each customer's messages, yourself or through an EDI provider |
| API | One system calling the other's interface directly | A system that can call yours, or one yours can call | A link built and kept working for each connected system |
| Portal or webshop | Typed by the customer on your website | Logging in and keying the order themselves | Products, prices and stock kept current online |
| Email, PDF, WhatsApp | In the customer's own words and layout | Nothing new | Reading and keying every order, or a system that reads them into drafts |
Every route still needs a person for the exceptions, such as a wrong price or a short line.
EDI vs API vs email
The difference is whether anyone has to read the order.
EDI and an API both move an order between systems as data. EDI runs on agreed message standards. X12, chartered by the American National Standards Institute, publishes an 850 Purchase Order, and OpenPeppol's ordering specification covers the order and the seller's reply: accept, accept with changes, or reject. An API is one system's own interface. There is no shared message, so each link is built for the systems at both ends.
For a small business, EDI follows the customer. If a large customer requires it, you set it up for them, and their volume decides whether it pays. It does nothing for the café, the site buyer or the corner shop, who have no EDI system to send from.
Against email, the difference is reading. An emailed order arrives as words, and someone has to read them and type each line. That is the expensive part, and the part worth automating.
Where to start
Which orders to automate first.
- Count two weeks of orders by route: EDI, portal, email, PDF, phone, WhatsApp, rep. Count the lines too.
- Time ten orders from each route, start to finish, including the looking up.
- Start where most keyed minutes go. If that is email and PDF, automate the reading. If one large customer sends half your lines, ask whether they will send EDI or use your portal.
- Keep the routes you have. 48% of the distributors in our study with online ordering still invite phone, email or rep orders too. Plan for customers who won't move.
If customers can't find how to order from you, start there instead: see the how-to-order page checklist.
How email orders are automated
Read, checked, approved. EDI and portal orders carry on as they are.
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1
Read
Each emailed order is read as it arrived, attachments and photos included, and comes out as lines.
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2
Checked
Lines are matched to your items using past orders, then checked against the customer's prices and your stock. Anything that doesn't match is flagged with the reason.
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3
Approved
Your team approves the draft and the order goes into your ERP through its API or an import file, next to the EDI and portal orders. See emailing orders into your ERP.
What it costs you today
The smallest route can hold most of the keying.
Illustration with invented data: 200 orders a day, 140 by EDI and portal at a minute each to check, and 60 by email at 6 minutes each to key. The email orders are 30% of the count and 6 of the 8 hours and 20 minutes the desk spends on orders each day.
Put your own figures into the order desk calculator. It shows the hours and the pounds a year. If we work together, that is the baseline we report against, as order processing time and order errors.
What you get from us
In this order, with a fixed price before you commit.
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30 minutes
Call with you
How orders reach you, by route, and which number that holds back.
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1 hour
Session with your team
We go through real orders with your desk. The same day you get a one-page verdict: the route to fix, the KPI it moves, today's baseline and a fixed price. Or a written no.
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A fixed number of weeks
Build
We build it and connect it to your ERP. Nothing is subcontracted.
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Every month
Run and report
We run it and report order processing time and order errors against the baseline. Stop at any report.
Questions
What people ask about EDI, APIs and email orders.
- What is the difference between EDI and an API?
- Both pass orders between systems as data. EDI uses message standards agreed between trading partners, set up by you or an EDI provider. An API is one system's own interface, so each link is built for the systems at either end.
- Is EDI worth it for a small business?
- If a large customer requires it, yes, for that customer. It won't reach customers who order by email or phone, because they have no EDI system to send from.
- Are EDI orders more accurate than email orders?
- An EDI order needs no reading, so nothing is mistyped on the way in. It can still carry an old price or a discontinued item. Emailed orders have to be read, which is why each one is checked against prices and stock and approved by a person.
- What does it cost?
- The price is fixed and written on the one-page verdict after the session with your team, before you commit to anything. If we don't find anything worth doing, we'll tell you and leave.
Next step
Thirty minutes on how your orders arrive.
Tell us your routes and roughly how many orders come each way. Or send us one order first and see what we'd read and flag.
The Open Build. We’ll build one UK supplier an order desk system, free and in public, measured on its own numbers. Everyone who applies gets a one-page read of their own workflow. Applications close at 5pm UK time on Friday 6 November. See the Open Build.