Order management for small-batch manufacturers and workshops
Customer orders by e-mail, PDF or photo: Onshop captures them as draft orders so you spend your time making things, not typing.
Orders arrive between other tasks
In a metal workshop, a joinery, or a fine-food business, processing orders is seldom a standalone task. An order e-mail often arrives while a staff member is operating a machine, preparing a quote, or packing parcels. The message is read during the next break and typed into the system in the evening, which sometimes leads to a missing line or a typo in the quantity.
Your business customers continue to order using their preferred methods. A retailer might send a monthly PDF for reorders, a restaurant might write a few lines in an e-mail, or an architect’s office might attach an Excel list. A dedicated web shop for these customers is rarely available and would often not be profitable for small-batch manufacturers.
The order is ready when you are
Onshop regularly monitors your order mailbox, even when no one is sitting at the desk. It turns every order—including those from scans, photos, and PDF attachments—into a draft order containing the customer, line items, quantities, and units. When you return to your desk, you find a list of drafts instead of a pile of unread e-mails.
You can see exactly which passage in the e-mail or attachment each line was taken from. Consequently, reviewing the draft takes no more time than reading the original e-mail. This process also works on a mobile phone, whether you are in the workshop or visiting a customer.
A small catalogue is sufficient
A perfectly maintained product master is not required to use the software. You can upload your products via a CSV file, such as the Excel list you currently use. Onshop matches lines that correspond to one of your products. If your catalogue is empty, the lines remain as text in the draft without Onshop asking the customer for clarification on every item. This allows you to start using the system on day one and expand your catalogue gradually.
Clarifications via e-mail
Onshop drafts a reply to the customer if a product is ambiguous, a unit does not fit, or a quantity is missing. You review the draft, adjust the wording if necessary, and send it directly from Onshop. The customer’s response then completes the draft. This prevents you from having to manually combine information from multiple e-mails.
What Onshop is not
Onshop is designed to capture and manage customer orders. It does not handle capacity planning, material requirements, routings, or bills of materials. If you use production software for these tasks, you can export confirmed orders as a CSV file to import them there. If you currently use Excel for planning, you can open the same file directly in Excel.
We state this clearly because software for manufacturing often promises more. Onshop handles the typing for you, not the production planning.
