Order Entry: What It Is, Common Problems, and How to Fix Them

You’ve probably been there…

An order gets delayed. A customer gets the wrong item. Your inventory says there’s stock, but the shelves say otherwise. Somewhere along the way, something broke — and now you're stuck trying to figure out where.

If you’ve ever found yourself digging through orders, spreadsheets, or shipping labels to find out what went wrong, chances are it started with a simple but critical step: order entry.

In this guide, we’ll break down what it is, why it matters, and how small mistakes at the start of the process can create bigger problems down the line — plus what you can do to fix it.

What is Order Entry in E-commerce?

Order entry in e-commerce is the process of taking a customer’s order and making sure all the details—like what they bought, how they paid, and where it’s going—are captured and recorded correctly. It’s what sets everything in motion once someone checks out.

Think of it as the link between your online store and your team behind the scenes. Once an order comes in, that information needs to move fast... to your inventory system, your warehouse, and your shipping provider.

If anything's missing or off, it can lead to delays, wrong items, or unhappy customers.

How It Works

Order Placement

The customer selects products, enters their details, and completes checkout.

Order Capture

The ecommerce platform or OMS stores the order information (items, quantities, prices, customer info).

Payment Validation

The system checks if the payment is successful before moving forward with fulfillment.

Inventory Update

Inventory is automatically updated to reflect items sold, helping prevent overselling.

Order Confirmation

A confirmation is sent to the customer, and the order is marked as received in the system.

Fulfillment Routing

The order is passed on to the warehouse or fulfillment team, ready for picking and packing.

Carrier Assignment & Labeling

A shipping carrier is selected and a label is generated based on delivery requirements.

Shipment Tracking Initialization

Tracking begins and updates are prepared for the customer to follow their order.

Why Does Accurate Order Entry Matter?

If you're running an online store, the moment a customer places an order is when the clock starts ticking. Everything that happens after depends on one thing: how accurate that order is.

Mistakes during entry—like wrong quantities, bad addresses, or outdated stock—can slow everything down. It affects shipping, inventory, and most of all, your customer’s trust.

Let’s break down why it matters...

It Avoids Delays and Wrong Shipments

When details like addresses or SKUs aren’t entered correctly, things don’t go out on time. Worse... they go to the wrong place. 

That turns into a refund, a lost customer, and more time wasted fixing a mistake that could’ve been prevented early on.

It Keeps Your Inventory Accurate

Every time an order is placed, your system should update stock levels instantly. 

But if the data coming in is off—like a missed item or duplicate entry—your numbers won’t reflect what’s actually available. 

Suddenly you’re overselling... or marking in-stock items as unavailable.

It Lowers Support Tickets and Builds Trust

When order info is correct, tracking starts right away, updates go out, and customers know exactly what to expect. 

But if something's wrong, they reach out. A lot. Fixing that early with accurate order entry means fewer support issues and a smoother experience overall.

What are Some Common Order Entry Problems and How Do You Fix Them?

Below are some of the most common issues we’ve seen—and how you can fix them before they become bigger problems.

Manual Data Entry is Causing Errors

Still entering customer and shipping info by hand?

Manual entry slows everything down and leads to costly errors — wrong addresses, missing items, or duplicated orders.

For brands that are scaling, it’s one of the fastest ways to bottleneck fulfillment.

How to Fix

1. Use an order management system that pulls order data directly from your ecommerce store — no more copy-pasting from one platform to another.
2. Our shipping automation tools handle this by connecting your storefront with fulfillment workflows, cutting down manual tasks dramatically.
3. Built-in checkout integrations also help reduce form errors and ensure cleaner order inputs from the start.

Inventory is Out-of-Sync with Incoming Orders

Selling items that are actually out of stock? That usually comes down to a delay between your sales platform and your inventory system.

When systems don’t talk to each other in real time, customers end up frustrated — and you end up refunding orders you could’ve avoided in the first place.

How to Fix

1. Sync your order capture with real-time inventory updates so product availability is always accurate.
2. Our integration platform makes it easy to connect inventory, fulfillment, and delivery systems — so orders pull accurate stock levels automatically.
3. If you operate from multiple locations, our ship-from-store setup helps you fulfill from wherever inventory is available fastest.

Delayed or Incorrect Shipping Label Generation

If your team is switching between carrier portals or printing labels manually, delays are inevitable.

Worse, labels might not match your customer’s selected shipping method — leading to missed expectations or last-minute carrier changes.

How to Fix

1. Automate label generation based on order location, delivery speed, and available carriers.
2. With our carrier management tools, you can apply custom rules to assign the best carrier for each order.
3. Labels are generated instantly through Click-n-Ship, reducing errors and saving time across every shipment.

No Real-Time Tracking or Customer Updates

You’ve shipped the order, but the customer still asks “Where is it?” That’s a sign your post-purchase communication isn’t proactive enough.

Without real-time updates, your support team gets overwhelmed and your customer experience takes a hit.

How to Fix

1. Offer customers branded tracking with live updates — from checkout to delivery.
2. Our customer engagement tools let you automate email, SMS, and WhatsApp notifications based on delivery status.
3. If you're running omnichannel or high-volume fulfillment, this layer reduces support tickets and builds trust through transparency.

Scaling Order Entry with High Volume is Painful

When order volume spikes, it’s easy for fulfillment teams to fall behind — especially if order entry and shipping tasks are still semi-manual.

Mistakes get more frequent, customer complaints grow, and staff morale dips.

How to Fix

1. Centralize your operations so that order routing, carrier assignment, and customer updates all run from a single dashboard.
2. Whether you're handling ecommerce, retail, or 3PL fulfillment, our platform tools are built to scale with demand.
3. Use our reports and analytics to track shipping performance and identify weak spots before they turn into delays.

If any of these problems sound familiar, you’re not alone. We've worked with businesses of all sizes — from small shops to enterprise-level operations — to build order workflows that scale without the chaos.

Want help reviewing your current setup? Feel free to reach out or explore more strategies on our blog. We're happy to walk through what a smoother order entry process could look like for your team.

Final Thoughts

Order entry might not be the most visible part of your operations, but when it’s working, everything else runs smoother. Fewer errors. Faster fulfillment. Happier customers.

If you’ve made it this far, chances are you’re already thinking about how to improve your current setup—or maybe you’re just getting started. Either way, we hope this gave you the clarity you needed.

If you're exploring tools to automate your shipping workflows, reduce delays, or just make things easier to manage, we’ve built solutions designed for that. Whether you're running ecommerce, retail, or managing 3PL operations, we've helped businesses of all sizes—from small shops to enterprise teams—fix the gaps in their order-to-ship process.

Feel free to browse our blog if you want more tips like this, or get in touch with us if you’re ready to explore how we can help.

And if you're just here to learn, that's great too—wishing you the best as you keep improving how your business runs behind the scenes. If you ever want to check out what we’re working on, you can always start here.

FAQs

What’s the difference between order entry and order processing?

Order entry is where we collect and validate customer order details. Processing kicks in after—updating stock, printing labels, and sending the order out. If entry is off, the rest usually falls apart. Our shipping automation helps keep both steps in sync.

Who is responsible for order entry in an e-commerce business?

In smaller teams, it’s usually handled manually. As businesses grow, we see most shift to connected tools that handle it automatically—linking the storefront with inventory and delivery. Our ecommerce solutions are built for that kind of setup.

Can order entry be automated?

Definitely. We help automate that flow by pulling clean order data from your store, validating it, and routing it to fulfillment—no manual copying needed. You can explore how that works in our platform overview.

Why do manual order entry processes cause so many problems?

Because they rely on people retyping or pasting data between tools—it's slow and easy to mess up. With our carrier management, that entire step becomes faster and more accurate.

Do I need a separate tool just for order entry?

Not necessarily. The better move is to use something that handles entry, inventory sync, and delivery all in one place. We’ve built that into our shipping automation tools so you don’t have to juggle different systems.