Orders from Email and Text for Dynamics 365 Business Central
A contractor’s emailed or texted list read into an order draft with lines from Business Central’s item card, the job account and the delivery date, confirmed by your counter and entered as a sales order in Business Central.
Sales & estimatingUpdated Oct 202620 ERPs
See it work on Business Central.
Click through the steps. Fictional data, in Business Central’s terms; the real thing runs on Business Central.
20 sheets 1/2 drywall, 40 2x4x8, 6 tubes subfloor adhesive, deliver Thursday to Maple St
Texted to the yard’s number, matched to the sender’s account and the job named in it.
The problem, as it happens in Business Central.
A contractor texts the counter at 6:40 am: twenty sheets of half-inch, forty 2x4x8, deliver Thursday to Maple St. Someone reads it off a phone, finds each item in the item card, guesses which job account, and keys a sales order between walk-ins. The email version sits in one inbox until that person is back from the yard.
What goes wrong is quiet: the wrong 2x4 grade, the house account instead of the job, Thursday read as this Thursday. The ticket is corrected at delivery or on the invoice, and nobody counts how many orders started as a photo of a napkin.
How it works.
- 1
The list comes in by email or text
Forwarded to the order mailbox or texted to the yard’s number. Photos, attachments and the body of the message are read the same way; a model reads the list twice before anything is drafted. The counter sees it in one queue, oldest first.
- 2
Lines are matched to your items
Each line becomes an item line from the item card, down to the code: ‘half-inch drywall’ to the sheet you stock, with grade, length and unit. The sender is matched to the customer card and the job named in the message to its job account. Anything uncertain is flagged, not guessed.
- 3
Delivery and terms are filled in
The delivery date and jobsite from the message, the price level and terms from the account. A credit hold or a job past its limit shows on the draft before the counter opens it, not at the window.
- 4
The counter confirms and enters it
The draft opens with every match beside the original line. Fix a line, change the date, confirm. A person enters it as a sales order in Business Central, and the contractor gets a confirmation only when that person sends it.
How it connects to Business Central.
Lunica reads the item card, the customer card and job accounts through Business Central’s API, under a user that can only read: descriptions, units and pack sizes to match a texted line to a stocked item, the contacts and jobs on each account to find the sender, and the price level and terms to fill the draft. Order history tells it that this contractor’s ‘2x4’ has always been 248SPF.
Nothing lands in Business Central without a person and nothing is sent on its own. The draft goes back as a Business Central API call or import where one exists, or keyed by your team from what Lunica prepared; the counter confirms every line before that happens. The confirmation to the contractor is a draft until the counter sends it, and a message Lunica could not read is handed over as the original, not guessed at.
What a week looks like.
- Every emailed and texted list in one queue, oldest first.
- Lines matched to stocked items with grade, length and unit, not retyped.
- The job account and delivery date on the draft before the counter opens it.
- Orders entered by a person who checked them, not read off a phone between walk-ins.
Questions
Does it enter the order?
No. It drafts a sales order with every line matched; a person at the counter confirms it and enters it in Business Central, or imports the file where Business Central takes one.
Does it write to Business Central?
No. Lunica reads the item and customer records and prepares the draft. The order goes in as a Business Central API call or import where one exists, or keyed by your team from what Lunica prepared.
How does it get the texts?
A number under your name that contractors text. Email is a mailbox you forward to or give out. Both land in the same queue.
What if it can’t read a line?
The line is kept as written and flagged. The counter sees the original beside the draft and picks the item or asks the customer.
Will it confirm back to the customer?
It drafts the confirmation with the lines, date and address. The counter sends it. Nothing goes to a customer on its own.
What does the model see?
The message, its photo or attachment, and the items and account it is matching against. Not the whole item card.
Does it need a server?
Lunica runs on one server inside your network, whether Business Central is in Microsoft’s cloud or on your own server, set up and maintained by Lunica. It reads Dynamics 365 Business Central through Business Central’s API, under a user that can only read. There is no inbound connection from outside your network.
What does Lunica read in Business Central?
The customer card, open items and terms, purchase orders and receipts, the item card, quotes and order history, as each workflow needs them. Read-only, and only the rows a task is about.
Can it post to Business Central?
Nothing lands in Business Central without a person. What belongs in Business Central goes back as a Business Central API call or import where one exists, or keyed by your team from what Lunica prepared.
What about our documents?
Invoice copies and scans keep living in the attachments on the record. Lunica reads them when a workflow needs one and never writes to them.
The same workflow, on another ERP.
Orders from Email and Text is written for every system on the list. You’re reading the Business Central version.
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- Dynamics 365 Business Central
- NetSuite
- Sage 100
- QuickBooks Enterprise
- Acumatica
- SAP Business One
- Epicor Kinetic
Another system? Tell us which →
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