Can BisTrack read emailed purchase orders?

Not the base system. Epicor's Order Entry Automation add-on can, for customers you've set up OCR templates for. Orders from customers without templates, and the non-SKU lines on any order, still need a person or a custom AI order entry system.

Does BisTrack Order Entry Automation use AI?

Epicor doesn't claim it does. The product page describes form recognition and OCR driven by per-customer templates. The contrast is Epicor's own AP tool for BisTrack: AP Assist advertises AI-powered OCR that adapts to new vendor layouts automatically, a claim the order entry product doesn't make.

How do orders get into BisTrack without manual entry?

Four paths: file-based imports through the eBusiness module, the EDI interface for trading partners, the separately licensed BisTrack API for programmatic pushes, and the Order Entry Automation add-on for templated PO documents. An AI layer uses the API or import paths to stage drafts automatically.

What happens with special orders and non-stock lines?

That's where automation earns or loses its keep at an LBM dealer. Epicor's template OCR leaves non-SKU lines blank for manual entry. An AI layer can still read those lines and route them to a person as flagged exceptions, so the rep handles judgment calls instead of retyping the whole order.

How long does something like this take to set up?

Plan on a few weeks for a custom build. The work is in matching quality against your item file, units of measure, and contractor pricing, not in the BisTrack connection. Epicor's add-on has its own ramp: templates are set up per account customer, so coverage grows one customer at a time.

ERP automation guide

BisTrack Order Entry Automation

By Airdev. We build custom AI order entry for distributors running BisTrack: built to match your exact process, owned by you, with no per-order fees. This guide is what we've learned doing it.

Order entry in BisTrack can be automated, and there are two real ways to do it. Epicor sells its own add-on, BisTrack Order Entry Automation, which reads scanned and emailed POs using OCR templates set up for each of your account customers. The other way is a custom AI order entry system, built by Airdev, that reads whatever a customer sends, matches it against your items and pricing, and stages a draft order a person approves.

The difference matters most for the orders that don't fit a template: one-off builders, handwritten notes, and special orders. Nothing posts without a human sign-off either way.

How orders actually arrive at an LBM dealer

BisTrack shops live in two worlds at once. At the counter, it's walk-in retail: the Order Entry screen even has a phone number lookup so a customer can key their number into the PIN pad to pull up their account. Away from the counter, it's contractor business: emailed PDF purchase orders from builders, phone orders scribbled down mid-delivery, quotes built from plan takeoffs, special orders for non-stock items, and big construction jobs released in stages as call-off orders.

That second world is where the keying happens. Someone reads the builder's PO, rebuilds it line by line in Order Entry, clears the Stock Warning screen when something is short, gets the job address right, confirms the contractor's negotiated pricing, and attaches the PO in Related Documents. BisTrack handles the transaction fine once it's in. Getting it in is the manual part.

What Epicor's Order Entry Automation add-on does

Epicor sells a first-party document intake product for BisTrack, which is more than it offers for some of its other ERPs. Order Entry Automation applies form recognition and OCR to scanned customer POs and emailed PDFs, pulls out the customer, the delivery or site address, the required dates, and the quantity, unit, and price for each SKU line, groups POs by customer and site in a review screen, and exports to BisTrack through the EDI interface as a sales order with the PO attached in Related Documents.

The design choice to understand before buying is that it is template-based. Templates are set up for your account customers, the builders and contractors you do repeat business with, and the system recognizes their PO layouts from those templates (dynamic zones handle values that move around the page). So a new or occasional customer needs a template before their orders automate, and non-SKU lines, which is what special orders often are, come through blank for manual entry. Epicor's product page makes no AI claims for it, and that's accurate: this is pattern-matching OCR, not a system that reads an unfamiliar document. No public pricing is listed, so that's a question for your rep.

How to import orders into BisTrack, in depth

Where templates stop and AI starts

If most of your emailed volume comes from a stable set of builders with consistent PO formats, template OCR can carry real weight, and you should price Epicor's add-on seriously. The gap is everything else: the long tail of contractors who order occasionally, POs that are half stock items and half special order, formats that drift, and the handwritten notes that come off a jobsite. A template system needs setup per customer, and an AI system reads the document in front of it.

A custom AI order entry system works like this with BisTrack:

1It watches the order inbox and reads each PO or emailed order as it arrives, whatever the format. No template gets built first.
2It identifies the customer and the job or delivery address against your BisTrack records.
3It matches lines against your item file and prices them at that contractor's negotiated pricing, not list.
4It flags any line it can't match confidently, including the special-order and non-stock lines a template system would leave blank.
5It stages a draft order in BisTrack through the API or import paths.
6A rep opens the draft, resolves the flags, and posts it. The rep still reviews every order; nobody retypes them.

Off-the-shelf vs custom for a BisTrack shop

The off-the-shelf landscape is narrower than for other ERPs, and that's worth knowing before you shop. Epicor's July 2026 order-automation partnership with Conexiom covers Prophet 21 and Eclipse, not BisTrack. Endeavor has an LBM case study (a building materials supplier going from 30 minutes to under 5 per order, by its own numbers) but publishes no BisTrack integration, and none of the other order-automation SaaS vendors we checked publishes one either. Today your realistic choices are Epicor's template OCR add-on or a custom build.

A custom system built by Airdev costs more up front, and then it's yours: template-free reading, matching tuned to your item file and contractor pricing, your review workflow, wired to BisTrack through its API or import paths, with no per-document fees. For BisTrack shops the real comparison is with Epicor's add-on: templates that cover a stable customer base against AI that covers the whole inbox, and an add-on priced by your rep against a system you own.

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