If your team types every B2B order into the Linnworks “Create Order” screen by hand, you’re burning more money than you realise. Let’s do the maths.
The honest time estimate
A trained operator can create a Linnworks order from a customer phone call in around 4–6 minutes. That’s search for the customer, type in the items, set quantities, set prices, set channel, add notes, click confirm.
If you take 15 phone or counter orders a day, that’s 60–90 minutes — over an hour of trained-operator time gone, every day.
The maths at a typical merchant
Assume: £30k pa per ops person (employer cost ~£35k), 1900 working hours per year.
- 1 hour/day on manual order entry × 250 days = 250 hours/year.
- At £18/hour effective cost = £4,500 per year per operator.
- 3 operators? £13,500 per year just on re-keying.
That’s before you count the cost of mistakes — wrong addresses, wrong quantities, wrong prices that have to be refunded later.
What a faster POS looks like
The same order, with the right tool, takes 30–60 seconds:
- Scan or search the SKU — product is in the cart with a stock check.
- Start typing the customer name — last 3 years of customers autocomplete, full address pre-fills.
- Click Submit — order is in Linnworks.
That’s 80–90% off the operator time. At our example merchant: £11,000–£12,000 a year saved.
The hidden second cost: queue length
This is the bit most people forget. When ordering is slow, customers walk away. A trade counter where the queue is two deep costs you the third customer who didn’t bother. We’ve had merchants tell us their average ticket per walk-up went up after speeding up POS — because the same customer adds an extra line item while the previous one is being scanned.
How to fix it
We built Trade Order POS specifically for this. Live Linnworks inventory search, barcode scanning, customer database from your processed-order history, custom pricing per line, VAT modes, internal references, and the order lands in your Linnworks Open Orders the moment you click Submit.
It runs in the browser. There’s nothing to install on your counter PC or tablet.