The short answer
There are three ways to stop keying emailed orders into Business Central. Turn on the Sales Order Agent that Microsoft ships inside the product, buy an order automation tool that connects to it, or build a pipeline around your own catalogue and rules that writes orders through the standard API. Which one fits depends less on the software than on how closely your customers' wording matches your item list.
Reading the order is the easy part in 2026. The work is turning a customer's description or part number into your item, unit and price, and knowing when not to guess. Every option below is judged on that.
I build and run this kind of system for distributors, so I have a bias, and I will say where the built-in agent is the better choice. Facts about Business Central come from Microsoft's own documentation, checked on 12 October 2026.
1. Microsoft's Sales Order Agent
The agent is built into Business Central and is generally available. You point it at a Microsoft 365 mailbox, and it reads each incoming email, finds the customer, finds the items, checks availability and prepares a sales quote. Depending on your settings it sends the quote to the customer for confirmation or turns it straight into an order.
It always creates a quote first, even when the customer asked for an order, because a quote does not touch planning, reservations or cash flow. It finds items in layers, first by exact identifiers such as item number, vendor item number, GTIN and item references, then by attributes such as colour or size, then by a wider fuzzy search.
Four limits matter in practice. It reads attachments only as PDF, PNG or JPG, with PDFs up to 50 pages, so an order sent as a spreadsheet is skipped. It identifies the customer only by matching the sender's email address to a contact card, so a forwarded order or a new address needs a person to link it. Designated users approve outgoing messages. And it is billed in Copilot Credits, so when the credits run out it stops picking up new emails until more are available.
2. An order automation tool that connects to Business Central
Specialist tools read the order, match it against a copy of your catalogue and customer history, and post it to the ERP. They suit a business with high order volume from repeat customers, where the tool can learn each customer's part numbers. I compare the main ones, with prices where vendors publish them, in my guide to sales order automation software.
The trade is that your matching rules live in someone else's product. That is fine while the rules are simple and becomes a constraint when pricing, pack sizes or substitutions follow logic that only your team knows.
3. A pipeline built around your catalogue and rules
The third route is a system built for your process. An agent reads each order in whatever form it arrives, spreadsheets included. Each line is matched to an item using the customer's own history and cross-references. Checks confirm the customer, units, pack sizes and prices. Lines the checks cannot confirm go to a person with the reason attached, and only confirmed orders are written.
Business Central makes the last step straightforward. Its standard API exposes sales orders and sales order lines, so the pipeline creates the order through a supported interface, not by imitating a user on screen.
This costs more to start than switching on a feature. It is worth it when order entry is a large, daily job and the matching rules are the hard part, which is the case for most distributors with long catalogues.
What to fix before you automate anything
All three routes depend on the same data. Microsoft says plainly that the quality of product information in Business Central affects how well its agent finds items, and the same is true of any tool. Fill in item references for the part numbers your customers use, keep descriptions and attributes consistent, and make sure every contact who orders has the right email address on their card.
Then write down the rules a good order clerk applies without thinking. Which unit a customer means when they write a box. What to do when the price on the order differs from the price list. Which customers may not order which items. An agent can only apply a rule that someone has stated.
Finally, collect a month of real orders with what was actually keyed for each. That set is how you will measure any option, and it is the only honest way to compare them.
How to measure whether it works
Measure by the line, not the order. An order with twenty lines and one wrong item is a wrong delivery. Count the share of lines entered with no human correction, and separately the share of wrong lines that got through unnoticed. The second number is the one that costs money.
Run the new process beside the team for a few weeks before it writes anything. Compare what it would have entered with what the team entered, line by line, and look hardest at the cases where they differ. Microsoft's agent has a try it out mode that creates a test task without sending an email, which is a good way to start.
For the built-in agent, also measure the credits. Microsoft bills it in Copilot Credits according to the complexity of each interaction and does not publish a figure per order, so a week of real orders is the only way to know your cost. Its daily email limit, 100 by default, keeps a busy mailbox from using the whole allowance at once.
The three routes compared
| Route | Best when | What you pay for | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Order Agent in Business Central | Orders arrive by email as text or PDF from known contacts, and item data is clean | Copilot Credits by usage | Spreadsheet orders, unknown senders, rules beyond item matching |
| Order automation tool | High volume from repeat customers | A subscription, usually by volume | Matching rules that are specific to your business |
| Pipeline built on your rules | Order entry is a large daily job and matching is the hard part | A build and a running cost | Needs your rules written down and past orders to test against |
How to pick
Try the Sales Order Agent first if your customers order by email from addresses you hold, send text or PDFs, and your catalogue is well described. It is already in the product, and a few weeks of real orders will tell you how far it gets.
Look at a specialist tool if volume is high and most orders come from a stable set of customers whose part numbers can be learned.
Build when the built-in agent stalls on your matching rules, when customers send spreadsheets, or when orders need checks it does not make, such as customer-specific pricing agreements or pack size conversions. Microsoft itself suggests stopping its agent at the quote when pricing or discount logic needs manual steps. That is the situation in the client result below.