AI Smart Purchase Order to Order Capture
Turn supplier data chaos into catalog-ready structure.
Automate quote and order creation with AI-powered document processing.
Ingest, extract, and normalize product data from any supplier source—PDFs, spreadsheets, data feeds, or web content—with AI that maps fields, resolves inconsistencies, and queues exceptions for human review.
Every supplier delivers data differently. Manual normalization doesn't scale. Virto's AI Capture operates as a data ingestion pipeline—not a feature—transforming inconsistent supplier inputs into structured, catalog-ready data without custom development work per source.
Extract and organize data from documents—including handwritten notes—automatically and understand the context and the meaning behind the data with the help of AI and machine learning (ML). Upload files—purchase orders or any order-like documents—to the system and have them processed and aligned with relevant catalog items and quantities in a matter of seconds.
AI Capture integrates into supplier onboarding and catalog ingestion workflows. Built on Virto's API-first, model-agnostic architecture, its extraction engine connects to domain-specific or proprietary AI models—perfect for industries where standard logic falls short on complex product data.
The Problem with Manual PO Processing
B2B buyers still rely heavily on traditional and offline methods to place orders—sending purchase orders via email attachments, fax, screenshots, or photos of handwritten notes. Processing these manually is slow, error-prone, and expensive.
Sales and operations teams spend hours re-keying product codes and quantities. Transcription mistakes lead to wrong SKUs, incorrect quantities, and mismatched pricing—resulting in costly returns, delays, and customer frustration. When buyers request quotes through informal channels, slow response times risk lost deals.
Virto's Smart PO to Order Capture is an AI-powered document intelligence feature—part of Virto's AI ecommerce platform for B2B—that automatically extracts product information, line items, and quantities from any visual or document input—and instantly transforms them into a structured shopping cart or quote request.
What the Smart PO and Order Capture Feature Delivers for Your Business
- Intelligent automation: AI and ML ensure that file processing is fast, precise, and accurate, effectively automating and streamlining the workflows for purchasing departments.
-
Improved customer experience: Time savings from automated PO and order capture removes tedious manual tasks from teams’ to-do lists, providing a seamless, positive experience even for very complex, bulk orders, boosting their satisfaction with the shopping experience.
-
Higher conversion rates: Automated and accurate PO to order capture ensures every product on the customer’s list is allocated and added to the cart. The fast process simplifies high-SKU order entry for field sales, reduces cart abandonment, and results in more completed orders, higher conversion rates, and increased revenues.
Key Capabilities of Smart PO and Order Capture
- Multi-format document ingestion: Accepts PDFs, image files, scanned documents, email attachments, and photos. Handles unstructured supplier data including spreadsheets, web content, and EDI feeds—any format a supplier might deliver.
- AI-powered data extraction: Identifies and extracts product lines, quantities, SKUs, and pricing from structured and unstructured inputs. Maps incoming fields to your catalog schema automatically—no manual field mapping per supplier.
- Handwritten document recognition: Processes handwritten POs, inventory sheets, and order notes with the same accuracy as typed documents.
- Corrupted & low-quality document handling: Reliably extracts data even from poor scans, low-resolution images, or partially damaged files.
- Instant cart or quote generation: Extracted line items are immediately mapped to catalog products and pushed into a shopping cart or quote request, ready for review and approval.
- Validation queue: Exceptions, low-confidence extractions, and unmatched fields are surfaced for human review before publishing. No automated publishing without human sign-off—validation is a core workflow requirement, not an optional step.
- External AI connectivity: The extraction engine connects to domain-specific or proprietary AI models via Virto's API-first architecture—for industries where standard extraction models don't cover the required depth.
Watch Our Interactive Demo for More Information
Use Case Examples
Inventory replenishment from field & warehouse
- Who: Warehouse staff and store managers who identify restocking needs on the ground but lack access to digital ordering systems in the moment.
- The problem: Restocking needs are spotted physically but can't be acted on digitally without manual data entry—creating delays, stockouts, and extra steps for workers who shouldn't need to log into a procurement portal just to reorder.
- The outcome: A store manager photographs a handwritten inventory count sheet—the system extracts items and quantities and pushes a restocking cart for approval. No portal login, no manual entry, no delay.
Competitor invoice & quote conversion
- Who: Sales teams building counter-quotes against competitor bids.
- The problem: Re-keying every line item from a competitor's invoice or quote manually is slow and error-prone — delaying response time and putting deals at risk.
- The outcome: A customer uploads or emails a competitor's invoice — the system extracts all product lines, quantities, and pricing instantly, generating a ready-to-send counter-quote. Faster response, less friction, more won deals.
Wholesale distributor supplier onboarding
- Who: A wholesale distributor onboarding 12 new suppliers per quarter, each delivering product data in a different format (PDFs, Excel feeds, EDI).
- The problem: Each new supplier format requires a separate normalization effort. Manual mapping doesn't scale as supplier count grows.
- The outcome: AI Capture ingests all formats, maps fields to the platform's catalog schema, and surfaces a validation queue so the catalog team can review and approve before anything is published. One pipeline, unlimited supplier formats.
Transforming complex, time-intensive purchasing processes into simple, accurate tasks creates a positive experience and helps the business stand out. Visit our user guide to find out more about powerful B2B and B2C capabilities in Virto Commerce.
Your Questions, Answered
Yes. Virto's Smart PO to Order Capture handles any visual or document input: typed POs, scanned attachments, email files, low-resolution images, and handwritten notes.
The AI extracts product lines, quantities, and identifiers regardless of format or document quality, then maps them to your catalog automatically. This is particularly relevant for distribution and manufacturing environments where field teams, warehouse staff, and long-standing buyers still rely on informal ordering methods.
Manual re-keying is the primary source of order errors in B2B—wrong SKUs, incorrect quantities, mismatched pricing.
Virto's document intelligence layer extracts and maps line items directly from the source document to catalog products, bypassing human transcription entirely. For distributors and manufacturers managing thousands of SKUs across multiple buyer accounts, this directly reduces returns, claims, and the operational cost of error correction.
Extraction and cart generation happens in seconds. Once a document is uploaded—whether a PDF, image, or email attachment—the AI processes the content, maps line items to catalog products, and generates a structured cart or quote request ready for review. For sales teams responding to competitive bids or processing high-volume inbound orders, this replaces a process that previously took hours with one that takes seconds.
Yes, and this is one of the highest-value use cases for sales teams. When a prospect shares a competitor's invoice or quote, Virto's system extracts all line items, quantities, and pricing from that document and generates a ready-to-send counter-quote against your own catalog. This removes the manual re-keying step that typically delays quote response by hours or days—a meaningful advantage in competitive deals where speed directly affects win rate.
Yes, and it's mandatory. Exceptions, low-confidence extractions, and unmatched fields are surfaced in a validation queue for human review before anything is published. No automated publishing without sign-off. This is a core workflow requirement for enterprise catalog operations where data accuracy directly affects downstream ordering, pricing, and fulfillment.
Smart PO to Order Capture is a native module within Virto Commerce, not a standalone tool. Extracted orders flow directly into Virto's order management layer, which integrates with ERP systems including SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, and others via API. For enterprise buyers evaluating total cost of ownership, this means no separate vendor, no duplicate data handling, and no additional integration project—the capture capability is part of the same platform managing catalog, pricing, and order fulfillment.
Yes. Virto's API-first, model-agnostic architecture lets the extraction engine integrate with proprietary AI models or industry-specific systems—ideal for cases where standard logic can't handle complex product data or unique supplier formats.
