Reordering stock at a wood-products distributor: the sales manager's side job for years, now a $70,000-a-year hire

For the executive who decides

• The customer acts
• The machine acts
• A person decides
• Nothing runs

An illustration built from the posting and public prices: the times, the item and the order size are examples, and the money is an estimate.

1The job

Keeping stock levels and placing purchase orders: setting a reorder point and a maximum on every stocked item, noticing when one runs low, ordering it, and chasing the supplier until it arrives. At a regional, family-owned distributor of specialty wood products that sells to manufacturers, about 20 to 200 people (data providers disagree). It is moving from its old accounting software to a new ERP. The posting gives no count of items, suppliers or orders.

2The number today

Purchasing has sat with our Sales Manager for years, on top of running a sales team. That worked while prices were steady. They aren't anymore. The duties that are this job, in the posting's words: "set and maintain min/max on every stocked item" and "place and manage all open POs, and own follow-up and shipment tracking."

The business will now pay $70,000 to $85,000 a year, plus up to 10%, for one full-time person to take purchasing over. That buys all nine duties in the posting, not only this one. Until then the work is done at a sales manager's pay: $71.28 an hour at the US median, against $37.36 for a buyer. This job takes about 9 hours of the sales manager's week: about $33,000 a year of a sales manager's time, or about $79 a purchase order.

The money at risk is the stock itself. A business this size holds about $700,000 of it, which costs about $70,000 a year to hold. A stockout on one 30-sheet order loses about $310 of gross profit, and possibly the customer.

Estimate. The 9 hours are two of the nine listed duties' share of a working year (462 hours). The $79 assumes about 35 orders a month, from the low end of a data provider's revenue range ($5 million) and a $10,000 average order. The $700,000 applies the lumber wholesalers' August 2026 stock-to-sales ratio (1.69 months) to that revenue; the $70,000 uses a 10% holding cost, the low benchmark. The sales manager's timed week and the business's own books replace all of them.

3The verdict

Hand over the counting and the chasing. Keep the buy.

• Hand to the machine: checking every stocked item each morning against its reorder point, with open orders counted; drafting each order up to the maximum, in the supplier's full packs, with the last three prices paid; sending approved orders; chasing suppliers for a confirmed date and flagging any slip that will leave a shelf empty; proposing reorder points from sales history once a month.
• Keep with a person: approving every order; prices, terms and rebates; buying early or holding off when prices or tariffs move; imports and containers; new suppliers; which items to stock at all.
• Not yet: sending any order without approval, even a small routine one; changing a reorder point or maximum on its own; any of it before purchasing runs in the new ERP with every item's reorder point, maximum and pack size filled in.

What the buyer is for now: reading the market and the suppliers. The machine counts, drafts and chases. The buyer decides what to buy, when, and at what price.

4The bill

About $100 a month. The reorder planning comes with the ERP the business is already moving to, so the cost is the buyer's seat: $80 a month (Business Central Essentials, billed yearly). The supplier reminders run on a workflow runner (20 euros a month) and an AI model (about $2 a month).

Other routes: a standalone planning tool starts at $900 a month (Netstock, annual); a purchasing assistant service costs $10 to $15 an hour, about $390 to $585 a month for 9 hours a week; the hire costs about $5,800 to $7,100 a month before bonus, for all nine duties. Two other planning tools publish no prices.

Checking: for the first two weeks, the buyer reads every drafted line before approving it, and the sales manager reviews any stockout and the week's slow stock each Friday. The checking time is not known until it is counted.

Estimate. The model cost and the per-order figures assume about 35 purchase orders a month.

5Owner and off switch

The purchasing lead owns it once hired; until then, the sales manager. The buyer answers for every order, and the sales manager for the cash tied up in stock. The off switch: in the ERP's list of scheduled jobs, set the morning reorder check to "on hold", and pause the supplier reminders. Nothing is drafted or sent, and orders are raised by hand as today. It takes under a minute. Try it once in week one.

6The brief to hand your builder

The job: each working morning, list every stocked item that will drop below its reorder point within its supplier's lead time, draft the orders for the buyer to approve, send the approved ones, and chase each supplier for a confirmed date.

Today: purchasing has sat with the sales manager for years, on top of running a sales team. Reorder points are not set on every item, and follow-up is done by hand when there is time.

Done when: for two weeks after purchasing goes live in the new ERP, every stocked item has a reorder point, a maximum and the supplier's pack size; the buyer has the list by 7:00 each working day; no order reaches a supplier without the buyer's approval; every open order has a confirmed date within two working days or is flagged; no item with a reorder point runs out without being flagged first; and by week two the buyer changes fewer than 1 in 10 of the drafted lines.

It may never, on its own: send an order; change a reorder point or a maximum; order from a new supplier; order import or container items; or place an order above the limit we set.

You get from us: the item list with each supplier, lead time and pack size; 12 months of sales and purchase history; every open order; who approves what, and up to what amount; admin access to the ERP.

We own: the ERP, the supplier relationships, the workflow account and the billing.

We get back: each morning, the list of drafted lines with on hand, on order and the last prices paid; each Friday, the stockouts, the slow stock, and every line the buyer changed.

Ask whoever sets it up	A good answer	A bad answer
What stops the same order going to a supplier twice?	Every draft counts what is already on order, and an order goes out only once, after approval, under one numbering	"The system handles that"
How does it round to the supplier's case or unit?	Each item carries its pack size; we test 10 items against real orders before go-live	"It orders exactly what you need"
What does it do when a supplier's price jumps, or a tariff changes?	It shows the last three prices, and any line with a price change over a limit you set waits for the buyer	"It always gets the best price"

For the operator who builds and runs it Paid layer

7The working set

• Trigger: a scheduled job at 6:00 each working day runs the reorder calculation on the requisition worksheet for every item with replenishment by purchase. A second trigger: an open purchase order with no supplier confirmation after two working days, or a promised date that moves.
• Steps: calculate the plan (reorder point, maximum, open orders and lead time counted); round each line to the item's order multiple (the supplier's pack); add the last three purchase prices, months of cover, and the open sales demand; mark lines that break a bound (a new supplier, a price change over the limit, a quantity over twice the usual, an import item, an item with no sales in 12 months) so they are not accepted by default; send the worksheet batch for the buyer's approval; on approval, carry out the action messages to create purchase orders and email each supplier; each morning, read open orders through the API, draft a reminder for any unconfirmed order, and log the reply and promised date; once a month, propose reorder points and maximums from the sales forecast for the buyer to approve.
• Data: one record per drafted line: item, supplier, on hand, on order, reorder point, maximum, pack size, suggested quantity, approved quantity, buyer action (approved, changed, held, rejected) and reason, last three prices, purchase order number, date sent, date confirmed, promised date, date received, and a stockout flag if open sales went short before it arrived.
• Review step: the buyer clears the morning batch by 9:00. The sales manager reviews stockouts and slow stock each Friday.
• Alerts: an item at zero with open sales demand; an order unconfirmed after two working days; a promised date that falls after the item runs out; a line over twice the usual quantity; a stocked item with no reorder policy; the morning job in error; and the wrong-but-green count, lines approved unchanged that later ran out or pushed stock above the maximum.
• If it breaks: what you see: no morning list, a list of every item, or due dates years in the past. Check first: the job's status in the job queue; old sales lines with past shipment dates feeding the plan; each item's reorder policy and order multiple. Safe fix: set the job on hold; the buyer runs the calculation by hand and raises orders as today.
• Cost per purchase order: about $2.29 for the buyer's ERP seat ($80 / 35 orders), plus 0.57 euros of workflow runner (20 euros / 35), plus about $0.06 of model use.
• Baseline, before switch-on: one week of: the sales manager's hours on reorders and orders (time it, do not ask), purchase orders placed, stocked items with no reorder point, sales lines short for lack of stock, the value of items with no sale in six months, and days from order to supplier confirmation.

Estimate. The cost per order assumes about 35 orders a month, from $5 million of revenue, a 16.3% margin and a $10,000 average order. The baseline week replaces it.

Tools by name: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials ($80 a user a month, yearly; reorder policies Fixed Reorder Qty. and Maximum Qty., requisition worksheet, Carry Out Action Message, worksheet batch approvals, job queue, Sales and Inventory Forecast extension, purchaseOrders API); n8n Starter (20 euros a month annual, 2,500 executions); Claude Sonnet 5.5 ($2 in, $10 out per million tokens); alternatives: Netstock (from $900 a month, certified Business Central connector), Stealth Agents (from $10 an hour).