Order Ops Breakdown: Which Order Processes to Automate First

If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of a shipping “crisis”—orders piling up, paper pick lists flying everywhere, and customer emails asking, “Where’s my package?”—you’re not alone. I’ve lived through that chaos more times than I care to admit. When your business is growing faster than your fulfillment can keep up, the pressure only mounts. Manual order processing that worked when you had a handful of daily sales turns into an operational nightmare with scale. The mistakes, the wasted time, and the endless, mind-numbing double-checking... at some point, something has to give.

Why Manual Order Processing Breaks Down Fast

I learned the hard way that what seems “good enough” when you’re small almost always becomes the bottleneck once orders pick up. In those early days, I was handwriting packing slips, retyping addresses into shipping software, and color-coding sticky notes for follow-ups. It felt “hands-on” and personal, but it was also completely unsustainable and, frankly, expensive in lost time and errors.

What to Automate First in Order Operations

Let’s get tactical. After building and breaking dozens of fulfillment processes, I always come back to a core principle: automate the processes that (a) happen every day, (b) create the most errors, or (c) trigger the most customer complaints. These are the true leverage points. Don’t worry about “optimizing” the exotic edge cases—get the basics off your plate first.

High-Impact Order Automations to Deploy First

Here are the first automations I’d put in place—these deliver a clear, immediate return if you’re fulfilling orders at scale:

Let me break down a few real examples from my own experience. We set up our unshipped order tracking to pull all “awaiting shipment” orders from ShipStation every afternoon and log the count in a Google Sheet. This gave us a daily heartbeat for fulfillment—no more guessing how many orders were stuck or missed by mistake. For backorder follow-up, we built a flow that automatically emails customers if their order has been on hold for more than 30 days, merging in the specific items and status for each order. No more manual “Sorry, it’s late!” messages slipping through the cracks .

How to Decide Which Order Automations to Prioritize

So, how do you know which order process to automate first? After plenty of trial and error, my advice is this: start where the pain is sharpest and the payoff is highest. Look at:

• Which tasks consume the most staff time every single day?
• Where do errors or drops most often lead to customer complaints?
• Which steps make you hold your breath, hoping nothing was missed?

For most small ecommerce teams, this means starting with tracking of unshipped orders, then moving to customer notifications, pick-list generation, and order entry/updates.

Common Pitfalls (And How to Dodge Them)

I’ll be honest: I’ve made every mistake in the book. Trying to automate everything at once is overwhelming—not to mention it usually breaks something you didn’t expect. Tools need to fit your actual process, not the other way around. And never automate a broken process. Fix your workflow first, then layer in automation.

"After building dozens of order automations, I’ve learned that less is more. Nail the core processes first, get your team on board, then expand from a solid foundation."

Calculating the Real ROI of Order Automation

Automation is an investment, not a magic wand. The time you save, the errors you avoid, and the headaches you eliminate—they all translate into real dollars. But you have to track it. For us, moving from manual order entry and tracking to automated flows meant reclaiming several hours per day and slashing our error rate. That’s time and money straight back to the business.

Action Steps: Getting Started with Order Workflow Automation

Ready to move your order ops out of the chaos phase? Start by documenting your current process (no shortcuts). Identify the daily, repetitive tasks that drain the most resources. Fix any broken workflows. Then—one step at a time—deploy automation for your biggest pain points. It isn’t about automating everything at once. It’s about building a business that can scale, without you losing your weekends to packing slips and “urgent” emails.