Trade orders by phone and Viber: when your customers are other businesses

It is 8:15 in the morning. A distributor's phone has three missed calls, and the messaging app has eleven new messages. One is a photo of a handwritten list from a taverna: "2 κιβ. τα ίδια με την άλλη φορά, + λάδι". One is a voice note from a salon. One is a shop owner asking whether yesterday's price still stands.

If you sell to other businesses in Greece — food and drink, cleaning supplies, building materials, cosmetics, spare parts — you know this morning. Your customers are busy people who order the way that is fastest for them. The work of turning that into a correct order, a delivery and an invoice lands on you.

What it costs

The cost is not the phone calls. It is what happens between the call and the invoice:

• Orders are interpreted, not received. "The same as last time" means someone has to find last time. A misread photo becomes a wrong delivery and a return trip.
• Prices depend on the customer. Each trade customer has their own terms, and whoever takes the order has to remember them — or look them up while the customer waits.
• Stock is checked after the order is accepted. So the customer finds out something is missing when the van arrives.
• The same order is typed several times. Into a notebook, into the stock system, into the invoicing software.

Why 1 October makes it more visible

From 1 October 2026, according to AADE, every Greek business not already covered must issue invoices to other businesses electronically, through a certified provider or AADE's own free applications. Accounting software on its own does not count.

That does not change how orders arrive. But it adds a fixed step at the end of every order, and it makes the retyping impossible to ignore: an order read from a photo, typed into stock, and then typed again into an e-invoicing system is three chances to make the same mistake. Ask your accountant how the rules apply to you; the operational question is how many times your team types each order.

What an order portal changes

A simple trade ordering site does not replace the relationship. Your customers can still call. What it offers is a faster option for the ones who want it:

1. Their own price list, shown when they log in. No "does yesterday's price stand?"
2. Reorder in one tap. "The same as last time" becomes a button.
3. Stock shown before ordering, so substitutions are agreed up front.
4. A cut-off time, so everyone knows what arrives tomorrow.
5. One order record that stock, delivery and invoicing all read from, instead of three retypings.

Not every customer will use it. The ones who order most often usually do, because it is faster for them too — which frees your phone for the customers who genuinely need to talk.

Messy data is the real first step

The hard part of these projects is rarely the ordering screen. It is the product and customer data behind it: price lists in several spreadsheets, product names written three different ways, dates typed however someone felt like typing them.

We met exactly this with the ASETH league's registration system: every team sent its roster as a spreadsheet, and no two agreed on how to write a date. The importer we built reads Greek text and both kinds of Excel date, so the data could come in as it was. A supplier's price lists are the same problem with different columns.

ASETHRegistration cards for a whole league, printed in one go

The honest version

If you have twenty trade customers and they order once a week, the phone is fine, and personal service is part of what they pay for. If you have hundreds, ordering daily, and someone in your office spends the morning transcribing photos, let's talk about it. Bring a week of messages. They are the best specification you have.