You Landed a Major Retailer. Now Someone Has to Process Their Faxed Sales Reports.
Scaling from DTC to wholesale means dealing with every retail partner's terrible data formats - faxes, PDFs, Excel chaos. Learn why manual processing doesn't scale and how automation eliminates the bottleneck.
Happened to an apparel brand we work with: They spent 18 months negotiating. Finally got the deal. Huge win for the company. Day one, they get their first sales report.
It's a fax.
Wait, what?
Welcome to Retail Partner Data Hell
Here's what nobody tells you about scaling from DTC to wholesale: every retail partner has their own special way of sending you data, and all of those ways are terrible.
Big Chain A? Faxed PDFs with barely readable numbers.
Big Chain B? Excel files where the format changes based on which regional warehouse sent it.
That premium boutique chain? They email you a table that's just... text. Like, someone literally typed it out in an email using spaces to align the columns.
And all of this data needs to get into NetSuite (or whatever ERP you're using) so you can actually see what's selling, reconcile inventory, and run your business.
Cool cool cool. So your reward for growth is... more manual work?
Why This Problem Exists
The honest answer: retail partners have zero incentive to make this easy for you.
They've been using the same systems for 20 years. Those systems work for them. They have 10,000 suppliers, and you're one of them. They're not customizing their reporting format for your convenience.
The bigger and more successful the partner, the less they care about your workflow. You wanted a Costco deal? Great! You're playing by Costco rules now. And those rules include faxed sales reports that look like they were printed in 1997.
You can't change this. Seriously, try asking Costco to send you a CSV instead of a fax. Let us know how that goes.
The Old Playbook (That Doesn't Scale)
Most brands handle this one of three ways:
Option 1: Hire someone whose job is just data entry
Cost: $40K-$60K per year for someone to copy numbers from PDFs into spreadsheets. Plus, this person will hate their job and quit every 8-12 months, so you're constantly training replacements.
Option 2: Make it your ops manager's problem
They'll spend 10-15 hours per week doing this instead of, you know, actually managing operations. Watch them slowly die inside every time a new partner gets added.
Option 3: Beg your dev team to build custom integrations
LOL. Your devs are busy building features that actually generate revenue. They don't want to maintain 15 different partner data integrations that break every time a partner changes their format (which is constantly).
None of these options work once you hit 20+ retail partners. The manual work compounds. The errors multiply. And your team is spending valuable time copying data instead of analyzing it.
What Actually Matters (And It's Not the Data Entry)
The real cost isn't even the labor hours.
It's the delay.
When you're manually processing partner data, you're always looking at week-old information. You can't see what's actually moving at retail in real-time. You can't react to trends. You can't reorder fast-moving SKUs before they go out of stock.
Your wholesale operation is basically flying blind while you wait for someone to finish copying numbers from PDFs.
Meanwhile, your competitors who figured out automation? They're seeing daily sales data, adjusting inventory in real-time, and making decisions based on what's actually happening at retail right now.
The Format Problem Is Genuinely Chaotic
Let us paint you a picture of what one apparel brand was dealing with:
Partner A (Major Retailer)
Faxed PDFs with size runs shown horizontally across the page. Negative returns are indicated by numbers on the right side. No clear column headers. Coffee stains optional but frequent.
Partner B (Premium Chain)
Excel file with 6 different tabs. Sales data is on tab 3. Size info is on tab 5. You have to manually cross-reference them. Format changes monthly.
Partner C (Regional Stores)
Sends a weekly email where someone literally types out the data in the email body. Uses dashes and spaces to make columns. Breaks completely if you try to copy-paste into Excel.
Partner D (Online Marketplace)
JSON export (finally, something modern!) but it's nested 4 levels deep and includes a bunch of metadata you don't need. Your ops team has no idea what to do with JSON.
This isn't hypothetical. This is what scaling wholesale actually looks like.
How One Brand Fixed This
True story: talked to an apparel brand that was selling through a major global retailer (think Costco-tier).
The setup
Daily sales reports via fax. Complex format with size runs, multiple styles per page, returns shown differently than sales. Their ops team was spending 2-3 hours every single day manually entering this data into NetSuite.
What they tried first
Hiring another ops coordinator. Worked until they added two more retail partners and the manual work doubled.
What actually worked
Template-free AI that could read the faxed PDFs (yes, we're processing faxes in 2025), understand the size runs, validate the math, and prepare NetSuite-ready data automatically.
Results:
2.5 hours per day saved
Eliminated nearly all manual data entry
Real-time visibility
Instead of week-old data, see performance immediately
Easy partner onboarding
Went from "oh god more manual work" to "cool, forward us the first report"
Errors dropped to basically zero
The AI catches math mistakes, missing SKUs, etc.
Why "Operations-First" Actually Matters
Most automation tools are built for engineers. APIs, webhooks, technical docs that require developer time to implement.
But here's the thing: your dev team doesn't want to own your retail partner data pipeline. They're building product features. They're fixing bugs. They're hiring and scaling the team.
They definitely don't want to maintain integrations for 30 different retail partner formats that change randomly.
What you actually need is automation that your operations team can own:
- • No coding required
- • No IT tickets for adding new partners
- • Validation rules in plain English ("flag any sales reports where returns exceed 20%")
- • Clear visibility into what's working and what needs review
Basically, ops problems should have ops solutions, not engineering solutions.
The Real ROI
Let's do the actual math on what this costs:
Current state (manual processing)
- • 15 hours/week in manual data entry
- • 1-2 weeks delay in seeing retail performance
- • 2-3% error rate causing inventory/reconciliation issues
- • Can't scale beyond 20-30 partners without hiring more people
Automated state
- • 5 minutes to onboard a new partner (forward sample report, done)
- • Real-time data as soon as partners send reports
- • Built-in validation catches errors automatically
- • Scale to 100+ partners with zero additional labor
The ROI isn't just the labor cost savings (though that's $40K-$60K/year). It's the speed and scale.
You can expand wholesale faster. You can see what's working in real-time. Your ops team can focus on analysis and strategy instead of data entry.
What Makes Wholesale Data Complex
It's not just about reading a PDF. It's about handling:
Format chaos:
- • Costco faxes with complex size run layouts
- • Target Excel files with 6 tabs you need to cross-reference
- • Regional chains that email text tables
- • Marketplaces with nested JSON exports
Business logic requirements:
- • Size runs need to become separate line items
- • Returns shown differently than sales
- • SKU naming varies by partner
- • Summary rows that aren't actual line items
Validation needs:
- • Catch math errors before they hit your ERP
- • Flag unusual return rates
- • Verify you're not missing SKUs
- • Compare against expected inventory levels
Partner-specific rules:
- • Partner A includes shipping, Partner B doesn't
- • Partner C reports by style, Partner D by SKU
- • Partner E sends full inventory, Partner F only sends changes
You can't handle this level of complexity with a DIY tool. You need someone who understands retail operations to build it for you.
Why "Done-For-You" Changes Everything
Here's the disconnect:
Most automation tools assume you want to build and configure things yourself. They give you a platform, documentation, and say "go build your solution."
But retail operations teams don't want to become automation engineers. And your dev team has better things to do than maintain 30 retail partner integrations.
What brands actually need: Someone who understands retail operations to build the automation for them.
This means:
- • You send sample files
- • They build templates with your specific business logic
- • They handle format changes and edge cases
- • They connect to your systems
- • You get working automation without lifting a finger
Think less "software tool" and more "specialized operations automation team you hire."
What to Look For
If you're at the point where manual partner data entry is killing you, here's what actually matters:
Format flexibility
If the solution only handles PDFs, it won't work. You need Excel, images, faxes (sigh), emails - all of it.
Template-free
If someone says "just give us samples and we'll configure it," that means manual maintenance forever. You need AI that adapts automatically.
Built for ops teams
If the demo feels technical or requires developer involvement, it's not for you. Your ops manager should be able to use this day one.
Fast deployment
If implementation is quoted in months, run. This should be up and running in days.
Validation included
Extracting data is half the problem. You need the system to validate totals, flag anomalies, and catch errors before anything hits your ERP.
The technology to automate this completely exists right now. The only question is whether you want to keep paying someone to copy-paste data, or whether you're ready to operate like it's 2025.
Want to see how your messiest retail partner report would actually work?
Key Takeaways
- • Every 10 retail partners adds 5-10 hours of manual data entry per week ($40K-$60K annually)
- • The real cost is delay - manual processing means week-old data while competitors see real-time performance
- • Retail partners won't change their formats for you - you need to adapt to their chaos (faxes, Excel, emails, JSON)
- • Template-free AI can process any format, understand business logic, and validate data automatically
- • Done-for-you automation means sending sample files and getting working solutions in days, not months
- • ROI comes from time savings, error reduction, real-time visibility, and ability to scale without adding headcount
In Summary: Scaling from DTC to wholesale means dealing with every retail partner's terrible data formats - faxes, PDFs, Excel chaos. Manual processing creates 5-10 hours of work per week for every 10 partners, causes week-long delays in seeing performance data, and doesn't scale. Template-free AI automation eliminates the bottleneck by handling any format, validating data automatically, and providing real-time visibility - typically saving $40K-$60K annually while enabling brands to scale to 100+ partners without adding headcount.
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About Mitch Patin
CEO & Co-Founder at TableFlow. Expert in operations automation, AI-powered document processing, and building scalable B2B software.
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