Together Business Is Made Easier 
Documented ROI study, scenario 2 of 5
Regional SMB distributor: $94,429 a year back
The ROI for a regional distributor running 1,190 orders a month is $94,429 net a year, a 195% return, with payback at 6.2 months. Those figures come from a documented study that measured 5,043 hours of manual order-to-cash work task by task across a full year, not from a projection.
The operation we measured
Every figure on this page belongs to one real operating profile. Change the profile and the numbers change with it, which is why there are five scenarios rather than one headline.
- Activity
- Dairy distribution with direct store delivery
- B2B orders
- 1,190 per month
- Estimated revenue
- $10,710,000
- Accounting or ERP
- QuickBooks Online
- Delivery drivers
- 6
- Order capture converted
- 100%
Where do 5,043 hours a year actually go?
Customers order by phone and by email. Someone keys every order into QuickBooks Online by hand, drivers total deliveries and returns on paper, and invoices get rebuilt from those notes once the truck is back.
| Stage | Before | After | Released |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer orders | 1,904 h | 380.8 h | 1,523.2 h |
| Consolidated supplier orders | 45 h | 9 h | 36 h |
| Delivery adjustments | 714 h | 142.8 h | 571.2 h |
| Invoicing | 714 h | 142.8 h | 571.2 h |
| Payments | 714 h | 107.1 h | 606.9 h |
| Accounts receivable | 952 h | 190.4 h | 761.6 h |
| Total | 5,043 h | 972.9 h | 4,070.1 h |
That is 3.0 full-time positions absorbed by work that produces no margin. Automating order capture releases 2.42 of them.
What changes
The spine is that the buyer places the order. Not a rep, not a customer service agent re-keying it afterwards.
Buyers order themselves
Customers order on a platform carrying your own brand, with their own pricing and their own delivery calendar. That is what removes the 1,904 hours spent keying customer orders.
The ERP stops being typed into twice
Real-time ERP sync pushes each order into QuickBooks Online as it lands, so there is no second entry and no transcription error to chase.
Delivery and payment close themselves
WEGODeliver captures returns and adjustments at the door and produces the final invoice there. WEGOPay applies payments to invoices automatically, at a flat fee per transaction rather than a percentage of the sale.
How long before it pays for itself
6.2 months for this operation. Across all five documented scenarios, spanning $3.9M to $192.6M in revenue, payback runs from 4 to 8 months and the five-scenario average saving is $354,359 a year.
How the numbers were built
Each stage was timed per order, multiplied by 1,190 orders a month, and costed at the reference hourly rate. Nothing is annualised from a sample week and nothing is rounded up. The after column assumes 100% of order capture moves to the buyer, which is the adoption these operations actually reach.
The full method, the task-level table and the before-and-after for every stage are in the study itself. There is also a 2026 ROI playbook covering the method across all five scenarios.
Timed per order
- Order creation
- 8 min
- Delivery adjustments
- 3 min
- Invoice creation
- 3 min
- Payment processing
- 3 min
- Accounts receivable
- 4 min
Total21 min
21 minutes per order across 1,190 orders a month is 4,998 hours a year. Add 45 hours for consolidated supplier orders, and the measured baseline is 5,043 hours.
Questions
How many hours does a regional SMB distributor lose to manual order processing?
5,043 hours a year at 1,190 orders a month, which is 3.0 full-time equivalents, costing $177,105.
What is the return on investment?
$94,429 net a year and a 195% return, with payback at 6.2 months.
Does this require replacing QuickBooks Online?
No. The platform sits on top of QuickBooks Online and syncs both ways. There is no ERP migration in this scenario.
Where does the hourly rate come from?
A $59,000 fully loaded salary over 1,680 working hours, which is $35.12 an hour. The same rate is used in all five scenarios.
Run these numbers on your operation
Your order volume, your delivery model and your ERP decide the answer. We will build the same study on your own figures, or you can see how pricing works first.
The other four scenarios: small independent distributor, mid-size distributor, large account, no direct store delivery, large food processor. Field teams selling in person are covered by WEGOSell.