Customer Order Requests — Self-Serve Order Intake
Let customers send you a fully-specced order — garments, sizes, print locations, and artwork — straight from their portal, and turn it into a job without re-keying a thing.
What an order request is
An order request is a structured order a customer sends you before the job exists in your shop. Instead of a vague email — "need 50 shirts, two colors, by Friday" — you get the real specs: garment type, brand, colorways, a size-by-size breakdown, each print location with its dimensions and ink colors, and the artwork files already attached. When it arrives, it's a new job in Quote status with everything captured, so you're pricing and confirming instead of chasing details.
Two ways a customer can send one
Customers reach the order form through whichever door fits them:
- 1From their portal: a returning customer opens their portal link and chooses to start a new order request. Because the portal already knows who they are, their saved shipping addresses and details can carry over.
- 2From the public order form (/submit): anyone you share the link with can submit an order, even without a portal login. They identify themselves first, then fill out the same order details.
Every customer has a permanent portal link (for example, app.kontraktr.io/portal/your-customer). Share it once and it keeps working — order requests are one of the things they can do from it.
What the customer fills in
The form walks the customer through order details, then print and artwork, then a review. Along the way they provide:
- 1Order basics — a title, decoration method, due date, and a PO number if they have one.
- 2Garments — type, brand, colorways, and a size breakdown with quantities (or a multi-row garment list for orders with several styles or colorways).
- 3Delivery — pickup, local courier, or shipping (with an address).
- 4Print locations — each location (Front, Back, Left Chest, and so on) with print width and height, number of colors, ink colors or Pantone numbers, and per-location notes.
- 5Artwork — files uploaded per location, with high-resolution or vector art preferred.
If the customer has a purchase order document, they can upload it and let KORA pre-fill the form from it — they just review what was read in and correct anything before submitting. It's the fastest path for customers who already have a written PO.
Upload the paperwork — KORA reads all of it
Customers don't have to fill the form out by hand. They can upload what they already have — a PO as a PDF, a spreadsheet of sizes, even a photo of a written order — and KORA reads it and fills in the order for them: garments, size breakdown, print locations, ink and thread colors, dates, and shipping. Different formats, one intake. The customer reviews what was read in and fixes anything before they send.
It flags exactly what's missing
Before a customer can submit, the form checks the order against what a real job needs — print locations, ink or thread colors, a size breakdown, a due date, shipping details — and flags precisely what's incomplete. Incomplete submissions can't slip through: the customer sees the gaps and fills them, so what lands in your shop is a complete order, not a puzzle you have to chase down.
This is the difference between "need some shirts" and a job you can price on sight. The customer does the completeness check for you, up front.
What happens the moment they submit
Submitting does real work on your side immediately. Kontrol creates a new job in Quote status, marked as coming from the customer portal, with the size breakdown, garment details, print locations, and ink colors all attached — and drafts a quote from what the customer specced, so you're reviewing numbers instead of building the job from scratch. Any artwork the customer uploaded is linked to that new job automatically. Your team gets an in-app notification that a new order request came in, and the customer gets a confirmation email so they know it landed.
The draft quote is yours to adjust. Review the pricing, drop in your mockups, and send it back for approval — nothing is committed until you do.
How you review and convert it
Because the request becomes a job in Quote status, there's no separate inbox to learn — it's already in your pipeline:
- 1Open the new job from the notification or find it in your Jobs list at the Quote stage.
- 2Check the specs the customer entered — sizes, print locations, colors — and open the attached artwork from the Files tab.
- 3Adjust or fill in anything you price differently, then build the quote or invoice and send it for approval.
- 4Move the job forward through your normal workflow once the customer approves.
Treat an order request as a starting point, not a finished order. The customer gives you the details; you confirm the garments, pricing, and feasibility before anything is promised. Nothing is committed until you send a quote and they approve it.
Order requests vs. reorders
These are two different doors. An order request is a brand-new order with fresh specs and artwork, and it lands directly as a job in Quote status. A reorder is a customer asking to run a previous job again — those come in through Reorder Requests, where you approve or decline and a new job is created from the original. If you're looking for a repeat of a past run, check Reorder Requests; for net-new work, it's an order request.