An order booking form records what a retailer ordered from a salesman: the products, the quantity, the rate, any scheme and the delivery date. The format below is built for distributors and FMCG teams, where an order taken on a beat today becomes a bill and a delivery tomorrow. If a column is missing, someone in the office ends up phoning the salesman to ask.
The columns an order booking form needs
Each column below answers a question that billing or dispatch would otherwise have to ask. A salesman in a shop has about two minutes with the retailer, so keep to what is actually needed.
| Column | Why it matters | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Order date | Sets the clock for delivery and shows how quickly orders are being served. | 30-09-2026 |
| Salesman | Who took the order. Needed for incentives and for questions later. | Suresh Patil |
| Retailer | The shop that ordered. Use one spelling every time. | Ambika General Store |
| SKU | The exact product and pack size, not just "atta" or "oil". | Sunrise Atta 5 kg |
| Quantity and unit | How many, and of what: pieces, cases or cartons. A missing unit is the most common cause of wrong deliveries. | 20 cases |
| Rate | The price per unit that was agreed on the day. | ₹480 |
| Amount | Quantity multiplied by rate. Lets you total the day's booking at a glance. | ₹9,600 |
| Scheme | Any free quantity or discount promised, written in words. | Buy 10 get 1 free |
| Delivery date | When the retailer expects the goods. | 02-10-2026 |
| Payment terms | Cash on delivery, advance or credit. Feeds your collection follow-up. | Credit |
A filled-in example
This is one salesman's orders from a single beat, one row per product.
| Retailer | SKU | Qty | Rate | Amount | Scheme | Delivery |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ambika General Store | Sunrise Atta 5 kg | 20 cases | ₹480 | ₹9,600 | 10+1 free (2 cases) | 02-10-2026 |
| Kaveri Kirana | Tulsi Tea 250 g | 12 cartons | ₹1,150 | ₹13,800 | None | 02-10-2026 |
| Balaji Provision | Golden Oil 1 L | 30 pieces | ₹138 | ₹4,140 | ₹4 off per piece | 03-10-2026 |
Total booked for the day: ₹27,540. Notice how the scheme is handled. Free goods are written in words and the amount is charged only on the paid quantity. Where a scheme cuts the price, the row shows the net rate. Decide one convention and tell everyone, or billing will read the same row two ways.
Six rules that prevent wrong deliveries
- One row per SKU per order. Repeat the retailer and date. It is easy to total for dispatch and easy to filter.
- Always write the unit. "20" could be 20 pieces or 20 cases. It is a classic cause of wrong deliveries.
- Standard product names. Keep a short SKU list and let salesmen pick from it. "Tulsi Tea 250g", "Tulsi tea 250 gm" and "Tulsi 250" are three products to a pivot table.
- Write the scheme where it applies. Do not leave it to memory. A scheme that lives only in the salesman's head becomes a dispute at the retailer's counter.
- Get a delivery date, even a rough one. "Thursday" is enough. Without it the retailer is disappointed and the salesman is blamed.
- Send orders the same day. An order that reaches billing two days later is an order that might be lost to a competitor's salesman.
Turning bookings into a dispatch list
The sheet earns its keep when the office can load the vehicle from it. Filter by delivery date, then total the quantity per SKU and unit, adding scheme goods to the paid quantity. From the example above, the 2 October run needs 22 cases of Sunrise Atta 5 kg (20 paid and 2 free) and 12 cartons of Tulsi Tea 250 g. That total is what the warehouse picks, so free goods must be visible in the sheet and not only in the salesman's head.
Then sort the same rows by retailer to print delivery slips. If the same retailer appears on three rows, they get one delivery, one bill and one collection visit, not three.
Common mistakes
- Booking orders in the salesman's own notebook and re-typing them at night. Typing twice doubles the chance of a wrong number.
- Mixing several products into one cell ("atta 20, tea 12, oil 30"). It cannot be filtered or summed.
- Not recording refusals. A retailer who wanted a product you were out of is useful information; put it in remarks.
- Leaving out payment terms, then discovering the retailer expected credit and the salesman promised cash.
Where paper, WhatsApp and Excel fall short
Paper order books are quick in the shop but slow to total, and the office has to read someone else's handwriting. A WhatsApp group of orders is readable but not searchable, and a line like "Ambika 20 case atta" needs a person to turn it into an order. Excel is the right end-point, but a salesman who has visited 25 shops does not want to type twelve columns into a phone. So the sheet is fine and the entry step is what fails.
Capture orders by voice on WhatsApp
vBol is built for that entry step. Right after the order, the salesman sends a WhatsApp voice note to vBol's number, in his own language:
vBol transcribes it, picks out the fields, and reads the order back on WhatsApp in the same language with buttons to confirm or fix a field. Nothing is written until he confirms. Then the row lands in your Google Sheet, Excel workbook on OneDrive or SharePoint, or Ekatm ERP. The built-in order record holds the customer, product, quantity, unit, delivery date, payment terms and notes, with one product per record. Extra columns such as scheme are set up by Vritti with you.
Every evening at 7 PM owners and managers get one WhatsApp message listing what was filed, by whom, and which salesmen sent nothing. Salesmen install no app and need no login. vBol is free for 30 days (up to 5 confirmed reports per person per day), then ₹199 per user per month for teams of up to 100 users, with a custom plan for bigger teams. See the pricing.
Want to keep it on a spreadsheet for now? Download the free template on this page. It has the columns above, dropdowns for unit and payment terms, and example rows to overwrite. For every visit, not just orders, see the daily sales report format.
Frequently asked questions
What is an order booking form?
An order booking form is the record a salesman fills in when a retailer or dealer places an order: who ordered, which products and how many, at what rate, with which scheme, and when it should be delivered. It is what the warehouse and billing team work from.
What should an order booking format include?
The order date, salesman, retailer, SKU, quantity and unit, rate, amount, any scheme, delivery date and payment terms. Add a remarks column for special instructions such as a delivery time.
How is an order booking sheet different from a daily sales report?
A daily sales report records every visit, including visits that ended without an order. An order booking sheet records only orders, one row per product, and is meant to be acted on by billing and dispatch.
Should each product be a separate row in an order booking format?
Yes. One row per SKU per order makes it easy to total quantities for dispatch and to filter by product, retailer or salesman. Repeat the retailer and date on each row.