Order Entry Clerk: Job Description, Salary, and Duties
$46,170/yearBLS median
An order entry clerk receives customer purchase orders by email, PDF, fax, EDI, and phone and enters them into the company's ERP or order management system. The role sits between customers, sales reps, and the warehouse, and accuracy directly drives fulfillment quality.
Order Entry Clerk Salary
| Source | Figure | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| BLS OES (Order Clerks, SOC 43-4151) | $46,170/year median | May 2025, 75,200 employed in the US |
| Indeed | $17.99/hour average (range $8.00 to $40.46) | As of October 2026. 280 salaries from Indeed job postings in the past 36 months. Page updated Oct 16, 2026; fetched Oct 22, 2026. |
| Fully loaded employer cost | ~$66,000/year | BLS median x 1.43 (benefits are 31.4% of total compensation per BLS ECEC) |
Order Entry Clerk Salary by State
Median annual wage for order clerks (SOC 43-4151) by state. Source: BLS OES May 2025, fetched via BLS API 2026-06-09 (SOC 43-4051, 43-5061 and 43-1011 states and SOC 15-1211 added 2026-10-22). States with suppressed BLS estimates are omitted.
| State | Median wage | Employment |
|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | $55,040/yr | 1,350 |
| Oregon | $50,260/yr | 790 |
| Vermont | $49,950/yr | n/a |
| Colorado | $49,530/yr | 1,970 |
| Rhode Island | $49,410/yr | 170 |
| District of Columbia | $49,150/yr | 170 |
| Alabama | $48,840/yr | 80 |
| Arizona | $48,590/yr | 760 |
| New Hampshire | $48,540/yr | 390 |
| Minnesota | $48,400/yr | 1,150 |
Order Entry Clerk Job Description (Copy-Paste Template)
Responsibilities
- Enter customer purchase orders into the ERP with correct items, quantities, units, pricing, and ship-to details
- Match customer item codes and descriptions to internal SKUs
- Validate pricing against price lists and flag discrepancies before release
- Acknowledge orders and communicate ship dates to customers
- Process order changes and cancellations
- Coordinate with warehouse and shipping on priorities and cutoffs
- Maintain customer item cross-references and standing order notes
- Track open orders and escalate exceptions
Requirements
- 1+ years in order entry, customer service, or data entry
- ERP or order management system experience
- High accuracy on multi-line numeric entry
- Clear written communication for order confirmations and discrepancy emails
Nice to Have
- Distribution or manufacturing background
- Familiarity with EDI transactions (850, 855, 856, 810)
- Experience with unit-of-measure conversions (each vs case vs pallet)
Want this tailored to your order channels and ERP? Use the free job description generator.
Interview Questions That Actually Screen
A customer's PO uses their item numbers, not ours. How do you make sure the right products ship?
What to listen for: Cross-reference discipline: item history, UPCs, asking for a mapping. This is the core skill of the job.
The PO says 10 CS but the unit price looks like an each price. What do you do?
What to listen for: Recognizes the unit-of-measure trap and verifies before entering. UOM errors are among the most expensive order entry mistakes.
How do you prioritize when 40 orders land before a 2pm shipping cutoff?
What to listen for: Triage logic: cutoff-bound and high-value orders first, batching similar formats, asking for help before missing the cutoff.
Tell me about an order entry error you made and what you changed afterward.
What to listen for: Owns a real error and describes a process change, not just 'I double-check now'.
Job Outlook
BLS Employment Projections show order clerks employment falling from 78,900 to 65,100 over 2025 to 2035, a 17.5% decline. The driver is order and document capture automation. Plan the role accordingly: the durable version of this job handles exceptions and customers, not keystrokes.
Before You Post the Req
Order entry clerks spend most of their day on capture: reading a PDF or email and retyping it into the ERP. That step is now automated reliably, including customer item code matching. BLS projects order clerk employment to fall 17.5% by 2035. The surviving version of this role reviews exceptions and talks to customers instead of keying.
- Manual order entry costs and error rates (BLS-verified per-order math)
- Manual order entry cost calculator (your volume, your wages)
- Free PO extractor (upload one of your real order PDFs and watch the capture step disappear)
How to Test Order Extraction Before You Buy
Vendors demo on a clean, typed, single-page order. Your orders are scans and spreadsheets. Here is the test protocol, the seven traps that decide the result, and how to score a trial honestly.
- How to build a test set that reflects what you actually receive
- The seven traps that break extraction, unit of measure first
- How to score at the line, so a near-miss counts as the error it is
- The questions to ask every vendor, including us
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FAQ
How much does an order entry clerk make?
The BLS median for order clerks is $46,170 per year (May 2025). Indeed pegs the average at $17.99 per hour (October 2026). Fully loaded employer cost on the BLS median is roughly $66,000 per year.
How many orders can an order entry clerk process per day?
Vendor benchmarks put manual entry at 11 to 12 minutes per order, which works out to roughly 35 to 40 orders per day of pure entry for a full-time clerk.
What is the difference between an order entry clerk and an order entry specialist?
Largely seniority and scope. Specialists usually own customer relationships, exception resolution, and process improvement in addition to entry. Clerk roles are entry-focused.