Order Operations Coordinator: Job Description, Salary, and Duties
$59,650/yearBLS median
An order operations coordinator moves orders from acknowledgment to shipment. The role expedites late and short orders, manages backorders, keeps retailer and distributor portals up to date, and makes sure what the customer was promised is what leaves the dock.
Order Operations Coordinator Salary
| Source | Figure | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| BLS OES (Production, Planning, and Expediting Clerks, SOC 43-5061) | $59,650/year median | May 2025, 390,160 employed in the US |
| Fully loaded employer cost | ~$85,000/year | BLS median x 1.43 (benefits are 31.4% of total compensation per BLS ECEC) |
Order Operations Coordinator Salary by State
Median annual wage for production, planning, and expediting clerks (SOC 43-5061) 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Washington | $77,190/yr | n/a |
| District of Columbia | $72,660/yr | 430 |
| Wyoming | $69,710/yr | 110 |
| Rhode Island | $65,310/yr | 960 |
| Colorado | $63,980/yr | 7,800 |
| Hawaii | $63,780/yr | 1,040 |
| Connecticut | $63,240/yr | 4,090 |
| California | $63,000/yr | 56,080 |
| New Jersey | $62,710/yr | 9,410 |
| Delaware | $62,700/yr | 450 |
Order Operations Coordinator Job Description (Copy-Paste Template)
Responsibilities
- Track open orders from acknowledgment to shipment and chase anything at risk of missing its ship date
- Manage backorders: allocate incoming stock, split shipments, and tell customers what to expect
- Expedite with purchasing, production, and suppliers when an order depends on inbound stock
- Update retailer and distributor portals with order status, ship confirmations, and appointment requests
- Coordinate carrier pickups, routing requests, and delivery appointments with the warehouse
- Reconcile what shipped against what was ordered and correct the order before the invoice goes out
- Report daily on late, short, and on-hold orders
- Keep customer-specific shipping and routing rules documented
Requirements
- 2+ years in order fulfillment, expediting, or supply chain coordination
- ERP skills across sales order, inventory, and purchasing screens
- Excel for open-order and backorder tracking
- Persistent follow-up with internal teams and outside partners
Nice to Have
- Experience with retailer vendor portals and routing guides
- EDI working knowledge (850, 855, 856) and how late ship notices turn into chargebacks
- 3PL or multi-warehouse coordination
Want this tailored to your order channels and ERP? Use the free job description generator.
Interview Questions That Actually Screen
Monday morning you have 30 orders past their ship date. How do you decide where to start?
What to listen for: Sorts by customer impact and penalty risk (retailer windows, must-arrive-by dates), not by order number. Tells customers before the fix is done.
Inbound stock for a large backorder slips a week. Who do you tell, and in what order?
What to listen for: Sales and the customer quickly, with options: partial shipment, substitute, or a new date. Updates the order so the system matches the promise.
A retailer portal shows an order as cancelled but your ERP shows it open. What do you do?
What to listen for: Treats the portal as the customer's record, confirms with the buyer, and stops the warehouse before it picks.
How do you keep 200 open orders from slipping through the cracks?
What to listen for: A daily list driven by ship date and status with exceptions flagged. Not memory, not sticky notes.
Job Outlook
BLS Employment Projections show production, planning, and expediting clerks employment falling from 392,100 to 387,100 over 2025 to 2035, a 1.3% decline. BLS groups this role with production planners and expediters in every industry, so the trend is a rough guide. The parts of the job that last are the ones that take judgment: late orders, short shipments, and partner disputes.
Before You Post the Req
Coordinators earn their keep on follow-through: chasing late stock, splitting shipments, and keeping partners informed. Every hour spent keying orders or copying status between the ERP and partner portals comes out of that. Automate capture and status updates and one coordinator can cover a bigger order book.
- 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 operations coordinator make?
BLS groups the role with production, planning, and expediting clerks, median $59,650 per year or $29.88 an hour (May 2025). Fully loaded employer cost on that median is roughly $85,000 per year.
Order operations coordinator vs order processing specialist: what is the difference?
The processing specialist gets orders in and released correctly. The coordinator owns what happens after release: expediting, backorders, partner portals, and making sure the shipment matches the order. Small teams often combine the two.
What is the job outlook for order expediting roles?
BLS projects production, planning, and expediting clerk employment to fall 1.3% from 2025 to 2035 (392,100 to 387,100 jobs), with about 32,600 openings a year over the decade.