To automate orders with Make, connect the order source (web form, online shop or email) to a scenario that finds or creates the customer in Holded, generates the sales order with its lines, alerts the warehouse and, once the goods ship, converts it into a delivery note and invoice. Start with the most repetitive flow and leave exceptions to a person.
What does automating the order flow mean?
In many B2B SMEs, orders come in through several doors: a website form, a distributor's email with an Excel attachment, an online shop or a B2B catalogue. Someone copies it by hand into the ERP, messages the warehouse on WhatsApp and, days later, someone else raises the invoice. Every manual step is a chance for error and a delay.
Make is a visual automation tool: workflows are called scenarios and you build them by dragging modules, with no coding. Holded has a verified app in Make with 38 modules (30 actions and 8 searches, according to Holded's integration page as of November 2026) to create contacts, products and sales documents, plus a module to call any part of its API when there is no dedicated module.
For an overview of which processes are worth automating in a business, start with our guide to Make automations for companies.
What do you need before you start?
An automation is only as good as the data it moves. Before opening Make, check the following:
- A clean catalogue in Holded: every product with a unique SKU, price, tax and warehouse. If the SKU in the form doesn't match Holded's, the scenario will fail or create lines with no stock.
- Identifiable customers: decide which field you will use to avoid duplicate contacts (tax ID, email or customer code).
- Price lists and terms: if each customer has their own price, let Holded apply the contact's price list rather than calculating it in Make.
- Holded API key: generated under Settings > Developers and pasted in when you create the connection in Make.
- A process owner: someone who receives error alerts and knows what to do with them.
How do you build the scenario step by step?
A typical order flow has six blocks. You can build them one at a time and test each stage before adding the next:
- 1. Trigger: a Make webhook that receives the form or shop data instantly, or an email module that reads a mailbox dedicated to orders. Make webhooks run the scenario as soon as they receive the request.
- 2. Normalisation: clean and validate the data (date format, quantities, SKU, delivery address). If anything mandatory is missing, the order goes to manual review, not to Holded.
- 3. Customer: search for the contact in Holded by tax ID or email; if it doesn't exist, create it or, better in B2B, alert sales so they can validate it.
- 4. Sales order: create the order in Holded with its lines, quantities, warehouse and customer reference. If there is no dedicated module, use «Make an API Call» with the documents endpoint.
- 5. Warehouse alert: an email, a message in the internal channel or a task with the order number and PDF, so the team can prepare the goods.
- 6. Delivery note and invoice: when the warehouse confirms dispatch, the Holded API lets you convert one document into another (for example, a sales order into a delivery note) and then invoice.
Holded also sends webhooks when a sales order is created, updated or deleted (events salesorder.create, salesorder.update and salesorder.delete). They are useful for the reverse direction: letting a change in Holded trigger alerts or other actions. The list of events and fields is in Holded's official webhook documentation.
What should you automate first, and what not?
Don't try to automate the whole cycle on day one. Prioritise by volume and by how predictable the case is:
- First: repeat orders from existing customers, with catalogue products and list prices. This is where you save the most hours and get the fewest surprises.
- Next: the warehouse alert, sending the confirmed order to the customer and conversion to a delivery note.
- Later: automatic invoicing, once the process has run for weeks without incidents and accounts have validated number series and taxes.
- Best left manual: orders with prices negotiated outside the price list, made-to-order products, new customers without a credit check and returns. Here the scenario should stop and alert a person.
A useful rule: if a person needs to think to decide, Make should ask them, not decide for them.
Common mistakes when automating orders
- Duplicate orders: a form submitted twice or a retried webhook creates two orders. Store a unique ID from the source order and check whether it already exists before creating another. Holded webhooks include an event ID designed for exactly this.
- Ignoring errors: Make lets you add error handlers to each module; for example, Retry stores incomplete executions so they can be retried and Rollback stops the scenario and reverts changes. Without them, an order can be lost without anyone noticing.
- Forgetting the order of processing: webhook scenarios run in parallel by default. If sequence matters (for example, because of stock), enable the option to process data in order.
- Not tracking usage: every API call counts. Holded limits requests per minute and calls per month by plan (as of November 2026, from 500 a month on Starter to 100,000 on Premium) and Make charges by operations. A scenario that polls every minute for no reason burns through both.
- Not documenting: if the person who built the scenario leaves, nobody knows what it does. Write down what triggers each flow, what data it moves and who it alerts when it fails.
If you also use a B2B catalogue or customer-specific price lists in Holded, the scenario becomes much simpler, because prices and terms already live in the ERP. We explain this on our Holded with Vycte page.
How Vycte helps you
At Vycte we design and implement Make automations connected to Holded: we analyse your order flow, clean up the catalogue and customer data, build the scenario with error handling and train your team. We are a Holded Solution Partner Gold and also develop bespoke management software when Make is not enough. See our digitalisation and automation service or ask for a diagnosis.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to know how to code to connect Make and Holded? Not for most flows: scenarios are built in a visual editor and the connection only needs the Holded API key. For endpoints without a dedicated module, it helps to have someone who understands the API documentation.
Can Make create invoices in Holded automatically? Yes, the Holded app in Make can create sales documents such as invoices. Even so, we recommend starting with the order and delivery note, and automating the invoice once the flow is stable.
What happens if a step in the scenario fails? It depends on how you have set it up. With error handlers, Make can retry, stop the scenario or store the incomplete execution, and alert the owner to review it before the customer notices a problem.
