Wholesale order form template: what to include, with an example

Updated 3 November 2026 · DELLI

A wholesale order form template is a ready-made form your stockists fill in to order from you: their details, where to deliver, and a grid of your products with case sizes and trade prices, so the order arrives complete. It can be a printed sheet, a spreadsheet or a form on your website. This guide covers what to put on a wholesale order form, a template and a filled-in example, how to build one in Excel or Google Sheets, how paper, spreadsheet and online ordering compare, and what happens to the order after it arrives.

1. What to put on a wholesale order form

Many independent shops, cafés and salons don't have a purchase order system. A wholesale order form gives them one, and gives you every detail you need to pick, pack and deliver without a round of follow-up emails. Lay it out in four blocks, in this order.

Block 1: who is ordering

• Business name and trading address
• Contact name, phone number and email
• The email address for invoices, if different
• Their own order or PO number, if they use one

Block 2: where and when to deliver

• Delivery address, if different from the trading address
• Days they can take deliveries, and times to avoid
• Instructions such as "side door" or "call on arrival"
• Requested delivery date, or "as soon as possible"

Block 3: the product grid

One row per product, with the columns pre-filled except the quantity: product code, product name, size, units per case, price per unit, price per case, then a blank "cases" column for the buyer and a line total. Ordering in cases is what keeps the order easy to pick. A buyer who writes "2" in a cases column has left nothing to interpret.

Block 4: your trade terms and how to send it

• Your minimum order, and whether products must be ordered in whole cases
• Delivery charges and any free delivery threshold
• Lead time, such as "dispatched within 3 working days"
• The date the prices on the form apply from
• Where to send the completed form: an email address, or "reply to this email"

Old forms stay in shops' files for months. A "prices apply from" date tells you straight away when a buyer has ordered from last year's prices. Our guide to purchase orders and invoices covers the matching documents that follow the order.

2. Wholesale order form template and example

Copy this layout. The example is Kindred Skin, a skincare brand in Leeds, which sells in sixes of each product with a £100 minimum order.

Wholesale order form example: a filled-in product grid

Moorside Apothecary, a shop in Harrogate, fills in the grid for its first order:

The order is over the £100 minimum and under the £250 free delivery threshold, so Kindred Skin's confirmation will show the delivery charge. Because the buyer filled in cases, the packer picks 30 units in five sixes, with no question about what "2 cleansers" meant.

A food brand can use the same grid with one more column. Wildfire Chilli Co, a chilli sauce maker in Bristol, adds the shelf life of each sauce, so a deli can order a quantity it will sell in time.

3. Wholesale order form in Excel or Google Sheets

A spreadsheet form adds up the order as the buyer types, which a paper form can't. Build it once with these columns, starting at row 10 so the buyer's details fit above the grid:

Below the last product row, add the total and a minimum order check. If the products run from row 10 to row 29:

Then make it hard to break:

• Restrict the cases column to whole numbers with data validation, so nobody types "half a case" or "6 bottles".
• Protect the sheet leaving only the buyer's details and the cases column editable, so prices and formulas can't be changed by accident.
• Put the price date in the file name, such as "Kindred Skin order form Jan 2027", so you can tell versions apart in your inbox.
• Keep one master copy. Update prices there and send fresh copies, rather than editing whichever version a stockist sent back.

Send it as an Excel file, or share a Google Sheet that each stockist copies. Keep a PDF version for buyers who prefer to print it.

4. Paper, spreadsheet or online ordering?

Expect to take orders in several ways at once, because each stockist orders the way that suits them. This is how the options compare:

Don't try to force every stockist onto one format. A busy café owner who sends "same as last time please" on WhatsApp will keep doing it. Make each format complete enough to act on, and bring every order into one list, whichever way it arrived.

5. How orders flow on from the form

A completed form is the start of the order. These are the steps it goes through next:

1. Log it in your order list with the date received and the buyer's order number.
2. Check it against your current prices, case sizes and minimum. If the form's price date is out of date, check every line.
3. Check stock for every line, and decide what to do about anything short.
4. Confirm to the buyer what you're sending, the delivery date, any delivery charge and the total.
5. Send it to be picked, by you or your warehouse, with the delivery address and instructions from block 2.
6. Dispatch with a delivery note, and tell the buyer it's on its way.
7. Invoice for what you sent, quoting the buyer's order number.
8. Diary the next order. Note when this stockist is likely to need more.

Our guide to wholesale order management goes through these steps in detail, and the guide to wholesale reorders covers step 8: spotting when a stockist is due to order again and what to send them.

Questions about wholesale order forms

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