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What order management really costs a small online seller in Europe
· The Osnovia team, sellers with 1,500 orders a month
Let us call her Lena. She sells bicycle accessories from a small warehouse in Poland: lights, locks, panniers. Most of her customers are in Germany and Austria. She sells through Kaufland and her own Shopify store, about 300 orders a month in total, and she works alone. Ask her what order management costs and she says: “Nothing, I do it myself.”
That is the most common answer, and the most common mistake. This article adds up the real order management cost for a seller of her size, line by line. Software prices come from public price lists as of 17 October 2026, net of VAT, and may change, so check the vendor’s price list. Time and error figures are our estimates, with the assumptions stated so you can replace them with your own.
Cost 1: the subscription
At 300 orders a month Lena is above the entry tier of most systems sold to small sellers in Europe. This is what she would face:
| System | At 300 orders a month | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Billbee (DE) | Starter is €9 a month up to 200 orders. At 300 she is above the limit, so pricing is usage-based (Growth plan); the figure is on the price list | automatic upgrade to Growth after 3 months above 200 orders; minimum fee charged even at 0 orders; refunds and credit notes count as orders; all features included; monthly cancellation |
| JTL-Wawi (DE) | €0 licence with the Start edition | runs on her own Windows PC; shop hosting €29 a month per shop; an additional user €119 a month; €0.11 to €0.35 per order beyond package limits; Advanced edition €99 to €119; Cloud ERP from €49.99 |
| Linnworks (UK) | quote only | priced by order-volume tiers with overages; no public prices |
| Veeqo (UK/US) | not available to her | supports only the United States and the United Kingdom; no Kaufland |
| Osnovia OMS | €0 | no plans, no order limits, no per-user fee |
Sources: billbee.io/preise, jtl-software.com/de/preise, veeqo.com/pricing.
The subscription is real money. It is also the smallest line in this calculation.
Cost 2: time spent retyping
For her first year Lena ran everything without a system: Kaufland in one tab, Shopify in another, the carrier portal in a third, an invoicing tool in a fourth. One order, by our estimate (replace with your own):
- checking payment and finding the order in the other panel: about 1 minute,
- retyping the address into the carrier portal and generating the label: about 2 minutes,
- issuing the invoice with the right VAT rate for the destination country: about 2 minutes,
- changing the status, entering the tracking number, messaging the buyer: about 1 minute.
Around 6 minutes per order. At 300 orders that is 1,800 minutes, or about 30 hours a month. Almost four working days not spent on sourcing, photos or customers.
Value her time at a modest €20 an hour (an assumption, not a fact) and that is about €600 a month. More than any subscription in the table.
With an order management system most of those steps happen on their own: one order list, labels in batches, invoices from order data, tracking numbers back to the buyer. What remains is checking and packing. We estimate screen work drops to about 1 minute per order, or about 5 hours a month. The saving is about 25 hours, or about €500 a month at the same rate.
Cost 3: address errors
Every retyped address is a chance for a typo. Assume, conservatively, 1 error per 100 addresses. At 300 orders that is 3 parcels a month that come back or go to the wrong town.
Each one costs the return to sender, a second shipment, half an hour with the customer and the carrier, and sometimes a poor rating. If one cross-border parcel costs her, say, €8 (an estimate), transport there and back is €16, times 3 is about €48 a month, plus an hour and a half of work, plus a risk to her rating that has no price tag.
When the address is copied from the order straight onto the label, this class of error disappears. Customer typos remain, but they are easier to spot.
Cost 4: labels
Lena ships with DPD and creates labels one at a time in the carrier portal. Two things go wrong most often: the wrong declared weight, which becomes a surcharge on the carrier invoice, and a missing tracking number on the marketplace order, which becomes a “where is my parcel?” message. A system ties a parcel size to each product and sends the tracking number back to Kaufland and Shopify on its own.
Cost 5: invoices and OSS
Lena sells across borders. Once her cross-border B2C sales pass the EU-wide €10,000 a year threshold, VAT follows the buyer’s country: 19% for Germany, 20% for Austria, and 20% for France or 22% for Italy if she expands. The tax is reported through the One Stop Shop (OSS). Each invoice must carry the right rate, and each return must add up by country.
By hand this is the slowest two minutes of every order and the easiest place to get a figure wrong. With a system the invoice is created from the order with the VAT rate of the delivery country, and the OSS return becomes a report rather than a reconstruction.
What can be automated
Lena’s order management cost, with time figures as estimates based on the assumptions above:
| Item | By hand | With a system | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work on orders | about 30 h a month (about €600 at €20/h) | about 5 h a month (about €100) | about 25 h, about €500 |
| Address errors | about 3 a month, about €48 plus 1.5 h | close to zero | about €48 and 1.5 h |
| Invoices and OSS | each one typed separately | generated from the order | several hours |
| Tracking numbers on the marketplace | typed in | automatic | fewer customer messages |
| Software | €0 | €0 to a usage-based fee, depending on the vendor | depends on the choice |
An order management system for a seller of Lena’s size automates:
- Collecting orders from all channels onto one list, with payment status.
- Carrier labels in batches, with parcel size tied to the product.
- Tracking numbers sent back to the sales channel and the customer.
- Invoices from order data, with the VAT rate of the delivery country and OSS reporting.
- Customer messages on status changes: paid, dispatched, on its way.
- Shared stock levels across channels, so the last unit is never sold twice.
Why Osnovia OMS is free
If all this is worth so much, why does Osnovia OMS cost nothing? The short answer: we earn on add-ons, not on your revenue.
The longer answer. Osnovia is a Polish software house that runs its own furniture business, about 1,500 orders a month across 7 channels in several countries, including Kaufland, OTTO, Temu, Allegro and Shopify. We built the OMS for ourselves. Opening the same system to smaller sellers does not cost us enough to justify a subscription. We host it ourselves and keep the data in Finland, inside the EU.
Only optional add-ons are paid, for example an AI assistant. If you do not want them, you pay nothing. We do not take a cut of your work. If you grow tenfold, Osnovia OMS still costs zero.
For the record: today we support Kaufland, OTTO, Allegro, Temu, Empik, Erli and Shopify, with DPD and DHL as carriers. Amazon and eBay are in progress. InPost, GLS and UPS are not available yet. If those are your main channels or carriers, wait for word from us.
What this means for Lena
Handling orders “for free, because I do it myself” costs her about 30 hours and roughly €650 a month in time and returned parcels, by our estimates, plus errors she does not count. Any system in the table pays for itself in the first month on time alone. The question is not whether to use one, but which one and on what terms.
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