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How we turned a messy manual process into clear, automated workflows – and saved many hours every month.
Many German companies still run core processes by hand, which is slow and error-prone. Order management is a typical bottleneck: cards need updating, order numbers need assigning, yearly quotas need maintaining and customer data needs documenting. Our client – a mid-sized company in Germany (name anonymised) – faced exactly this.
The starting point: manual work and no visibility
The company used Trello heavily for client projects and internal workflows, but there was no central, automated logic:
- Every new card had to be checked by hand
- Order numbers were assigned manually (high error risk)
- Staff maintained yearly order counters themselves
- Repetitive tasks caused delays
- The team had no clear view of status
The goal: fully automate order numbers and process logic
The client wanted a workflow that:
- detects every new Trello card automatically
- checks whether a record already exists
- runs different steps depending on the result
- generates order numbers automatically
- increments yearly counters automatically
- stores all data reliably in a central data store
- updates the Trello card at the end – with no manual step
The solution: a multi-step Make.com scenario with Trello & Data Store
- Trello watcher detects new or updated cards
- Data store lookup checks for an existing order ID
- Router decides: record found → update running number and year; new record → new number and new entry
- Automatic order numbers (e.g. 2025-001, 2025-002)
- Yearly and order counters increment automatically
- Trello custom fields are filled in automatically
The results
- 20+ hours of work saved per month – no manual numbering, no rework
- Near 0% error rate
- Better overview – key data appears automatically in custom fields
- Scalable – from 50 to 500 orders a month
- Faster handling of new Trello cards
Conclusion
When data is structured cleanly and repetitive steps are automated, the efficiency gain is huge. The client no longer worries about order numbers, counters or manual mistakes – the team focuses on the work that matters.
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