In my online web store, there are many smaller items that are not already entered in the data base, but my customer base knows that I sell them from past, non-web, purchases.
There are literally hundreds of products, so entering them as needed seems more logical to me than spending a week just doing data entry.
What is the fastest way to enter a new product on the fly when I get a phone customer calling in to order?
thanks
[QUOTE]What is the fastest way[/QUOTE]
You already have the answer, your way is the fastest of them all! 
If you have an internal (PC based) order entry system in use, then that is where you should really be entering an order such as you mention, forget the webstore.
Alright, there is one other way which is quite “messy”!
Create a product (today) & call it “Custom Product”, add any price, weight, etc details to this product you wish as they will not serve any real purpose in the end.
When a customer calls to place an order for one of these “Custom Products”, go to admin panel>Orders>Add New Order>add the custom product to the order>modify the price, & shipping costs as needed>either select one of your existing customers, or enter the new customer details>process the order
Like I said, very messy, & very time consuming, would not want to be there!
Yes, time consuming! Makes these particular phone order a pain. A “clone” seems to be another similar way as you described.
Web store is easier in the end b/c it has all the CC processing build in, so no double data entry needed.
No simple Product name and price option i guess?
Any other tricks I dont know about?
If you are wanting to ADD product sas you go then this wont work, but if you want to just process an order and take the money on the phone then you could just create 1 product with various options field for your needs and have the price field as input area. When your staff speak to customers they out whatever price it is in the input filed then have a text area where they put all the details i.e. customer wants 5 t shirts in blue, then check out and input cc details.
Maybe?
john
Interspire shopping Cart did a great job at this actually