That title may have sounded weird, but hopefully this explanation makes it easier to understand.
Imagine a form with various items on it,each with a quantity drop down. A user might select only certain of this items to change the default quantity from 0 to a larger number. When the form is submitted, a list entry is created for each non-zero item. Even better, the form itself is created dynamically from another SP list with one entry on the form for each item in the list.
Let me put some icing on the cake problem set. The user would get an email listing the items he or she selected, and in this particular case since the items will be delivered to them, would reply - or something else similar - to update the list times by changing their status from ordered to received without specifically accessing the SP list. I know that SP online cannot have emailed enabled lists, so is there another mechanism?
I am a bit open to third party products to solve this problem.
Good luck...