Hi Steve,
I assume by the comment "all setting optimized" that you've made sure that OE is not doing either a credit check or a check for duplicate reference (PO) numbers for the customer. Both of those processed require reading all the customer transactions.
Since you are importing orders, couldn't you default the customer code in the import template and just change that every month?
I'm surprised it's taking 6 seconds to load an order. How many lines are typically being loaded for each order? How much memory is in the server and workstation? Would you be willing to upload a copy of the data? Perhaps we could improve the performance.
_________________________
Andrew Bates