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Distributor software development

For managing directors, sales directors and operations managers at distributors and wholesalers with trade accounts who need pricing, stock, ordering, delivery routes and credit to live in one system shaped around how their customers actually buy.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A distributor with eight hundred trade customers takes orders by phone, email and from representatives in the field, and each order is keyed into the stock system by someone in the office.

  • The price a customer should pay depends on their tier, a handful of negotiated lines and a promotion that ended last week, and the person keying the order has a printed price list and a memory.
  • Two customers on the same street are charged differently for the same case because two representatives agreed two deals.
  • A customer phones to ask whether a line is in stock and is told yes; by the time the order is keyed, the last pallet has gone to someone else, and the back-order is a note on a pad.

Where it gets harder

Delivery cut-offs are known to the office and not to customers, so orders placed at half past four for next-day delivery are refused by phone the following morning.

  • Routes are planned by the warehouse supervisor from a printed list each evening.
  • Credit limits are in the accounting system, which the sales office cannot see, so an order is picked, loaded and then held at the gate when accounts notice the account is over its limit.
  • Statements go out monthly, and customers query lines on them that the office then reconstructs from delivery notes.
  • Supplier price changes arrive as spreadsheets in different layouts and take a week to apply.
  • The sales director cannot say which customers have stopped ordering, which representatives are selling at the deepest discount, or which lines are back-ordered most often.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom distributor build normally covers:

  • A trade account application With the details you need for a credit decision and an approval step that creates the account with its tier, terms and assigned representative
  • Customer-specific pricing that layers a base list A tier discount, negotiated lines per customer and time-limited promotions, resolved by the system at the moment of ordering so the price is the same whoever takes the order
  • Stock levels By product and location with available-to-promise shown to customers and representatives, and back-orders created, tracked and released when stock arrives
  • Quick order by product code Reorder from history and saved order lists for customers who buy the same lines every week
  • Delivery routes with days and cut-off times per postcode area Shown to the customer at checkout and used to plan picking
  • Credit limits and overdue balances checked at order time With holds that the accounts team can release
  • Statements generated from invoices and payments
  • Supplier catalogue intake That maps each supplier's price file to your product codes
  • Representative accounts limited to their assigned customers With order entry on a phone from the customer's premises

How discovery works

Discovery walks through an ordering day with you: who takes orders and how, how prices are actually agreed and how often they change, where stock is counted and how reliable the figure is, how routes and cut-offs work today, what the accounting system holds and what the sales office needs to see from it, and how supplier files arrive. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: account approval, order, pick, route, deliver, statement.

Deliberately out of scope

  • The finance ledger, purchase ordering to suppliers beyond catalogue intake, and warehouse management at bin level where a warehouse system already exists
  • The distributor system exchanges orders, deliveries and invoices with those systems rather than replacing them

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A wholesaler with two depots, six representatives, four pricing tiers, three hundred negotiated customer lines, a route plan per depot with postcode cut-offs, credit held in an accounting system and twenty suppliers sending price files monthly is a different build from a single-depot distributor with a flat price list, and the scope document will say so.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of an ordering day, a sample of price agreements, route plans and supplier price files
  • A written scope document naming each stage from account approval to statement, the accounting and stock exchange and what is excluded
  • Design of the customer ordering screen, the representative order entry on a phone, the pricing rules view and the route planning board
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of products, customers, tiers, negotiated prices, open orders and balances from your stock and accounting systems, where relevant
  • Supplier price file mappings and the accounting exchange set up and reconciled against a sample week
  • Training for the sales office, representatives, warehouse and accounts, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the product file, customer list with tiers and negotiated prices, route plans, the stock and accounting systems and a set of supplier price files.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the sales director, a representative, the warehouse supervisor and the accounts lead; pricing layers, cut-off rules, credit holds and the scope document are agreed with milestones.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the customer ordering screen with live prices and stock, the representative phone view, the back-order list and the route board.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: products, customers and pricing first, then ordering, stock and back-orders, then routes, credit, statements and supplier intake.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    The sales office keys a day of real orders into the system alongside the current method and compares every price; a representative places orders from a customer visit.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Pricing precedence, cut-off rules, credit hold thresholds and supplier mappings are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Customers, prices and balances migrated, the accounting exchange verified against a sample, customer logins issued in waves, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    Customers and representatives order through the new system; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Accounting systems holding the ledger, credit limits, invoices and payments
  • Stock and warehouse management systems supplying levels and receiving picks
  • Supplier price files and catalogues in their own layouts
  • Route planning and vehicle tracking platforms where the fleet already uses them
  • Card payment and direct debit providers for accounts that pay on order
  • Email and SMS services for order confirmations, delivery notices and statements
  • Barcode scanners and label printers in the warehouse

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A two-depot wholesaler with negotiated customer lines

The situation

A wholesaler with two depots, six representatives and eight hundred trade customers priced orders from a printed list and a memory, learnt of credit problems at the loading gate and planned routes from a printout.

Why it is a custom build

The reason this needs a custom build is the pricing precedence and the credit check against a live accounting balance, both of which depend on how this wholesaler actually trades rather than on a generic trade shop.

The scope we would propose

  • Pricing resolved at order time from base list, tier, three hundred negotiated customer lines and dated promotions, with the resolved price and its source shown on every order line
  • Available-to-promise per depot with back-orders released automatically when stock lands
  • Routes per depot with postcode cut-offs shown at checkout
  • A credit check at order time reading the balance and limit from the accounting system, with holds the accounts team can release before picking
  • Representative order entry on a phone limited to assigned customers
  • A supplier intake that maps twenty monthly price files to the product codes once and reapplies the mapping each month

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of products, customers and depots
  • Pricing layers: tiers, negotiated lines, promotions and how they take precedence
  • Whether stock levels come from an existing warehouse or stock system, and which one
  • Credit limits and holds read from an accounting system, and which one
  • Route and cut-off rules and whether a route planning platform is involved
  • Representative accounts and order entry from customer premises
  • Number of suppliers sending price files and how varied the layouts are
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Distributor ordering package

Trade account approval, customer price lists and tiers, stock with back-orders, quick order by code and reorder from history, delivery routes with cut-offs, credit limits, statements and representative accounts.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do you decide between a custom build and the package?

Discovery compares how you price, pick and deliver with what the distributor ordering package does through configuration. A distributor with tiers and a modest number of negotiated lines, one depot and stock maintained in the system usually fits the package. Live credit checks against an accounting system, a warehouse system feeding stock, or complex pricing precedence point to custom work, and we say which before anything is quoted.

Will prices be right for every customer?

The price is resolved by the system from the layers you define, in the precedence you set, at the moment the order is placed, and each order line shows which rule produced its price. Whether the rules themselves are right is checked during the shadow week, when the sales office compares a day of real orders line by line.

Does it replace our stock and accounting systems?

No. The accounting system stays the ledger of record and a warehouse system, where you have one, stays the record of bins and picks. The distributor system takes orders, resolves prices and credit, plans routes and exchanges orders, deliveries and invoices with those systems.

Can our representatives order from the customer's premises?

Yes. A representative logs in on a phone, sees only their assigned customers, and places an order with the same prices and stock the office would see. The order carries the representative's name for reporting.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and all data, including pricing rules and order history, are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional, separately agreed and the system can move to another provider.

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