ERP for Distribution Companies
Distribution looks simpler than manufacturing and has two problems that are harder: deciding which stock goes to which order when there is not enough, and knowing what a product actually cost you by the time it reached your shelf.
Discuss your projectAllocation and landed cost
Allocation is the question every distributor faces daily. Two orders want the same unit and you have one. Does it go to the larger customer, the earlier order, the one with the contractual delivery commitment, or the one with the better margin? Generic systems apply first-come-first-served and leave the rest to whoever is watching, which means the decision is made inconsistently and your best customers occasionally lose out to a smaller order placed an hour earlier.
A system worth building encodes your actual rules — priority by customer tier, by committed delivery date, by margin, or a combination — and makes the exceptions visible so a person can intervene deliberately rather than by accident. This is one of the clearest cases for custom work, because the rules are commercial and specific to you.
Landed cost is the second. The price on the supplier invoice is not what the product cost. Freight, duty, insurance, currency movement between order and payment, and port charges all belong on it, and they arrive at different times and often as a single invoice covering many products. Distributors that cost on supplier price alone systematically overstate margin on imported lines, and the error is largest exactly where volumes are highest.
So we model landed cost explicitly, with a method for apportioning shared costs across a shipment — by value, weight or volume, which is a decision to make with your accountant — and a mechanism for adjusting cost when a freight invoice lands after the stock has already been sold.
What we build
Multi-location inventory
Stock by warehouse with transfers modelled as dispatched and received states, so nothing is counted twice or lost in transit.
Allocation and available-to-promise
Your rules encoded, with on hand, allocated and genuinely available as three distinct figures your sales team can see.
Customer-specific pricing
Price lists, contract pricing, volume breaks and promotional pricing, with a clear precedence order. Pricing complexity is the most common reason distributors outgrow a generic system.
Backorders and part shipments
Handled as first-class states rather than as exceptions people manage in notes, with the customer's preference on partial delivery respected.
Purchasing to demand
Reorder points by location with supplier lead times, generating purchase suggestions that account for stock already on order.
Landed cost
Freight, duty and currency apportioned across shipments, with cost adjusted when the freight invoice arrives late.
Returns and credits
With the stock implication handled — a return that does not put stock back is why figures drift.
Margin by line
Real margin per order line against landed cost, so you know which products and customers are genuinely profitable.
Integrations
- Sales channels — your own store, Shopify, Amazon, trade portals — with stock decrementing on sale rather than on someone noticing.
- EDI with larger retail customers, which many distributors need and which is a defined piece of work per trading partner rather than a generic capability.
- Carriers for labels, rates and tracking, with dispatch writing back to the order.
- Accounting for invoicing, stock valuation and cost of goods sold, with the mapping agreed with your accountant.
- Supplier systems where they support electronic ordering rather than email and a PDF.
- Scanning hardware in the warehouse, covered on our warehouse management page.
Common questions
Tell us what you need
Describe the problem and we will come back with scope, timeline, and a rate. No obligation to proceed.
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