Grow the volume without growing the errors.

Where a growing distribution operation gets stuck

If most of the points below sound familiar, the problem is not your team's performance but the structure they work in:

• Order entry slowed down by price look-ups and stock confirmation
• Customer-specific prices and discounts kept in spreadsheets, varying by sales rep
• System stock not matching the shelf; sold goods that cannot be found
• Imbalances between warehouses noticed far too late
• Picking lists prepared by hand, leading to incomplete or wrong shipments
• Purchasing planned on instinct rather than on remaining stock
• Overdue balances only becoming visible at month end
• No reliable profitability figure per product, customer or sales rep

One data set, a faster order process

Wholesale and distribution businesses process a high number of documents every day, so two minutes lost on a single order becomes a serious loss of capacity by month end. In SAP Business One the sales process is built on documents deriving from one another: quotation, order, delivery and invoice. Each document is copied forward, so data is not retyped, and therefore not mistyped again.

As the order is entered, the customer's price list, special prices, discount rules and current balance are already in the system. Stock is shown together with committed and ordered quantities, which means the question "do we have it?" is answered without calling the warehouse.

When we build this flow, our priority is the balance between speed and control. Putting an approval step on every document slows the operation down, and putting none at all puts margin and collections at risk. We decide together which exceptions should stop for approval.

Price lists, customer-specific pricing and discounts

Pricing in distribution is rarely single-layered: dealers, chain accounts and end customers work from different lists, with quantity breaks, campaign periods and individually negotiated agreements layered on top. SAP Business One provides a pricing structure that carries these layers as standard.

The foundation is price lists, which can be derived from one another so that a cost update flows into dependent lists by rule. On top of that you can define special prices per business partner, tiered prices based on quantity breaks, and period discounts. During order entry, which rule produced the applied price remains traceable on the document.

The gain is not only speed but consistency. When a pricing rule lives in the system, a customer sees the same price regardless of which representative serves them, and discount authority belongs to a rule rather than to a person. Complex agreement structures are modelled together during the project, with additional controls added through adaptation where the standard structure is not enough.

Purchase planning: what, when and how much

In distribution, a large part of your capital sits on the shelf. Excess stock ties up cash; missing stock loses the sale. Balancing the two by instinct becomes impossible as the number of items grows.

In SAP Business One, purchasing decisions can be driven by stock levels and open documents: minimum stock levels, lead times and open sales orders combine into a requirement. The planning wizard automates the repetitive decision for fast-moving items, while slow movers are reviewed through reports.

On the procurement side, requests, quotation comparison, orders, goods receipt and invoice matching are linked as a document chain. The gap between what was ordered and what was received stays visible, keeping short deliveries and pending orders under follow-up.

Time recovered in dispatch and logistics

What happens after picking is the stage where your customer actually judges you:

• Picking lists and delivery documents generated from the system per order
• Partial deliveries tracked, with remaining quantities staying open
• Barcode verification before dispatch to prevent wrong shipments
• Shipments created with courier integration and tracking numbers matched back
• Route and vehicle based dispatch planning with delivery status monitoring
• Returns processed within the document chain instead of outside it
• Delivery paperwork archived together with the related customer and order

Questions we hear from distributors and wholesalers