Orders re-keyed
Web, EDI and emailed orders typed into the ERP by hand. Every typo becomes a mis-pick, a return and a credit memo.
Distribution
Orders arrive five ways. They should land in one place.
Phone, email, EDI, a web store and a rep with a spreadsheet all feed the same ERP, usually through somebody re-keying. We connect them, log every record that moves, and build the screens the package never had.
A wholesale distributor at twenty to two hundred people almost always runs a capable ERP or accounting package and a warehouse that half-trusts it. The gap between the two is filled by people: a CSR typing web orders, a picker counting twice, a bookkeeper pasting tracking numbers into invoices on Friday.
None of that is a software failure. It is the space between systems that nobody sold you. That is the space we work in.
What we usually find
Three hand-offs that leak time every day.
Inventory in two places
The ERP and the floor disagree, so someone counts twice and the website oversells what is not on the shelf.
Invoices lag shipments
Tracking pasted back by hand, invoices batched at the end of the week, AR days creeping up for no reason the owner can see.
What we build
Connections and screens, in that order.
Order intake into the ERP
Web, marketplace and X12 850 orders land as orders with the customer, pricing and ship-to already resolved.
One inventory number
Receipts, picks and adjustments flow both ways on a schedule you choose, with variance reported rather than hidden.
Ship confirm, invoice on ship
Carrier labels from the pick, tracking back to the order, the invoice created the day the truck leaves.
The screens the package lacks
Cycle counts, returns, label printing, customer-specific pricing rules, in React on your SQL Server.
Reports the owner reads
Fill rate, on-time ship, inventory turns, margin by customer, straight from the data you already have.
The SQL Server underneath
Backups that restore, indexes that fit, a version Microsoft still patches.
Where to start
The usual first steps for a distributor
Front door
Operations Systems Assessment
Two weeks, fixed price, a systems map and a costed roadmap.
From $4,500BuildERP, WMS, shipping and accounting integration
Replace the hand-offs with logged connections.
Learn moreBuildReporting and dashboards
Fill rate, turns, AR aging and margin by customer.
Learn moreCommon questions
From distributors, before the first call.
We run Sage 100 with a bolt-on warehouse module. Do you work with that?
Yes. Sage 100, Dynamics GP and NAV, Epicor and Fishbowl are the packages we see most, usually with a WMS or a clipboard beside them. The assessment maps what you have before anything is proposed.
One of our customers now requires EDI. Where do we start?
With the assessment, which covers the 850, 856 and 810 documents that customer needs and whether a VAN, a direct AS2 connection or an SFTP drop fits your volume. We build and test the mapping against their specification.
Will this replace our ERP?
Almost never. The pain is between systems, not inside one. If a replacement really is the right answer, the assessment says so with a buy-versus-build comparison and the honest cost of each.
Bring the spreadsheet that runs your warehouse.
Thirty minutes, no obligation. We reply within one business day.