POS and inventory software for wholesale distributors

Wholesale is a different job from retail. The counter may be busy, but the real work happens after the sale: credit balances, deliveries, returns, stock moving between branches and customers who pay in instalments. Software that models only the till forces the rest back into notebooks — and that is where stock and receivables drift.

What makes distribution different

• Credit sales. Most orders are on account, paid later, sometimes in parts. The balance has to stay correct without a ledger book.
• Mixed units. The same product is bought by the tonne and sold by the bag, viss, pyi or kilogram. Stock has to stay accurate while the unit changes.
• Routes and deliveries. Goods leave the store before the money arrives. The delivery note, the invoice and the stock movement must agree.
• More than one location. Stock transfers between branches need a trail, not a phone call.

Credit sales and receivables

A sale on account should answer three questions at any moment: what does this customer owe today, what is overdue, and what did they buy last time. That means a running balance per customer, due dates, payment records and a statement you can print or send. When a customer pays part of an invoice, the balance should update without a second notebook entry.

Receivables are also a cash-flow tool. Ageing — 30, 60, 90 days — shows which balances need a call this week. EBS treats receivables as part of the same system as sales and stock, so a payment at the counter updates the customer balance immediately.

Units, packaging and price lists

Unit conversion is where many systems quietly fail. If stock is stored in one base unit and sold in several, every sale, purchase and transfer has to convert consistently. A bag of 50 kg, a viss, a pyi and a tonne are not decoration — they are how the trade actually quotes and delivers.

Wholesale also needs price tiers: retail, wholesale, contract or customer-specific. The price list should be editable without touching the till, and the receipt should show the unit and the price used, so a dispute is settled by the document rather than memory.

Deliveries, returns and branch transfers

A delivery is two events — stock leaving and money owed. Both should be recorded at the same time. Returns are the same in reverse: stock comes back, the balance changes, and the reason is noted. Branch transfers should move stock from one location to another with a record of who sent it, who received it and when.

If those movements live in different tools, month-end becomes a reconciliation exercise. If they live in one database, the stock figure at each branch is simply the sum of its movements.

Stock you can trust

Reliable stock is a ledger, not an edited number. Every sale, purchase, return, transfer and adjustment writes a movement, and the quantity on hand is derived from those movements. That way an error is traceable to the document that caused it. Stock counts then correct the ledger with a reason, instead of overwriting history.

What to check before you choose

• Offline behaviour. Ask exactly what still works when the internet drops — and what does not.
• Where the data lives. On-premise and cloud are different trade-offs; know which one you are buying.
• Unit conversion. Test your own units, not the vendor's demo units.
• Migration. Your Excel sheets, opening balances and customer list have to come across with a plan.
• Support and training. Who answers at 9 pm on a delivery day, and how?

How EBS fits

EBS builds POS, inventory, CRM and receivables as modules of one system on your own computer, with offline-first operation and remote deployment. The inventory and purchasing and CRM and receivables pages show the modules in more detail; live demos show sample data you can click through.

If you want to compare the data-ownership trade-off first, read on-premise vs cloud POS. If outages are your main worry, start with offline-first POS.

Frequently asked

Can the system handle credit sales and part payments?

Yes. A sale can be recorded on account, with a running customer balance, due dates, part payments and statements. Ageing reports show which balances are overdue.

Does it work when the internet is down?

Day-to-day selling and stock continue on the local network; changes sync when the connection returns. The offline-first guide explains the details.

Can we bring our Excel sheets and notebooks across?

Usually yes. Migration is scoped during discovery: products, units, customers, opening balances and stock. It is quoted with the plan and done with you.