In a typical wholesale business, one customer order is handled by four or five people and typed or corrected at almost every step: keyed in from an email, printed as a pick slip, changed by hand when stock is short, invoiced from the marked-up slip, and only later reflected in stock and margin. When the workflow is joined up, the order is captured once, what's actually picked and dispatched updates the order, the invoice is built from what left the building, and stock and margin are right the next morning. People still check the unusual orders. They stop fixing the same order three times.
This post is part of our series One workflow, one business like yours. Owners often tell us that what would help most is a working example in a business like theirs. So each post follows one workflow through one typical business. The business below is a composite: it's put together from how many wholesalers and distributors work, not a story about one client, and there are no invented figures in it.
The business and its systems
Picture a distributor selling a few thousand product lines to trade customers and retailers, with one warehouse, a small sales team, a customer service desk, warehouse staff, accounts and the owner.
The systems are ordinary:
- orders arriving by email (often as PDFs), phone, a B2B web store, and EDI from one or two larger retail customers
- a stock or inventory system (Cin7, Unleashed, MYOB Advanced, ERPNext, or the inventory side of Xero or MYOB)
- printed pick slips in the warehouse
- carrier portals for booking freight and printing labels
- Xero or MYOB for invoices and the accounts
- a margin spreadsheet the owner or finance manager builds at month-end
What happens today, step by step
- The order arrives. A customer emails a PDF purchase order. Customer service retypes it into the stock system, matching the customer's product codes to yours and checking the price against their price list.
- Credit check. Nobody looks, unless they remember the customer is slow paying. The account status is in Xero; the order is in the stock system.
- Pick slip. The order prints in the warehouse. The picker finds two lines short and one product substituted, and writes it on the slip.
- Dispatch. The despatch person books freight in the carrier's portal, retyping the delivery address and carton count, and prints the label.
- The invoice. The marked-up pick slip goes back to the office. Someone adjusts the order to what was actually sent, creates the backorder, and invoices it into Xero or MYOB, adding a freight charge by hand.
- Stock and cost. Stock levels are only right once the adjusted order is processed. The cost of the goods sold depends on whether the latest landed cost (freight, duty and currency on the last shipment) has been entered.
- The owner, at night. At month-end the owner exports sales and costs into a spreadsheet to see which customers and product lines made money, and finds credit notes for wrong quantities they hadn't heard about.
The same order has now been typed or corrected four times: entry, pick, freight booking and invoice. That's double entry (the same information typed into more than one system), and every correction relies on someone reading handwriting on a pick slip.
Where it breaks
- Retyping orders. Emailed orders are keyed in by hand. Wrong codes, wrong quantities and wrong prices start here and travel all the way to the invoice and the credit note.
- Orders for customers on stop. When account status lives in the accounts and orders live in the stock system, goods go out to customers who haven't paid. See when a customer is on stop in Xero but orders keep coming.
- Waiting on paperwork. The invoice waits for the pick slip to come back to the office, so goods dispatched today might be invoiced days later.
- Stock you think you have. Shorts and substitutions written on paper don't update stock until someone processes them, so sales promise stock that isn't there, and the stocktake doesn't match. Our guides on stocktake reconciliation and why stock values don't match the accounts cover the clean-up.
- Freight charged wrong or not at all. Freight booked in one portal and charged in another means some orders carry the wrong charge and some carry none.
- Margin you only see a month later. If landed costs arrive late and margin is built in a spreadsheet, you find out a customer or product line was unprofitable long after you could do anything about it. More in why you can't see margin by customer and landed cost.
What it looks like when it's joined up
Same business, same people, mostly the same software. What changes is that one order record carries the truth from arrival to margin.
- The order arrives once. B2B store and EDI orders come straight into the stock system (our post on EDI orders into Xero, MYOB or ERPNext covers that). Emailed PDF orders are read automatically and matched to your codes and price list, with AI doing the first pass and a person checking anything that doesn't match.
- Credit check, automatically. If the customer is on stop or over their limit in the accounts, the order is held and the right person is told before it's picked.
- Picking. The picker scans or confirms each line on a handheld or tablet. Shorts and substitutions update the order as they happen, and the backorder is created there and then.
- Dispatch. The freight booking is created from the order with the address and carton count already filled in, and the freight cost comes back against the order.
- The invoice. When the order is marked dispatched, the invoice is created in Xero or MYOB from what was actually sent, with the right freight charge.
- Stock and margin. Stock is right as soon as the order is dispatched. Landed costs are applied when the shipment is received, so every sale carries a current cost. On Monday you can see last week's margin by customer and product line, from one set of numbers everyone trusts.
Who still checks what:
- Customer service reviews any order the system couldn't match, and any price that differs from the price list.
- Accounts decides on held orders for customers on stop.
- The warehouse supervisor approves substitutions.
- The owner or finance manager reviews the weekly margin report instead of building it at night.
You don't need to replace your stock system to get here. Often it's order capture, a handheld picking step, a carrier connection and a link to the accounts. Our wholesale and distribution page and warehouse integration page describe the systems we usually connect.
What to measure before and after
Count these in your own business for two or three weeks before anything changes, then count the same things again a couple of months after. Your own numbers are the only ones that matter.
- Times each order is typed or corrected between arrival and invoice.
- Hours spent each week keying orders, matching codes and processing pick slips.
- Days (or hours) from dispatch to invoice.
- Credit notes for wrong quantity, wrong price or wrong freight, and how many of them trace back to order entry or picking.
- Orders shipped to customers on stop.
- Stock adjustments at stocktake, by value.
- How long after month-end you can see margin by customer and product line.
The free Admin Time Count gives you a quick starting estimate of the time your team spends on re-keying and chasing.
The next step: one workflow, done properly
Most wholesalers don't need to change everything at once. Pick the workflow that hurts most (for many it's order to invoice; for others it's supplier order to receipt to payment) and fix that first.
Our Process & Systems Audit ($5,000) maps how orders, stock and invoices really move through your systems, counts a few baseline measures like the ones above before anything changes, and gives you a written report on what to fix first. If you then go ahead, we fix that one workflow as a First Workflow Sprint: a fixed-scope project with a fixed quote and timeframe, handed over with written steps your team can follow, and you own everything we build. Part of your audit fee comes off the sprint.
Frequently asked questions
Is this example a real client?
No. It's a typical example built from how many wholesale and distribution businesses work, so you can compare it with your own. It doesn't describe a specific client, and your steps will differ with your customers, systems and warehouse.
Can emailed PDF orders really be read automatically?
Yes, for most orders. Automated reading handles the routine ones well, and anything with an unknown product code, an odd quantity or a price that doesn't match is flagged for a person to check. A person stays responsible for what goes into the system.
Do we need barcode scanners in the warehouse?
Not necessarily. Scanning is fastest and most accurate, but a tablet where the picker confirms each line and enters shorts still removes the handwritten pick slip and the retyping that follows it.
Will this work if we use Xero's or MYOB's own inventory?
Often, yes. Smaller wholesalers sometimes run stock inside the accounting system. The same steps apply, although at some point a dedicated stock system (kept alongside Xero or MYOB, not replacing them) may make more sense. The audit would show whether you're there.
How long does fixing one workflow like this take?
It depends on your systems, how orders arrive and how many customers have special pricing. We scope it first and give you a fixed quote and timeframe. Single-workflow projects are usually measured in weeks, not months.
If your orders are typed or corrected more times than they should be, book a free initial chat and we'll talk it through.