"Can you deliver 100 cartons tomorrow?"

Picture a busy morning at a food distribution company. A regular supermarket customer is on the phone. The salesperson checks the stock balance: 500 cartons. More than enough. He is about to confirm the delivery when the accounts team walks over.

"Please hold that order. Their last invoice is overdue."

From the warehouse comes another message: most of those cartons are already committed to other customers. And the vehicle covering that area tomorrow? Nearly full.

The customer has asked one simple question. Answering it now involves sales, accounts, the warehouse and dispatch.

For a growing distribution business, this can happen several times before lunch. ERPNext for distribution becomes useful at exactly this point: when accepting an order means coordinating decisions across the business.

The price question arrives before the truck does

The supermarket buyer on the phone has one more question.

"Have you included our offer?"

The customer has a negotiated modern trade price. A quantity scheme is also running this month. Another promotion offers free units on selected items. Whether all three can apply together depends on the commercial agreement.

Nearby, the salesperson handling hotels and restaurants is working with a different price list. A distributor has a separate purchase incentive. The general trade team is applying an outlet promotion.

ERPNext Price Lists, Pricing Rules and Promotional Schemes help manage these differences. Customer eligibility, products, quantities and validity dates determine which rules apply. Priorities and permitted combinations determine what happens when several rules match.

Those decisions need to be agreed before the scheme reaches customers. Otherwise, the same offer can produce different prices depending on who enters the order.

There is another distinction the management team wants to preserve: primary and secondary schemes.

A principal may reward a distributor for qualifying purchases through a primary scheme. A secondary scheme may support an offer made by that distributor to retail outlets. Purchasing stock and passing an offer to an outlet are different events, with different supporting records.

When the distributor submits a secondary scheme claim, the reviewer needs the eligible outlet sales, the benefit given and the amount being claimed. A customised claims and settlement workflow can connect those details to approvals and reimbursement.

The scheme then has a record beyond the original announcement. Accounts can reconcile what is due, and management can review the cost alongside the sales and margins achieved.

The applicable discounts and free goods settle the final order value before the credit controller reviews it.

Before anyone promises a delivery

Let us follow that supermarket order through a connected workflow.

As the salesperson creates the order, the system checks the commercial terms agreed with the customer. There is an approved credit limit, an agreed credit period and a restriction on the number of outstanding cheques.

The order value may fit within the monetary limit. But an earlier invoice has crossed its due date, and three customer cheques remain uncleared when the company policy permits only two.

Instead of another round of calls, the configured workflow sends the order automatically to the credit controller. The salesperson can see that it is awaiting approval. The warehouse has not yet started preparing it.

The controller opens the request and sees the new order alongside overdue invoices, outstanding exposure and cheque details. After reviewing the overdue invoice and pending cheques, the controller approves a one-time exception and records the reason.

ERPNext provides standard credit limit controls. The combined check for credit days, outstanding cheque counts and automatic escalation can be built around the approval policy of the company. The business decides when an order may be released; the workflow makes that decision visible to the people acting on it.

In this example, the controller approves the order after reviewing the customer position. Now the warehouse can take it forward.

There are 500 cartons but how many can we sell

The warehouse supervisor returns to the stock balance. There are 500 cartons on hand, but 350 are already reserved against other confirmed orders. That leaves 150 available for the new commitment.

The supermarket needs 100. The order can be fulfilled, and the team reserves those cartons against it.

A second salesperson receives an enquiry for 80 cartons of the same product. There may still be 500 physically sitting in the warehouse, but only 50 remain uncommitted after the latest reservation. That difference matters before another promise is made.

ERPNext stock reservation against sales orders and pick lists helps preserve those commitments. The team also needs a policy for reviewing reservations when orders are cancelled, changed or held for too long.

Meanwhile, other orders are arriving. A hotel wants larger packs. Restaurants need smaller quantities delivered more frequently. Retail outlets are ordering their usual mix for the next route.

Some goods are ready to dispatch. Others still need production or packing.

Thirty orders become one preparation plan

By late morning, the team has 30 approved orders for a product sold in several pack sizes. Passing 30 separate instructions to production would make it difficult to see the total requirement.

Instead, a consolidated view brings the approved demand together by item, pack size and required date. Available finished stock is considered first. The balance becomes a bulk production request or bulk packing request, depending on how the business prepares the goods.

For a business that manufactures, the shortage may become a production requirement. For one that buys in bulk and repacks, it may become a packing requirement involving the product, pouches, labels and cartons.

The preparation team gets a combined plan. Sales still needs to know which customer orders will be covered as quantities become ready, so the request retains the connection to those orders.

ERPNext manufacturing and stock transactions provide the underlying records. The consolidated request, preparation status and allocation back to customer orders can be tailored to the business.

When packing finishes, dispatch can see what is ready. Nobody needs to walk to the packing area with a handwritten list to find out.

Ready for dispatch is only part of the answer

By afternoon, the supermarket cartons are ready. The dispatch coordinator is planning the vehicles for tomorrow.

Several orders go to the same area, but they cannot simply be loaded together. The supermarket accepts deliveries during a specific receiving window. The restaurants on the route need earlier stops. The vehicle has a capacity limit, and goods for the first delivery need to be accessible.

ERPNext Delivery Trip connects a vehicle and driver with customer stops and delivery notes. Additional planning can be built around route allocation, loading sequence, weight or volume, transporter details and freight costs.

The coordinator reviews the proposed load, assigns the supermarket order and checks the remaining unallocated deliveries. An order that cannot fit stays visible for another vehicle or an agreed later trip.

Now the salesperson has a basis for confirming the next day delivery: credit is approved, stock is reserved, packing is complete and a vehicle is allocated.

On delivery day, suppose two cartons arrive damaged. The customer accepts the rest. The delivery exception needs to reach the warehouse and accounts so the stock movement, return or credit note follows what actually happened. Proof of delivery and mobile updates can be added where the logistics scope requires them.

The delivery exception, like the credit approval the previous day, remains linked to the relevant transactions, giving accounts the information needed for the next credit review.

At the review meeting the questions change

At the end of the week, the owner asks how the distribution business is doing.

The total sales figure is a start. It does not explain why one part of the network is performing better than another.

One distributor has placed larger orders, but overdue balances have grown. Another has lower sales and consistently pays on time. A route has rising revenue but expensive delivery runs. Modern trade is growing, while HoReCa margins need a closer look.

With the right classifications captured on transactions, management can review performance for the business:

Distributor-wise, to spot growing exposure behind growing orders

Route-wise, to see demand and delivery completion together

Area-wise, for overdue balances and collection focus

Vertical-wise, comparing modern trade, HoReCa and general trade

Salesperson-wise, for achievement against collections

The sales manager can compare achievement and collections by salesperson. The distribution manager can review route demand and delivery completion. Accounts can identify overdue exposure by distributor or area. Management can compare modern trade, HoReCa and general trade without rebuilding the same spreadsheet each week.

Profitability requires the relevant costs as well as sales. Route comparisons need delivery costs; scheme reviews need the discounts, free goods and claims associated with the offer.

When the supermarket next places an order, its latest returns, payments and cheque status should already inform the next credit decision. The cycle starts again with a clearer customer position.

Bring the whole order into view

The original question from the supermarket sounded straightforward: "Can you deliver tomorrow?" A dependable answer needed several teams to act on the same information.

That is the value of a connected distribution workflow. Sales can make a commitment that accounts, the warehouse, packing and dispatch are ready to support.

ERPNext supplies the core sales, inventory, manufacturing and accounting foundation. Credit controller escalation, cheque restrictions, bulk preparation requests, advanced logistics and secondary scheme claims need to be scoped as configuration, customisation or integration work around that foundation.

Businesses that also need mobile order booking and field sales activity capture can extend the workflow with DISA, Wahni’s field-sales add-on for ERPNext.

Read more about DISA field sales management with ERPNext

At Wahni, we can help map how an order moves through your distribution business and build the ERPNext workflows around it.

If answering "Can we deliver tomorrow?" still takes several calls, speak with Wahni about connecting your order approvals, stock preparation, schemes and delivery planning.

Frequently asked questions

Q. Can ERPNext handle our trade schemes — quantity offers, free units, modern-trade prices together?

A. Yes. Price Lists, Pricing Rules and Promotional Schemes apply by customer, product, quantity and validity, with priorities governing combinations — the model behind our FMCG food implementations such as Q Spices and Grain and Grace.

Q. Our salespeople keep promising stock that is already committed. Can this be fixed?

A. Stock reservation ties confirmed quantities to specific orders, so the available balance a salesperson sees is genuinely free — before the promise is made.

Q. Won't credit checks slow down our good customers?

A. No. Orders within the approved limits flow untouched; only exceptions escalate to the credit controller, who sees overdue invoices and cheque exposure beside the order.

Q. We sell in cut lengths and pouches, not cartons. Will stock work in our units?

A. Unit-of-measure conversions handle bundle-to-length and bulk-to-pack sales — proven in our aluminium and PVC extrusion implementations.

Q. We need batch and expiry traceability for oils and personal care products.

A. Batch-wise receipt, expiry and quarantine tracking comes from the same stock backbone — the pattern behind engagements like Swarnam Oil and Amrutveni Hair Oil.

Q. Is all of this standard, or do we need customisation?

A. The core — sales, inventory, manufacturing, accounting — is standard. Distribution specifics like cheque-count policies, consolidated packing requests and secondary scheme claims are scoped as configuration or customisation around it. Businesses including Unitaste, Mosons and Thaaram run these workflows on ERPNext implemented by Wahni.