ERPNext for Trading and Distribution Businesses

Multi-godown stock, van stock and transfers

Distributors rarely have one store. There is a main godown, perhaps a branch godown in another town, and vans that carry stock all day. ERPNext treats each as a warehouse, including the vans, so a material transfer from godown to van in the morning and back in the evening leaves an exact trail of what was sold, returned and still on board. Reorder levels per warehouse raise material requests when a fast-moving SKU runs low.

Where products carry batch numbers or expiry dates, such as lubricants, safety consumables or packaged goods, batch tracking follows the stock so the oldest batch is picked first and near-expiry stock shows on the ageing report before it becomes a write-off.

• Warehouse tree: company, branch, godown, van
• Stock reconciliation after physical count, with variance by item
• Slow-moving and non-moving reports by godown

Schemes, price lists and pricing rules

Principals change schemes monthly: quantity slabs, buy-ten-get-one, a period discount on a range, a special rate for a channel. ERPNext pricing rules and promotional schemes encode these with validity dates, so an invoice on the 2nd picks up the new scheme and one on the 31st still gets the old one. Price lists per customer group keep retailer, wholesaler and institutional pricing apart, and margin is visible on each invoice line before it is saved.

Because the discount given is recorded on the invoice, the claim to the principal for scheme reimbursement is a report filtered by scheme and period rather than a reconstruction from memory.

Dealer credit limits, ageing and collections

Every customer in ERPNext can carry a credit limit and payment terms. When a sales order or delivery would push a dealer past the limit, the system holds it until an authorised person overrides, which is the control most distributors want but cannot enforce in a register. The receivables ageing report groups outstanding by 0 to 30 days, 31 to 60 and beyond, per dealer and per salesperson.

Payment entries settle specific invoices and handle part payments and post-dated cheques. Thirvusoft's WhatsApp integration sends the invoice and outstanding statement to the dealer, so reminders go out on schedule rather than when someone remembers.

Dealer order app and van sales on a phone

Thirvusoft's distribution management product on ERPNext includes a dealer mobile app built in Flutter. Dealers see their price list and current scheme, place orders, view invoices and outstanding, and pay through Razorpay if you enable it. Orders land in ERPNext as sales orders, ready for the godown to pick. In salesman mode the app supports van sales: raise the invoice at the shop, record the payment, note returns and move to the next outlet.

Orders taken by phone can still be keyed by the office, but the app removes the retyping and the disputes about who ordered what and when.

• Dealer: catalogue, order, outstanding, invoice download
• Salesman: route for the day, van stock, invoice, collection
• Manager: orders and collections by salesman as they happen

E-way bills, returns and damaged stock

For consignments above the e-way bill threshold, the India Compliance app generates the bill from the delivery note or invoice, with transporter and vehicle details. Returns come back as sales returns against the original invoice with a credit note, and damaged or expired stock moves to a damage warehouse so it is neither sold nor counted as good stock. Claims to the principal for damages are again a report from that warehouse, with the invoice references attached.

Salesman targets, commissions and margin reports

ERPNext sales persons carry targets by item group and period, and every invoice is tagged with the salesperson, so target against achievement is a live report. Commission for external agents or sub-distributors is calculated through sales partners. The gross profit report shows margin per invoice, per item and per customer, which tells the owner which dealers and which lines actually pay for the vans.

• Sales by salesperson against target
• Outstanding by salesperson, so collection is part of the target
• Gross profit by item group and customer
• Stock turnover per godown

From registers and Tally to ERPNext

A trading company without manufacturing usually goes live in 4 to 8 weeks, with ledgers, customers, suppliers and stock migrated from Tally or Excel and training given in Tamil or English at your godown or remotely. ERPNext has no licence fee; the cost is implementation, customisation, hosting and support, typically starting within a few lakh rupees for an SME, and Thirvusoft quotes a fixed price after discovery.