Distributors & Dealers

Almost all building materials software is designed for manufacturers and handed down to the channel. That is why so many dealers and distributors still run on a spreadsheet: what they were given solves the manufacturer’s problem, not theirs.

Their business is genuinely different. Multiple brands with overlapping ranges. Credit extended in both directions. Schemes to claim from every principal. Counter sales, project supply and site delivery running on different rhythms in the same day.

What makes this segment hard

One view across several principals. A dealer carries brands that compete with each other, each with its own catalogue structure, pricing logic and scheme rules. Merging them into one usable stock and pricing view is the central problem, and no manufacturer’s system will ever do it.

Credit runs both ways. You take credit from principals and extend it to contractors and builders. Both positions move daily, and the decision to release goods against an overdue account is commercial judgement that needs current numbers.

Scheme claims are real money, often unclaimed. Every principal runs schemes with different rules and windows. Tracking what was earned, submitting it before it expires and reconciling what was actually paid is a job that quietly loses money when it is done from memory.

Three businesses share one counter. Walk-in retail, contractor supply and project delivery have different pricing, different credit and different fulfilment. Software built for one makes the other two harder.

Nobody has time for training. The person at the counter is serving customers. If the system is slower than the notebook it replaces, it will lose to the notebook.

What we build for it

• Multi-brand catalogue and stock in a single view, with each principal’s structure preserved underneath.
• Customer credit limits, ageing and exposure available at the counter.
• Scheme tracking across principals, with claim deadlines and settlement reconciliation.
• Fast counter billing, plus separate flows for project supply and site delivery.
• Purchase planning against what is actually selling rather than what a principal is pushing.
• Sales360 for the sales side, and WhatsApp for customer communication.

Where implementations usually fail

The system is designed around the manufacturer’s catalogue and the dealer is expected to adapt to it. They do not, because their business does not work that way, and within months there are two systems running in parallel.

The other failure is speed. A counter transaction that takes six clicks instead of two will be abandoned during the first busy afternoon, and nothing you do afterwards will bring it back.

If this sounds like your business

Tell us what you are trying to fix. You will not spend the first meeting explaining the distribution business to us, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.

See also: building materials overview · what we have built · what we build