Wholesale Distribution and Van Sales
A pharmaceutical or FMCG distributor running vans on routes, loading stock in the morning, selling to retailers along a route, collecting cash and extending informal credit, and reconciling at the end of the day from a driver's book.
The problem
Stock, cash and credit all leave the building on a van every morning, and the business's control over them is a person's handwriting.
In scope
- Route and customer management
- Van stock loading and reconciliation
- Mobile order and invoice on the van
- Customer credit limits
- Cash collection
- Settlement
- Returns
- Route profitability
Out of scope
- Retail dispensing
- Warehouse management beyond van loading
- Route optimisation algorithms
What this would cover
Grouped by module — open the ones you want to read.
Customers
- Retailers by route, with location, contact, price tier, credit limit and payment terms
Routes
- Journey plans by day and van, with expected call list
Van loading
- Stock issued to a van at batch level, signed for by the driver, becoming that van's stock rather than warehouse stock
Mobile selling
- Order captured at the customer's counter, priced from the customer's tier, invoiced and printed or sent immediately
Credit control
- The customer's balance and limit visible before the sale; sales beyond limit blocked or requiring authorisation, which is the single most valuable control in the concept
Collection
- Cash and transfer collected against specific invoices, not against a general balance, so ageing stays accurate
Returns
- Expired and damaged goods taken back at the point of call, with batch recorded, credited and moved to quarantine
End-of-day settlement
- Van stock issued, sold, returned and remaining reconciled; cash collected against cash remitted; variance recorded per driver per day
Reporting
- Sales by route, van, driver and customer; margin by route once vehicle and driver cost is allocated; ageing by customer; return rate by product
Data model
- Route → JourneyPlan → Call
- Van → VanStock → StockMovement
- Customer → CreditLimit → Invoice → Payment → Allocation
- Return → Credit
- Settlement → Variance
- Driver
Invariants
- Van stock is real stock at a location, at batch level, not a note about what was loaded.
- A payment is allocated to specific invoices, never to a floating balance.
- Settlement must balance or record a variance with a reason; it cannot simply close.
- Returned goods enter quarantine, never saleable stock, without an inspection step.
Offline behavior
Fully offline-first. Vans work in areas without coverage for hours and must sell, invoice and collect the entire day without a connection, reconciling on return.
Hard trade-offs
The difficult decisions, stated plainly — not trimmed for length.
Enforcing credit limits at the van will lose sales, and the sales team will fight it.
A driver who cannot sell to a retailer over their limit will report a lost order, and the commercial pressure to allow overrides is immediate and constant. The system can enforce, warn, or require authorisation. Which one is a commercial decision the owner must make knowingly, understanding that "warn only" means the limit is decorative. This is the conversation that determines whether the engagement is worth doing.
Van stock reconciliation exposes losses that were previously invisible, and the first month of variance reports will be uncomfortable and will implicate specific drivers.
How that is handled determines whether the data stays honest.
End state
What would be true about their day once this is running.
- Stock on a van is tracked at batch level as real inventory.
- An invoice is issued at the counter rather than written in a book.
- A customer's credit position is known before the sale, not after.
- Cash collected is allocated to invoices, so ageing is accurate.
- The day reconciles, and where it does not, the variance is a recorded event with a name.
This is a deliberate first step toward Pharmacy Retail and Dispensing Platform — its data model is designed as a genuine subset, so growing into it later doesn't mean starting over.
Let's map how your operation actually runs.
One session. We look at what's breaking, and what we'd build around it — whether or not you hire us afterward.
Start the operations review