Distribution Management + Order Booker App
Route-wise booking on the booker's phone, a delivery sheet for the van, and recovery tracked against the stock that actually went out.
A distribution business lives or dies on two numbers nobody can state before mid-week: what was booked yesterday, and how much cash came back against what was delivered last week. The order booker goes out on a bike with a phone, works his route shop by shop, and the orders reach the office on a call, a photograph of a page, or in a book he hands in when he comes back.
What gets built here is in two halves. A booking app the booker actually uses standing at a counter — route-wise, with the shop's last order and outstanding balance in front of him — and an office side that turns the day's bookings into a load, a delivery and a recovery figure per route. The booker's half has to work with a weak signal and finish an order in under a minute, or it will not be used.
What it fixes
- Orders written on paper and phoned in, so loading starts late and short deliveries are discovered at the shop
- Bookers unable to see a shop's outstanding balance at the point of booking, so credit quietly accumulates with the shops that pay slowest
- Recovery against delivered stock reconciled days later, by which point the difference between cash short and stock returned is guesswork
- Routes and beat plans existing on paper, so there is no check on whether a booker actually covered his area
- Company schemes, trade discounts and bonus offers applied differently by each booker, and argued over at invoicing
- Damages, expiries and returns from shops absorbed into stock differences, so the claim on the principal is never fully made
What gets built
A starting point, not a fixed list. The build is scoped to your own process before anything is written.
Order booker app
Route for the day, shop by shop, with the product list, the shop's last order and current outstanding visible. Orders book offline and sync when a signal returns, because the booker will be standing inside a shop.
Routes and beat plans
Areas, routes and the day each shop is to be visited, with coverage against the plan — which shops were booked, which were skipped, which had no order.
Load and delivery sheets
Bookings consolidated into a van load per route, a delivery sheet for the driver, and delivery confirmed against it, so short supply is recorded at the point it happens.
Recovery and shop accounts
An account per shop with invoices, cash received, cheques and outstanding by ageing, and a recovery position per route and per booker.
Schemes and discounts
Trade discount, bonus quantity and company schemes defined centrally with validity dates, applied the same way for every booker and every shop in a category.
Returns, damages and claims
Expired and damaged stock taken back from shops, recorded against the shop and the batch, and totalled into the claim that goes to the principal.
Who this is for
Distributors and wholesalers running two or more routes with bookers in the field — FMCG, pharmaceutical, beverages, confectionery, building materials — typically from five bookers upwards, where the owner can no longer see every route himself. It suits a business where credit to shops is normal and recovery is the real constraint on cash. A wholesaler selling over the counter to customers who come to the godown does not need the booker app at all and should buy only the stock and party accounting half. If you have one booker and twenty shops, this will cost more than it saves.
Questions
Will the app work where there is no signal?
It has to, and that should be a design requirement rather than a feature request. Bookers work inside shops, in markets and in basements. Orders are taken offline and synced when the phone gets a connection. The honest limitation is that outstanding balances shown offline are as of the last sync, so a payment made this morning may not be reflected at the counter this afternoon.
Can we track the booker's location to confirm he visited the shop?
Technically straightforward — the shop can be geo-tagged and the booking stamped with where it was taken. Whether you should is a separate question. It works where it is introduced openly as route verification and it causes real resentment where it arrives unannounced. We will build it if you want it, but it is worth deciding deliberately and telling your team.
Does it connect to the principal company's system?
Sometimes. Some large principals provide a portal or a defined format for sales and stock reporting, and where they do, exporting to it saves a monthly data entry job. It depends entirely on which companies you distribute for and what they currently require, so tell us the principals and we will check before committing to it.
Tell us how your distribution runs.
We scope it first — what it takes, how long, what it costs. No obligation.