Buying blind
Purchase decisions are made from a memory of what has been selling, because there is no stock position anyone trusts enough to buy against.
Trading & Distribution
One order, from the supplier’s invoice to yours.
Trading and distribution is a margin business run on movement. OrbitWix connects purchase, stock, sales, dispatch and finance so the margin you calculated when you bought is the margin you actually collect.
Common business problems
Six ways margin disappears between buying and billing.
None of these show up as a loss on any one transaction. They show up at the end of the year, as a gap between the margin you thought you were making and the one in the accounts.
Margin known too late
The real cost of a consignment is complete only when the last freight and handling bill arrives — usually after the goods have been sold.
Branch stock is invisible
One branch is out of an item while another is sitting on six months of it, and neither has any way to see the other.
Price lists that disagree
The rate a customer gets depends on who took the call and which version of the sheet was open in front of them.
Dispatch is a separate world
What was sold and what was loaded are reconciled by hand at the end of the day, if anyone gets to it.
Month-end is an investigation
Closing the books starts by working out which of the systems is telling the truth about the same month.
The solution
What the solution puts in place.
Eight parts, all reading the same customers, suppliers, items and warehouses. Nothing here is a separate system that has to be kept in step with the others.
Sales
Quotations, price lists per customer and territory, and an order that dispatch and finance read rather than copy.
Purchase
Requests, purchase orders, supplier pricing and goods receipt booked against the order that caused it.
Inventory
Real-time stock per warehouse and per branch, with reservations, batches and reorder levels.
Warehouse
Bins and locations, putaway and picking, and stock counts recorded as movements with a reason.
Dispatch
Loading plans, delivery notes, gate-out and proof of delivery, driven from the sales order.
Customer management
One customer record carrying the credit limit, terms, territory and order history everyone works from.
Finance
Invoicing raised on what actually shipped, with receivables and credit control against the same customer.
Reporting
Margin per order, stock ageing, branch performance and customer profitability from one set of records.
Example business flow
One item, seven stages.
Bought, received, held, sold, shipped, delivered, invoiced — with the cost following it the whole way.
An item moves through seven stages: purchase order, goods receipt, available stock, confirmed sales order, dispatch, delivery and invoice.
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01 Purchase order
SKU-2210
Raised
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02 Goods receipt
SKU-2210
Received
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03 Stock
SKU-2210
Available
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04 Sales order
SKU-2210
Confirmed
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05 Dispatch
SKU-2210
Shipped
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06 Delivery
SKU-2210
Delivered
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07 Invoice
SKU-2210
Raised
Benefits
What changes in a normal week.
Margin you can verify
Landed cost sits on the item, so the margin on an order is a figure rather than an estimate someone defends.
One stock figure across branches
Availability read across every branch or one at a time, so stock is moved rather than reordered.
Prices that apply themselves
The customer’s rate comes off the customer record, so it does not depend on who answered the phone.
Dispatch tied to the order
What loaded is recorded against what was sold, and the invoice follows the dispatch, not the order.
Books that close from records
Nothing to reconcile between systems, because there is one set of records underneath all of it.
Room to add trade later
When importing starts to matter, Trade and Logistics switch on against the data already there.
Apps used
The apps behind it.
Trading and distribution is not a separate product. It is these apps, on the shared Core OS, arranged around one way of working.
Sales
Quotations, price lists and the order everything downstream reads.
Inventory
Real-time stock across warehouses, batches and serial numbers.
Dispatch
Planning, picking, loading and proof of what actually left.
Logistics
Trips, carriers and freight cost allocated to what moved.
FAQ
Questions about trading and distribution.
Is this an ERP?
It covers what a trading or distribution ERP covers, but you are not buying the whole thing on day one. The Core OS plus sales, purchase and inventory is a working system; warehouse, dispatch, logistics and finance are added when they earn their place.
We keep our accounts in another system. Does that have to change?
Not necessarily. An existing accounting system can stay and be integrated, so operations move to OrbitWix while the books stay where your accountant wants them. Whether that is worth keeping is a conversation, not a requirement.
How does it handle transfers between branches?
As stock movements between warehouses, with the same visibility as any other movement. Stock in transit between two branches is a state you can read, not an unexplained gap in both.
How long before it is running?
It depends far more on the state of your master data than on the software. Configuring companies, branches, roles and workflows is quick; reconciling four versions of a customer and item list is the part worth planning for.
Have a different question? Talk to us.
Bring one order that went wrong.
We will follow it from the purchase order to the invoice and show where the platform would have caught it.