AssembloERP
Search for ERP advice as a trader and you will drown in BOMs, work orders and shop-floor dashboards. None of it applies. You do not make anything; you buy well, hold carefully and sell on terms — and every rupee of your margin lives in three places most manufacturing-shaped software treats as an afterthought.
1. Landed cost, not purchase price
Your supplier invoice is not your cost. Freight, insurance, clearing, non-creditable duty and, if you import, exchange differences all belong in the item's cost. Apportioned properly — by value, or by weight where freight is the driver.
Businesses that start doing this discover something uncomfortable within a month: one or two of their "best selling" lines are barely profitable, because freight on a bulky low-value item eats the margin. That single realisation usually pays for the system.
2. Schemes, slabs and the pricing your software probably fumbles
Indian distribution pricing is genuinely complicated, and it is where packaged products creak:
- Different price lists by customer category, region or dealer tier
- Quantity slabs — a different rate above 100 units
- Free-goods schemes: buy 10 get 1, valid for six weeks
- Cash discount for payment within 7 days, on top of a trade discount
- Year-end turnover rebates accrued monthly
If your system cannot express these, your team will run them in a spreadsheet, and your invoices will disagree with your scheme file. When you evaluate software, take your three most awkward schemes to the demo and ask to see them entered. Do not accept "that can be configured".
3. Credit control at the point of order
Total outstanding is a comforting number that hides everything. What you need is invoice-wise ageing per customer, and a limit that is enforced when the order is entered — not discovered at month-end.
| Control | Weak version | What actually works |
|---|---|---|
| Credit limit | A note in the customer master | Order blocked, with an override that is logged |
| Ageing | Total outstanding | Invoice-wise buckets: 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 90+ |
| Follow-up | Someone remembers | A daily list, assigned, with last-contact recorded |
| Cheque bounce | Handled informally | Flag on the party, visible at order entry |
4. Stock across godowns, with honest transfers
Two godowns and a shop mean transfers, and transfers mean in-transit stock. If your system nets it all into one number, you will promise material that is physically 40 km away. You need per-location balances, transfer documents with dispatch and receipt, and batch or expiry tracking if you deal in anything perishable or regulated.
The same recording gaps apply as anywhere else — samples out, replacements, returns booked late. Our piece on why stock never matches books is written for traders as much as for factories.
5. Sales returns that credit the right thing
Returns are routine in distribution and quietly corrosive: the goods come back, the credit note is issued, but the batch is not restored, or is restored to the wrong godown, or the scheme discount is not reversed. Six months later your stock and your ledger have drifted apart and nobody can point at when.
What you can safely ignore
Multi-level BOMs. Routings. Capacity planning. Machine-hour costing. Shop-floor terminals. If a vendor's pitch spends more time on production than on pricing, credit and landed cost, they are showing you the wrong product — and you should say so.
When you want it scoped around your own pricing and terms, describe your setup and we will map which modules you need — and which ones you can leave switched off. Also useful: the GST documentation checklist and what an ERP really costs.
