Distribution ERP and CRM
Your CRM stops watching at closed won.
In distribution that is where the expensive things start happening. Stock goes out on approval, batches reach their expiry date, and someone sells to an account that has not paid.
What a normal CRM cannot do
- Goods on approval
- A kit goes out, part of it is used and invoiced, the rest goes back into stock. All of it handled at the time, not reconstructed from memory three weeks later.
- Stock at the customer
- Consignment held on their shelf, tracked apart from what is on yours.
- Batch and expiry
- Your rep is selling a specific batch with a specific expiry date, carrying the identifiers a regulator will ask for if anything goes wrong.
- Real availability
- What is in stock and what is already promised, shown while the order is being taken.
- Credit at the point of sale
- Payment terms and credit limit visible during the order, not discovered at invoicing.
- Negotiated prices
- Each customer's agreed prices applied automatically.
And everything behind it
- Warehouse
- Transfers, reservations, and corrections that require a reason.
- Purchasing
- Purchase orders, and reordering triggered by stock levels.
- Invoicing
- Invoices, credit notes, proformas, and legal number series with no gaps.
- VAT
- Applied per line, exemptions handled, and frozen onto the document when it is issued.
- Banking
- Import your bank statement, match the payments, reconcile.
- Chasing and reporting
- Overdue reminders, customer ledgers, ageing, stock valuation, and an export your accountant recognises.
- Tax filing
- Invoices filed automatically with the tax authority, in production today.
Traceability
Any batch, traced forward to the customer who received it and backward to the delivery it came in on. An issued invoice cannot be edited or deleted. Corrections go through a credit note tied to the original, because the software enforces it rather than because someone remembered the rule.
Where it runs
- Your infrastructure
- Your own cluster, managed cloud, or a single server. Your database and your backups.
- Upgrades
- Scripted and versioned, not a consultant with a checklist.
- Integration
- A documented API, and two-way sync with an existing ERP where one already runs the business.
- Permissions
- By role, checked on the server for every request.
How much AI is in it
Three things use a model. Supplier invoices are read into a draft goods receipt, payments are matched with a confidence score and a written reason, and an assistant answers questions about your own data. Nothing reaches stock or the ledger until a person confirms it. One switch turns all of it off and the rest keeps working.