Wholesale ERP Consultant, India

Dealer price lists, quantity slabs and rate contracts

Indian wholesale pricing is layered. A typical business keeps separate rates for dealers, semi-wholesalers, retailers and walk-in trade buyers, and moves a dealer to a better rate once purchases cross a slab. Items may be sold by the piece, the box or the case, with a different rate for each. Institutional buyers such as hospitals, schools or contractors often have rate contracts for a fixed period, sometimes won through a tender.

On top of the rate sit discounts: a trade discount on the bill, a cash discount if payment arrives within a set number of days, and special rates the sales head approved on a call. In many businesses the only full record of these terms is the rate sheet and the memory of the people who use it.

My first step is to collect every live rate and discount and lay them out in one table by customer type, item group and pack size. Then I write the precedence: rate contract beats dealer slab, dealer slab beats standard rate, and approved special rates apply only within their dates. That table becomes the core of the BRD, and I use it to script platform demos so each vendor bills the same five difficult orders.

Turnover discounts and credit notes the books can defend

Many Indian wholesalers promise dealers a turnover discount: reach a quarterly or annual purchase target and receive a percentage back, sometimes with higher slabs for higher targets. Settlement usually happens through credit notes, and this is where accounting and GST questions arise. Whether a post-sale discount can reduce GST on the original supply depends on conditions such as how it was agreed beforehand and linked to invoices; otherwise it may be treated as a commercial or financial credit note without a GST adjustment. That judgment belongs to your chartered accountant.

The ERP design has to support whichever treatment is confirmed. I write a rule book covering, for each discount type:

• eligible dealers, items and period
• target slabs and the percentage or amount for each
• whether the credit note carries GST or is a financial credit note
• which invoices the credit note references, if any
• approval and the date it is issued

With that in place, accruals build as invoices are billed, dealers can see their progress toward the next slab, and quarter-end settlement becomes a report instead of a week of reconciliation. I include a full settlement cycle in UAT, including a dealer who misses a slab by a small margin.

GSTIN, PAN and tax deducted or collected at source

For a wholesaler, the customer master carries more tax weight in India than in most countries. Each registered dealer's GSTIN determines the place of supply and whether a bill attracts CGST and SGST or IGST, and B2B invoices may need to be reported through the e-invoicing system depending on your turnover. Wrong or missing GSTINs lead to mismatches that the dealer will raise when claiming input tax credit.

Income tax rules add another layer. Depending on turnover and the value of transactions with a particular party, a buyer may need to deduct tax at source when paying for goods, or a seller may need to collect tax at source when selling them. Which provision applies, and when, is for your chartered accountant to confirm. The ERP requirement is that it tracks cumulative purchases and sales per party, holds PAN details, applies the correct deduction or collection on the right documents and supports the returns that follow.

I define a customer and supplier master standard with validation for GSTIN, PAN and state code, and flags for the tax provisions that apply. Cleaning these records is a workstream of its own during data migration, because errors in masters repeat on every bill afterward.

Dealer ordering, credit days and the move away from Tally

More and more dealers prefer to book orders on an app or over WhatsApp instead of calling, and wholesalers want to see stock, outstanding and credit before accepting those orders. A dealer ordering app works only if it reads rates, slabs and pack sizes from the ERP and checks credit days and limits before confirming. I scope that channel together with the ERP, not as a separate project.

Credit is central. Dealers buy on credit days that vary by relationship, and post-dated checks are still part of collection in many trades. I specify credit limits and credit days per dealer, overdue holds, and an approval path for urgent orders from dealers over their limit.

Most wholesalers I work with run Tally with Excel rate sheets, sometimes alongside a billing tool at branches. Migration covers dealer masters with validated tax details, opening outstanding by bill, live rate contracts, turnover discount progress for the current period and item masters with HSN codes and pack sizes. All work is remote, in Indian business hours. For more, see ERPNext for Indian businesses, the India ERP consultant page, the India hub and the wholesale ERP overview.