Wholesale ERP Consultant, USA

Price levels, contract sheets and supplier cost increases

A typical American wholesaler prices from a base list, assigns each account to a level such as contractor, dealer or volume buyer, and then layers contract sheets on top for the accounts that negotiated harder. Over time the sheets multiply. Some carry fixed prices, some a markup on cost, some a discount off list, and a few were agreed by email and never entered anywhere.

The pressure point is the supplier cost increase. When a manufacturer sends a new cost file, someone has to decide which levels move, which contracts are protected until their end date, which customers need notice first and which items should be repriced on a cost-plus basis automatically. Done in spreadsheets, the rollout drags and margin slips on every order taken in between.

In requirements gathering I collect the live sheets, group them by method and write a precedence table: contract price beats group price, group price beats level price, promotional price wins only when it is lower. Then I write the cost change procedure as a set of steps the ERP must support, including effective dates, approval and an audit of what changed. These two documents usually decide which platforms are worth a demo.

Buying groups, member pricing and exempt buyers

Many US trades, from hardware and building products to foodservice and industrial supplies, have buying groups that bargain collectively for independent businesses. For a wholesaler, a group agreement means a member list that changes, a group price file, sometimes billing through the group rather than to the member, and an administration fee or rebate paid back to the group on qualifying sales.

The ERP needs to know, at order entry, that a customer belongs to a group, which group terms apply on that date and whether the sale counts toward the group's totals. I write each agreement up as a short rule card with eligibility, pricing source, billing route and fee basis, and test it with real member orders.

Exempt buyers are the second thread. Wholesale customers often buy for resale, and some buy partly for resale and partly for their own use. Whether a particular sale is taxable belongs with your tax advisor. The design question is mine: the exempt status, its scope and its supporting document must sit on the customer and ship-to record, so that the order desk, the portal and an EDI order all reach the same tax decision. Where a sales tax engine is in use, I define what the ERP sends it and what it expects back.

B2B ordering: portals, punchout and EDI from larger accounts

US wholesale customers increasingly want to order without calling. Smaller accounts use a web portal to reorder from their history, check stock and download invoices. Larger institutional and corporate buyers often purchase through their own procurement software and expect a punchout catalog, where they browse your items inside their system and return a cart that becomes a purchase order. Retail chains and some distributors send orders by EDI and expect acknowledgments, advance ship notices and invoices back in the same format.

Each channel adds rules the order desk used to apply by eye: pack size and case rounding, minimum order quantities, substitutions, backorder or cancel preferences, and free freight thresholds. I list those rules once and specify that every channel draws on them, rather than letting the portal vendor or EDI provider rebuild them in their own setup.

This is where ERP integration planning matters most. I document each flow, who owns the mapping, how errors surface and what happens when an incoming price does not match the contract. A mismatch should stop for review, not post silently. The result is that customers can self-serve while the inside team handles exceptions rather than keying routine orders.

Margin by account, rep commissions and the system you leave

US wholesale is still a relationship business, and outside reps often own accounts. Commission plans may pay on margin rather than revenue, which means the ERP has to know true margin per line after contract pricing, group fees and any customer rebate. If commission is calculated in a spreadsheet from exported invoices, disputes follow, and price overrides that erode margin go unchallenged.

I define an account scorecard the business can run every month: net margin after rebates and fees, override frequency by rep, share of orders arriving through digital channels, open backorders and days to pay. Building it into the solution design early means the data it needs is captured at source.

The usual starting point is QuickBooks with price sheets kept outside it, an older on-premise distribution package, or a homegrown order system nobody wants to maintain. Migration covers active customers with their levels, groups and exempt flags, live contracts with end dates, open orders and backorders, and item data with pack sizes and units of measure. Expired contracts and dormant accounts stay in an archive. Everything I do is delivered remotely, with sessions scheduled around your time zone and the busiest hours on the order desk. The US ERP consultant page and the United States hub cover broader context, and the wholesale ERP overview explains the core process.