A retailer sells what they can see. A wholesaler sells what has to be fetched first — and that is the whole difference. In a depot the question is never only "do I still have any?", it is "do I still have any, and where".
That is why a well-stocked depot can feel like it is out of stock. The goods are there; nobody knows which aisle.
One location per product, written down somewhere
The first thing to put in place is not software, it is an address. Every product has a location, and that location gets written: aisle B, bay 3, bottom level. Three pieces of information, always in the same order.
The test that tells you whether your depot is kept is simple: can someone who does not work there find an item from the record alone? If the answer is "you have to ask Rachid", the depot is not kept — it is memorised, which is a different thing and far more fragile.
The broken pallet is the real problem
While pallets are full, everything is fine: you count pallets. The gap opens the day you sell twelve cases off a pallet that held forty-eight.
There are only two honest ways to handle that, and the worst option is to mix them. Either the whole depot counts in cases, full pallets included; or a broken pallet comes out of its pallet location immediately and goes to a picking area. A depot that counts sometimes in pallets and sometimes in cases cannot be corrected, it has to be recounted — the same principle as case and unit in a hardware shop.
The price depends on the customer, and that is normal
The second peculiarity of wholesale is that there is not one price but several: the small retailer taking two cases and the one taking forty do not pay the same, and the trade works that way for good reason.
The danger is not having several prices, it is having them only in your head. A price granted on Tuesday and forgotten by Thursday creates two problems at once: a margin you can no longer calculate, and a customer who is right to complain.
- Write the price against the customer, not in your memory. A customer record carrying their rate is what lets someone other than you serve that customer correctly.
- Set the tiers in advance. "From ten cases" is a rule; "for him it is cheaper" is a negotiation that restarts with every order.
- Check the margin tier by tier. A wholesale rate agreed without recalculating the margin is the most common way to work hard for nothing.
In a depot, information that exists only in someone's head is information that does not exist.
Credit, in wholesale, is played for higher stakes
A retailer carrying a 300-dirham slate has an organisation problem. A wholesaler who lets three unpaid deliveries of 8,000 dirhams go by has a cash problem that can stop the depot.
The same rules apply, but the per-customer ceiling stops being a precaution and becomes a condition of trading. The subject is covered in detail in the article on customer receivables.
What a tool changes
A depot kept in a notebook can work perfectly well as long as the owner is there. What software adds is not precision — it is that the information stops being carried by a person: the location, the customer's rate and the balance are readable by whoever picks the order.
A stock solution for Moroccan wholesalers such as Gestio handles stock, customer pricing and receivables in one account, on mobile in the depot and on a computer in the office. See the features.