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Understand customers, products and routes across your distribution business. Explore sales and order data through dashboards and an AI analyst, with reporting adapted to your account structure, product catalog and operating model.
Stocktake analysis compares physical inventory counts with the inventory book at the same cutoff. Use a worked distributor example to calculate quantity and value differences, investigate exceptions and reconcile the totals before posting adjustments.
Oct 24, 20265 min readMeasure recorded stockout incidents, unavailable time, and unfilled order value by SKU and location. Separate later recoveries from confirmed cancellations and reconcile the exception totals.
Oct 14, 20265 min readProduct RFM compares how recently each SKU sold, how often it appeared on orders, and how much sales value it generated. Work through a distributor's order lines, set explicit score bands, and understand why a strong RFM code is only one input to a product decision.
Oct 10, 20266 min readUse public Walmart evidence to frame the inventory and service questions a business should measure. Rebuild turnover, aging, and fill rate in a worked US distributor example, then test a change to ending inventory.
Oct 7, 20266 min readCalculate the merchandise margin retained after markdowns and allowances. Follow a category example from original ticket value to net sales, merchandise cost and the reconciliation back to initial margin.
Oct 5, 20265 min readA filled-in profit and loss statement for a US distributor with $47,000,000 of net revenue, this year against last, read line by line from gross sales to net income. It shows how each subtotal is built, the same P&L as percentages of revenue, and the bridge that explains why net income rose 52% on 7% more revenue.
Sep 25, 20267 min readThe inventory turnover ratio is cost of goods sold divided by average inventory. This page gives the formula and the data it needs, works it for three categories of a food distributor with the Excel formulas, proves the total as a weighted average, converts turns to days of inventory, and shows why one company figure hides slow categories.
Sep 22, 20265 min readInventory days, or days inventory outstanding (DIO), is average inventory divided by cost of goods sold, times the days in the period. This page gives the formula and the data it needs, works it for five categories at a distributor with the Excel formulas, proves the total as a COGS-weighted average, and places it in the cash conversion cycle.
Sep 19, 20266 min readReconcile a distributor's invoice sales and credits before explaining customer growth. This guide works through a customer-level net-sales bridge, spreadsheet formulas and the checks that connect an invoice export to reported revenue.
Sep 10, 20265 min readA distribution dashboard compares order fill, stock availability and gross margin by branch. This worked example shows the export rows, the calculations and the checks that make branch comparisons useful.
Sep 9, 20266 min readCompare business buyers across online and sales-assisted orders using account pricing and supplied costs. Calculate repeat purchasing and contribution with formulas that reconcile to the order export.
Sep 1, 20265 min readCalculate furniture order profitability after merchandise, inbound freight, damage and customer delivery costs. Follow a worked distributor example from sales exports to contribution and an operating profit reconciliation.
Aug 30, 20266 min readHow distributors should choose analytics software: start from the questions, check the data you hold, ask vendors ten questions, avoid the traps.
Aug 30, 20264 min readCalculate a vegetable distributor's margin after measured spoilage, inbound freight and handling. Use lot and sales records to reconcile quantities, costs and contribution before subtracting shared operating expenses.
Aug 30, 20265 min readThe honest answer to what cost to serve a distributor or supplier should run per customer: the 8 to 15 percent of revenue figures quoted depend on which costs are allocated, on the driver used to allocate them, and on whether cost to serve is read against revenue or against gross margin. This page gives the ranges by desk, the three measurable things that set the right figure for one business, and the table to compute before anyone quotes a percentage.
Aug 25, 20263 min readThe ten sales KPIs a wholesale distributor should run on, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: account coverage at cadence, dormant accounts by prior value, category share against similar customers, contribution after cost to serve, price realization, average drop value, order channel mix, fill rate and lost lines, customer concentration, and new account activation. Also the three measures most distributors miss, the vanity figures to drop, the identity behind each table, and who should own what.
Aug 23, 20265 min readCalculate electronics contribution by SKU and channel after landed cost, rebates, returns and warranty expenses. Use sales and cost exports to reconcile the result before changing prices or channel terms.
Aug 18, 20265 min readCustomer profitability is reported at three levels that are often confused. Gross margin is revenue less the cost of the goods. Contribution margin takes off the costs the customer's own behavior causes: deliveries, order handling, sales time, returns, rebates and credit. Net margin takes off a share of fixed overhead as well. This page sets out the three definitions, computes all of them for three customers, shows why the ranking changes at the contribution line and why it should not be taken further, and says which decisions each level is for.
Aug 13, 20264 min readThe ten questions a distributor's commercial director puts to the branch and sales managers, which accounts are dormant and worth what, which branches leak category share, which accounts earn least after cost to serve, which take too many drops, which lines were lost to stock-outs, where is private label under-penetrated, which reps cover their books, what are the unagreed discounts, which counter customers deserve an account, and what changed, each with the table from the invoice lines and the delivery log, and the answer to send back.
Jul 29, 20263 min readHow a beverage or food distributor measures route coverage from the sales report it already runs: stores on the route, stores visited, stores that bought, range stocked per store, and the Monday list each rep should get.
Jul 21, 20264 min readHow a distributor measures range per store against a channel-specific SKU list, values each gap at the store's own rate for similar SKUs, and turns the result into a three-line Monday brief per rep that names the store, the SKU and the number.
Jul 18, 20263 min readHow a distributor measures the share of each account's purchases that are its own private label against branded equivalents, from the invoice lines and the product master: penetration per account per category, the margin difference per line, the norm from accounts of the same type, the accounts buying branded where similar accounts buy own label and the value of the switch, and the identity that keeps own-label and branded revenue summing to the ledger.
Jul 16, 20262 min readSeparate product resale margins from implementation and support costs. Follow a customer bundle from sales and supplier files through delivery labor, contribution and allocated account profit.
Jul 14, 20265 min readHow a distributor finds the accounts whose delivery frequency is out of proportion to their order size, from the delivery log and the invoice lines: drops per week against value per drop, the norm from accounts of the same size and type, the accounts on daily drops that similar accounts serve twice a week, the cost of the extra drops, and the offer that consolidates without losing the account.
Jul 13, 20262 min readHow a distributor computes gross margin per account from invoice lines and cost, adds the cost to serve from delivery and returns, ranks accounts by margin rather than revenue, and finds the large accounts whose price agreements, delivery frequency and returns leave less than the small ones, with the identity that ties the account margins to the ledger.
Jul 10, 20262 min readDistribution financial analysis joins branch profitability with inventory and receivables. Use the worked spreadsheet layout to compare margins, trace working-capital movements and reconcile the cash available after operating costs.
Jul 8, 20265 min readMarket basket analysis measures which products appear in the same order. Build an order-level table from an order-line export, calculate support, confidence and lift, and check the value of the baskets behind each pair.
Jul 5, 20265 min readThe return on inventory ratio compares gross profit with average inventory at cost. Work it by product category, prove the company total and distinguish gross margin return from turnover, markup and overall investment returns.
Jun 16, 20266 min readDistribution analytics for your business.
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