A distributor holds stock in several places and serves customers from whichever one makes sense. The decision about which one is usually made by whoever picks up the phone, and its cost shows up in freight three weeks later.
This post covers what distribution ERP needs to do. It is the thinking behind our distribution industry page.
Allocate across the network, not the nearest shelf
Availability, transfer cost and lead time should be weighed together when an order is placed, with the reasoning visible on the line. When the choice is made by habit, the cheapest warehouse to serve the order rarely wins.
Landed cost that actually lands
Freight, duty and handling need to distribute across received lines, so item margin and balance-sheet valuation agree. If landed cost is estimated, channel margin is fiction and the accounting is guessing.
Real reservations
Stock committed to an order must leave the available pool immediately. When two reps can sell the same pallet, overselling is not a possibility to discourage — it is an inevitability. Real reservations make it structurally impossible.
Channel-level margin
Profitability by channel, region and customer computed from the same ledger the accounts close on. When operations and finance disagree about a number, the business cannot act.
The multi-warehouse reality
Slow-moving stock in one region while another is short is the classic distribution failure. It happens because nobody can see the whole network. A single system of record across warehouses makes that visible.
How AlpineERP fits
AlpineERP covers the distribution depth above, and we configure it against how your business actually runs before you go live. See the distribution industry page for the capabilities in full, or how an implementation runs.