Business model 03 · Wholesale distributors
ERP for wholesale distributors, from the order book to the margin report
You buy lines, hold them, and sell them to many accounts at different prices. Or you're the brand, and wholesale is most of your revenue. Either way your day is orders in volume. This page describes the system for that: one wholesale order book, one inventory every account sells against, tiered pricing that applies itself, EDI where a retailer demands it, factor approval before anything ships, and reporting that shows which accounts and lines actually make money.
Is this you?
The distributor profile, in the words distributors use
You carry several lines or several of your own labels. You sell to boutiques, specialty chains, department stores, off-price and maybe Amazon. Every account has its own price level, terms, ship window and paperwork. Half your orders come in from reps and B2B platforms, the rest by EDI or email. Your inventory number is different in the warehouse, in the spreadsheet and on the B2B platform. And someone still checks credit by hand before a big order ships.
If three of those sentences are true, you're a wholesale operation whether you call yourself a distributor, a brand, or a showroom. The importers page covers the sourcing side; the manufacturers page covers cut and sew. This one covers selling in volume to accounts.
What ERP does a wholesale distributor need?
Short answer: a wholesale distributor needs an ERP that takes orders by size run from every channel into one queue, prices each account from its own tier automatically, allocates against a single open-to-sell number, clears credit with the factor before shipping, sends EDI documents to the retailers that require them, and invoices from what actually shipped. A general distribution ERP does the volume part. An apparel-built ERP also does the size-run, prepack, ship-window and chargeback part.
Most systems that show up when you search "ERP for wholesale" were built for industrial, hardware or food distribution. They count units. Apparel wholesale counts style, color and size, sells in size runs and prepacks, ships to start and cancel dates, and lives with retailer compliance rules. That's the difference this page is about.
One order book, one inventory
The wholesale workflow AIMS360 runs
| Step | What happens in AIMS360 |
|---|---|
| Orders in | Five sources land in one queue: rep and customer entry, B2B platforms (JOOR, NuORDER, RepSpark, Brandboom), retailer EDI, Faire, Shopify B2B. Same order record, same inventory. |
| Pricing | Price categories and tiers by account, by size and by quantity. Customer-level discounts apply to every order from that account. Imported platform orders keep the price negotiated on the platform. |
| Availability | Open to sell = on hand + work in process − already committed. Every channel reads the same number, so you can sell incoming goods without overselling. |
| Credit | Orders go electronically to your factor for approval. Approvals post to the order; denials get flagged for review before anything picks. |
| Allocation | Intelligent allocation reserves stock and incoming WIP by warehouse, ship window, customer priority and order source. |
| Pick, pack, ship | Pick tickets, mobile scanning, UCC-128 labels, VICS bill of lading, carrier labels. Your warehouse or a 3PL. |
| Invoice and assign | Invoice generated from what shipped, assigned to the factor with correct remittance details, synced to QuickBooks, NetSuite or Sage. |
| Commission and margin | Rep commissions calculated on posted invoices, with splits, holdbacks and returns. Margin by style, account and channel. |
The wholesale checklist, feature by feature
Use this as your evaluation checklist. Every item below is standard in AIMS360, not an add-on module.
| Feature | Why wholesale needs it |
|---|---|
| Style / color / size matrix | You sell a size run, not a SKU. Up to 26 sizes per scale, entered as a grid. |
| Prepacks, case packs, bundles | Prepacks speed order entry and enforce minimums. Case packs are stocked and picked as a unit. Bundles derive availability from their components. |
| Tiered and customer-level pricing | Different prices for different accounts, applied automatically, not remembered by a rep. |
| Start and cancel ship windows | Wholesale orders ship to a window. Allocation and reporting respect it. |
| Open-to-sell across channels | Reps, portals, EDI and Shopify B2B all sell against one number. |
| Factor approvals and assignments | Credit cleared electronically before shipping. Invoices assigned on shipment. 14 factoring partners connected. |
| Retailer EDI, built in | 850, 856, 810, 860, 940/945 and the rest to 350+ retailers, plus chargeback management. |
| Rep tools and commissions | iPad order entry that works without wifi at a trade show. Commissions on posted invoices with splits and holdbacks. |
| Multi-warehouse, multi-currency, divisions | Several labels, several locations, several currencies, one set of books. |
| Reporting by account and line | Which accounts pay late, which lines return, where the margin is. |
Money side
Margin per account is visible the whole way
Distributors run on thin, repeatable margins across many accounts. The number that matters is not gross sales, it's margin after the price tier, the freight, the chargeback and the commission. AIMS360 holds all four on the same order, so the style analysis and sales order reports show margin by customer, by line and by channel without a spreadsheet in between. If a chain is a volume account and a loss, you'll see it.
When a retailer says the word EDI
Boutiques order through a rep or a portal. Chains, department stores and off-price send an 850 and expect an 856 with a UCC-128 on every carton. EDI in AIMS360 is part of the ERP, not a third-party connector, so the order, the allocation, the label and the invoice all come from one record. Compliance details for each retailer are on the EDI retailer integrations page. If none of your accounts require EDI yet, nothing on this page changes; it's there when the first one does.
We're a brand that sells wholesale, not a distributor. Does this page still apply?
Yes. The order book, pricing, allocation, factor and EDI workflow is the same whether you made the goods or bought them. The difference is what feeds inventory: a brand's inventory comes from production or imports (see the manufacturers and importers pages), a distributor's comes from vendor purchase orders and receiving. AIMS360 runs both, in the same system, with the same one-inventory rule.
Wholesale distributor FAQ
What wholesale distributors ask us
The best fit is an ERP built for style, color and size, with wholesale order entry, tiered account pricing, factor integration and retailer EDI inside the same system. AIMS360 was built for that operation and has served apparel and consumer brands for 40+ years. General distribution ERPs (NetSuite, Acumatica, Epicor Prophet 21, Dynamics 365) handle volume but need customization or add-ons for size runs, prepacks and apparel EDI compliance. See the apparel ERP guide for a side-by-side.
Those systems count units and are strong in industrial, food and hardware distribution. Apparel wholesale sells size runs, ships to start and cancel dates, clears credit through factors, and answers to retailer routing guides with chargebacks. AIMS360 handles those natively. A general system can get there with customization, which shows up in the implementation cost and timeline.
Price categories and tiers are set by account, by size and by quantity. A discount on the customer record applies to every order from that account automatically. Pricing applies to orders entered in AIMS360 or WebLink; orders imported from JOOR, NuORDER or another platform keep the price negotiated there.
Orders are sent electronically to your factor (CIT, Hilldun, Rosenthal, Wells Fargo, White Oak and others, 14 in total). The approval comes back onto the order. A denial is flagged so the team reviews it before a pick ticket is issued. When the order ships, the invoice is assigned to the factor with the correct remittance details.
Yes. Reps use RemoteLink on iPad, including offline at trade shows. Approved accounts sign in to WebLink, a private portal where they see the collections you allow, check availability by delivery date, place orders in size runs at their own price level, and view invoices. WebLink is for accounts you already have; new-buyer discovery runs through the JOOR, NuORDER, Faire and Brandboom integrations.
Yes. The invoice is generated from what actually shipped, including partial shipments, assigned to the factor if the account is factored, and synced two-way with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, NetSuite or Sage 100. Credit card and ACH payments run through AIMS360 Payments for accounts on card terms.
Only when an account requires it, which usually happens with the first department store, chain or off-price order. EDI is built into AIMS360 for 350+ retailers, so turning it on is configuration, not a new vendor.
Cloud. AIMS360 is web-based, runs on Microsoft Azure with redundant Azure SQL databases and backups, and upgrades itself with new features and security updates. Reps, warehouse staff and accounting all work in the same live data from anywhere. There is no server to buy or maintain.
AIMS360 is priced in three plans by team size: Bronze (3-user minimum), Silver (5-user minimum) and Gold (10-user minimum), billed quarterly, with no per-order or per-document fees. Implementation is a separate, scoped engagement quoted before you sign. Details are on the pricing page.
Typical go-live is 3 to 16 weeks. A single-warehouse operation with clean customer and style data lands on the short end. Multiple warehouses, several EDI retailers and a large price-tier structure take longer. AIMS360's own team runs it, including data migration. See the implementation page.
Yes. Each brand or product line can run as its own division inside one AIMS360 system, managed and reported independently, with multi-currency for international vendors and customers. Vendor purchase orders and receiving feed the lines you buy; production or import POs feed your own label.
Most AIMS360 customers are between $5 million and $100 million in revenue. Below that, the price tiers, factor and EDI workflow usually aren't in play yet. Above that, the same system scales with more users and warehouses.
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Bring one account and one season, we'll run it live
Send us a real price tier, a real size run and the name of the retailer that gives you the most paperwork. We'll enter the order, clear it with a factor, allocate it, ship it and invoice it in front of you. 30 minutes.
