For FMCG distribution houses
Your counter and your salesmen,
on the same books.
A Windows billing counter and an Android app for the field. Both keep working when the internet does not, and catch up the moment it returns.
GST invoicing · batch & expiry tracking · van delivery · field collections
For the owner
You open it and the day is already answered
That screen above is the first thing anyone sees on opening Distro — not a menu, and not a blank billing form. It is the morning's questions, already answered, without running a report:
- What have we sold today, and what came in as cash.
- What is owed to us, and how much of it has been owed too long.
- What needs attention now — stock running out, batches expiring, customers past their credit limit, orders waiting to be billed.
The reports are still there when you want to go deeper. Most mornings you will not need to.
What it does
Everything the counter does in a day
GST billing
Tax invoices, credit and debit notes, HSN and cess. A GSTR-1 workbook, a GSTR-3B worksheet to check the portal's draft against, and GSTR-2B reconciliation to find credit a supplier never declared.
Batches and expiry
Stock tracked by batch and sold first-expiry-first-out, so short-dated goods move before they become a write-off. Damaged returns go to quarantine, not back on the shelf.
Salesmen in the field
Orders taken against today's beat, with live stock and the shop's outstanding in view. Collections recorded on the spot, with a photo of the payment screen.
Van delivery, and one-click credit notes
Load a van against the bills it carries, then record what each customer accepted line by line. A part delivery or a refusal becomes a credit note in a single action — nobody re-keys fifty returned items to correct one trip.
Cash that reaches the office
A receipt is written where the money changes hands, with a photograph of the payment screen against it. Handing in at the counter is then its own step, settled receipt by receipt — so the cash a rep collected and the cash that reached the drawer are reconciled against each other rather than trusted to agree.
Reports that answer questions
Who is over their credit limit. What is expiring this month. Which shops nobody has visited. Who owes you the longest, and which lines are not moving. Twenty-four of them, across stock, sales, purchase, accounts and field work — every one date-ranged, filterable, and out to Excel in a click.
How it works
Built for a connection that comes and goes
Every device keeps a full copy of your books. Billing does not stop because the line dropped, and a salesman on a beat with no signal still takes orders and collects money. Everything settles up when the connection returns.
Nobody presses Sync. The counter looks for new work every minute on its own, so an order taken on a beat at eleven is waiting to be billed before the rep has reached the next shop. It runs the same way in reverse — a rate you change at the counter reaches every salesman's phone without anyone being told to refresh it.
And the same books, in the field
Nobody starts the day by pressing Download. The handset syncs on its own overnight and again through the day, so a rep who opens the app at seven has this morning's prices, this morning's stock and this morning's dues without thinking about it.
The salesman opens on today's beat and works down it. Each shop shows what it owes before he walks in, and the order screen carries live stock, the customer's rate, any scheme running on the item — and a warning when the stock he is promising is already promised to somebody else.
No signal is not a problem. Orders and collections are captured on the handset and reach the counter the moment there is a connection.
The list is ordered by what this shop actually buys. Not the catalogue, and not what sells well generally — this customer's own recent orders, most frequent first. A rep covering someone else's beat, or on his first day, can take a sensible order from a shop he has never walked into.
It also tells him where the next sale is. When a customer is close to a slab, the line says so — “+13 Box → 2% bonus” — so the rep asks for the bigger order with a reason the shopkeeper can check, instead of guessing which scheme applies to whom.
Rates and schemes
One rate, and both of you can see how it got there
Most arguments in this trade are about a number, not about goods. Three of them are settled before they start.
The quote is the bill
The salesman's phone and the billing counter run the same pricing code, off the same rate charts. He cannot promise a rate the counter will not honour, because neither of them is working it out separately.
The rebate arrives on the bill
A customer working towards a target gets what he has earned on each bill as he earns it, with what was already given tracked against it. Nothing waits for a month-end settlement that both sides then recalculate differently.
Two discounts do not make one argument
A 10% offer on top of a 9% tier is 18.1%, not 19%. The line says so — the offer, the tier and the resolved figure, printed where the rate is typed rather than reconciled afterwards.
You can see the last one on the bill above: “Line offer: Monsoon Dhamaka −10% on top of tier 9% → 18.1% total (stacked, not added)”.
Who it is for
Distribution houses with a counter and a team
The kind of business where the counter cannot stop because the connection dropped, and where what the salesman promised and what the counter billed have to be the same thing.
Where it fits
It does not replace your accountant
Distro is not accounting software and does not pretend to be. There is no balance sheet, no profit and loss, no journal. Your accountant keeps doing what they do. What Distro replaces is the part that was never really theirs — the counter, the van and the salesmen.
An order is not typed twice
The order a salesman takes on his phone becomes the bill at the counter. Nobody reads it off a diary and keys it in again, and nothing is lost between the two.
Billed is not the same as delivered
A general package treats the invoice as the end of the story. Distro tracks what the van actually left behind, and turns what came back into a credit note.
Stock knows its expiry
Batches sell first-expiry-first, damaged returns go to quarantine rather than back on the shelf, and the counter is warned before short-dated goods become a write-off.
For GST it goes as far as the filing: a GSTR-1 workbook your accountant uploads, a GSTR-3B worksheet to check the portal's draft against, and reconciliation of what your suppliers have actually declared. It does not file on your behalf, and it is not tax advice.
What you are buying
Counters and salesmen — not devices
A subscription covers a number of billing counters and a number of field salesmen. That is deliberately not a count of machines and handsets, and it is the difference you feel on the day something breaks.
A rep drops their phone
He signs in on the new one and carries on. There is nobody to ring and nothing to re-license, because the seat belongs to the salesman, not the handset.
A counter PC dies
You retire the old machine yourself from Settings and set the replacement up in its place. You do not wait on us to unlock anything.
The line goes down for a week
The counter keeps billing for a month without reaching us at all. Losing your connection is not the same as losing your software.
Setup
What you’ll need to run it
Runs on Windows. The field app is issued to your salesmen separately.
Talk to us
We set it up with you — your items, your customers, your rate charts — and stay on the phone through your first day of billing. Call or message to arrange a demo.