Wholesale Distribution ERP — Sage 100 & Sage 300

The Inventory and Pricing Squeeze Distributors Feel First

Wholesale distribution is a volume business with thin margins, which means small inefficiencies compound quickly. An inventory count that's off by a few percent across thousands of SKUs translates into real dollars of carrying cost or lost sales. A pricing structure that can't handle customer-specific contracts and quantity breaks means sales reps either manually override prices — creating margin leakage — or lose deals to competitors who can quote faster. Sage 100 and Sage 300 address both problems natively, but only when configured with distribution-specific workflows in mind, not left at default settings designed for a generic small business.

Distribution Capabilities We Configure

Multi-Warehouse Inventory: Available-to-Sell, Not Just On-Hand

A common gap we find in distribution ERP setups is that the system only tracks total on-hand quantity per warehouse, without distinguishing between quantity on hand, quantity already committed to open orders, and quantity available to sell. This causes overselling — promising inventory to a customer that's already allocated to someone else — or under-selling, where sales reps avoid quoting items because they're not confident the system's numbers are accurate. We configure Sage 100 and Sage 300 so that available-to-sell quantity is visible at the point of order entry, by warehouse, accounting for open sales orders and in-transit transfers.

Pricing Structures That Match How You Actually Sell

Distribution pricing is rarely a single price list. Real-world pricing structures include base price levels by customer class, customer-specific contract pricing that overrides the base level, quantity break pricing within a single order, and time-limited promotional pricing. When these rules live in spreadsheets or in a sales rep's head rather than in the system, the result is inconsistent pricing, margin leakage, and a slow quoting process. We map your actual pricing logic — however complex — into Sage's pricing structures, so that quotes and orders calculate the correct price automatically without manual lookups.

Landed Cost: Why Vendor Invoice Price Isn't Your Real Cost

For distributors importing product — which describes most distributors operating through Southern California's ports — the vendor invoice price is only part of the true cost. Ocean freight, customs duties, tariffs, drayage, and brokerage fees all need to be allocated into inventory cost for gross margin reporting to mean anything. Without landed cost configured, two products with identical vendor invoice prices but very different import costs (due to tariff classification, for example) will show identical — and misleading — margins. We configure landed cost allocation so these costs flow into inventory value automatically as shipments are received.

EDI: Compliance Isn't Optional for Big-Box and Major Accounts

If your distribution business sells to large retail accounts, EDI compliance for purchase orders (850), invoices (810), and advance ship notices (856) is typically a contractual requirement, not a nice-to-have. The risk isn't just the EDI transactions themselves — it's whether they integrate cleanly with your inventory and order system. We've seen EDI integrations that technically "work" but require manual re-entry into Sage afterward, defeating the purpose. We configure EDI integrations that write directly into Sage 100 or Sage 300's order entry and inventory, so EDI orders flow through your normal fulfillment process without double entry.

Southern California Distribution Market Expertise

The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach make Southern California the entry point for a significant share of U.S. imports. Our distribution clients include importers, master distributors, and e-commerce fulfillment operations serving the U.S. market from warehouses in Ontario, City of Industry, Long Beach, and Cerritos. We understand this market and configure Sage accordingly.

We also serve the region's large Chinese-speaking distribution community — providing full bilingual Sage support in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Sub-Industries We Work With

Wholesale distribution covers a wide range of sub-industries, each with its own configuration nuances. We work with food and beverage importers, consumer goods distributors, industrial supply companies, electronics distributors, medical supply distributors, and apparel importers — each of which is described in more detail on its own page.

Frequently Asked Questions