Trade orders still arrive in more ways than most suppliers would like. A café emails a list on Sunday night. A retailer texts a photo of an empty shelf. Someone leaves a voicemail after the warehouse has gone home. And every one of them gets keyed in by hand the next morning, checked against what that customer pays, and fixed when the case size or the price turns out to be wrong.
Taking trade orders online fixes most of that. Your customers order when it suits them, at their own prices, and you get a tidy order to check instead of a message to decode. This guide covers what to sort out before you start, the decisions that matter, and how to bring your buyers across. It's written for NZ wholesalers, distributors and producers who sell to other businesses.
Start with the prices you actually charge
The hardest part of ordering online isn't the website. It's the price list.
If your trade prices live in a spreadsheet, a few people's heads and old emails, an online order page will show every gap. Before anything goes online, get each customer's pricing into one place:
- Price levels. Most suppliers have a few, such as wholesale, distributor and key account. Put each customer on one.
- Quantity breaks. If 10 cases cost less each than one case, write that down as a rule rather than leaving it to whoever takes the order.
- Customer-specific deals. The 5% off one product for one long-standing customer belongs in the system, not in someone's memory.
- Pack sizes. Decide whether each product is ordered by the each, the case or the carton, so a buyer can't order 7 single jars of something you only sell by the dozen.
Once this is right, an online order is priced correctly without anyone checking it, which is most of the time you're trying to save.
Choose what to sell online
You don't have to put everything online on day one. Start with the products your trade customers order again and again. Leave out discontinued lines, made-to-order items and anything where the price is agreed case by case. You can keep those for phone and email until you're ready.
Make sure the products you do put online have a clear name, the code your customers know them by, a short description and a photo if you have one. Buyers searching for "1kg" or a product code should find what they're after quickly.
Decide how much stock to show
Buyers want to know whether they can have something before they order it. They don't need to know how many you've got. Showing "in stock", "low" and "out of stock" gives them enough to plan, without telling a competitor or your biggest customer exactly where you stand.
Whatever you show has to be accurate. If the site says something's in stock and it isn't, you're back on the phone apologising. Get your stock counts current before you open the doors, and keep receiving deliveries and recording production as you go.
Keep control of credit and checking
Trade selling runs on credit, so decide up front what happens when an order comes in:
- Check before you confirm. Most suppliers starting out are happier with online orders arriving as drafts that someone checks and confirms. It gives you a chance to look at freight, substitutions and anything unusual before stock is committed.
- Respect credit limits. A customer on stop shouldn't be able to order online when they couldn't over the phone. If a customer has a credit limit, decide whether an order that takes them over it is refused or just flagged for you.
- Keep the paperwork the same. An online order should end up as the same sales order, picking list and invoice as any other, so nothing changes for the warehouse or for your accounts.
Sort out delivery details and cut-offs
Each customer should have its delivery addresses set up, so buyers pick from a list rather than typing an address. Tell buyers your order cut-off time and delivery days where they'll see them when they order, such as "orders in by 2pm are sent the same day". Let them add their own order number, because many trade customers need it on the invoice.
If you supply a group, such as a head office with several branches, work out who orders for whom. Often one person at head office orders for every branch, and each branch has its own prices and delivery address.
Bring your buyers across
Once it's set up, the work is in getting people to use it. A few things help:
- Start with your regular buyers. The people who order every week get the most out of it and become your best example.
- Invite people, not businesses. Each buyer gets their own login, so you know who placed each order and can turn one person off without affecting the rest of their team.
- Help with the first order. A short email explaining what's there, and an offer to talk them through their first order, gets most buyers going.
- Keep the old way open. Carry on taking phone and email orders while people switch. Pushing everyone over at once annoys the customers you most want to keep.
After a month, look at how many orders came in online, how much keying time it saved and whether pricing mistakes dropped. That tells you whether to bring the next group of customers across.
How Frostbyte Pro does it
Frostbyte Pro has a trade portal built in, at no extra cost. In a new account you switch it on in Settings, choose which products to sell in it, and invite buyers from each customer's page. Buyers sign in with their own email and password and see their own prices, including price tiers, quantity breaks and their discounts, with stock shown as in stock, low stock or out of stock. Each order arrives as a draft for you to confirm, credit limits and holds apply, and buyers can see their orders, tracking and invoices in the same place. Buyers don't pay in the portal, and only people you invite can order.
You can read more about it on the B2B ordering portal page, or see how it fits with pricing, warehouses and dispatch on the wholesale inventory page.
The short version
Taking trade orders online works when the prices are right, the stock is accurate and the order lands in the same place as everything else. Get your price levels, quantity breaks and pack sizes in order first, show availability rather than numbers, keep checking orders before you commit stock, and bring your buyers across a few at a time.