Wholesale & Distribution
Customer profitability, stock turn and true landed margin.
Wholesale margin hides in the detail — rebates, drop sizes, carriage, returns and payment terms all move it, and none of them sit in the same report. We rebuild margin at the line level so pricing and range decisions stop being guesses.
The numbers that matter here
What we'd connect here
Whatever it is and however it exposes itself — API, database, nightly file, or a spreadsheet somebody maintains by hand. We only ever need read access, with personal data excluded.
What we do about it
Where it hurts
- True margin per customer buried under rebates, carriage and terms
- Stock turn and dead stock reported too late to act
- Trade pricing decisions made without knowing the current margin
- Rep performance measured on revenue, not contribution
What Acta builds
- Line-level margin with rebates, carriage and returns attributed properly
- Customer and product contribution ranking that updates itself
- Stock turn, ageing and availability in one operational view
- Rep and depot performance on contribution rather than revenue
What you get
Pricing and range decisions made on real margin, the same week.
Live in months rather than years, from £5k a month, on your own Google environment — handed over to you, or run by us.
Inside a wholesale and distribution engagement
Wholesale margin hides in the detail. Rebates, drop sizes, carriage, returns and payment terms all move it, and none of them sit in the same report, so the headline gross margin on the sales report and the real contribution a customer leaves behind can be a long way apart. Reps are measured on revenue because that is the number that is easy to pull, stock turn and dead stock are reported too late to act on, and trade pricing decisions get made without anyone knowing the current margin they are pricing against.
We rebuild margin at the line level in your own BigQuery, with rebates, carriage and returns attributed to the order and customer that caused them, and join it to stock so ageing and availability sit in the same view. The customer that most often turns out to be a problem is a high-revenue account whose rebate structure and carriage cost quietly make it one of the least profitable you serve — invisible on revenue, obvious on contribution. Dead stock becomes visible while there is still a decision to make on it rather than after.
The result is that pricing and range decisions run on real margin the same week, rep and depot performance is measured on contribution rather than revenue, and a customer or product ranking that updates itself replaces the quarterly spreadsheet. You do not need a data team or a platform project for it — the work happens in your environment, on the systems you already run.
You don't need to be a tech company. You need to see your own numbers.
Builders merchants. Wholesalers. Distributors. Plant hire. Family manufacturers. Serious turnover on thin margin, where the person who really understands the numbers is the owner, a long-serving manager, and a shared drive. If that is you, this is more for you than it is for the tech companies — because you are the one still doing it by hand.
Cash sitting on a shelf nobody has counted since March
The only copy, and it leaves when Dave does
Gross margin, so the branch that eats the deliveries still looks fine
Nobody knows the win rate, or which quotes went cold and why
Two versions in circulation, and the trade counter has the old one
Cost to serve per drop, which is where the margin actually goes
Set once, three years ago, on a customer who has since doubled
Rebate thresholds you hit or miss without noticing until the quarter ends
Every one of those is a question the business already asks every week. None of them talk to each other, none of them have any history, and all of them depend on somebody remembering to update them.
Which customers actually make you money
Not gross margin — margin after the deliveries, the returns, the credit you carry and the time your team spends on them. Most merchants find a handful of their biggest accounts are their worst.
What is dead on the shelf
Every line, how long since it moved, and what that cash would be worth doing something else. Along with the lines you keep running out of, which is the same question from the other side.
Which branch, van or rep is carrying the others
The same numbers for every part of the business, worked out the same way — so the comparison is an argument about what to do rather than about whose spreadsheet is right.
You are not too small for this. You are the size where it pays back fastest.
In a large corporate, doing this properly is a multi-year programme with a steering committee. In a business of forty or a hundred people it is a few months, because the whole operation genuinely fits in one layer — one stock system, one finance system, one CRM if you are lucky, and the spreadsheets in between.
And the payback is not a nicer report. It is one dead product line cleared, one bad account repriced, one rebate threshold hit that you would otherwise have missed. At £60k a year for a single area, that arithmetic tends to work out quickly — or start with the £15k map and see the numbers before you commit to anything.
What this looks like in wholesale & distribution.
Common questions
Our true margin is buried under rebates, carriage and terms — can you untangle it?
Yes. We rebuild margin at the line level with rebates, carriage, returns and payment terms all attributed properly, so margin per customer and per product stops being a guess. Pricing and range decisions then run on real contribution rather than headline revenue.
Can you show stock turn and dead stock early enough to act?
Yes — stock turn, ageing and availability land in one operational view that updates itself, rather than a report that arrives too late to do anything about. Dead stock becomes visible while there is still a decision to make on it.
We're a distributor, not a tech company — is this really for us?
It is built for exactly this. You do not need a data team or a platform project: we work in your own Google environment, read from the systems you already run, and put real margin in front of you within a week. Solving one area is £60k a year at £5k a month.
Which wholesale & distribution systems do you connect to?
Whatever you already run — it makes no difference whether a system exposes an API, a database view, a nightly file or a spreadsheet somebody maintains by hand. In wholesale & distribution that usually means: ERP (Kerridge K8, Sage 200, Access Dimensions, SAP Business One); Warehouse management; Trade counter EPOS; Telesales and quoting; Carrier and haulier portals; Supplier EDI and price files; In-house SQL Server; The rebate and margin spreadsheets. We only ever need read access with personal data excluded, and the layer is built in your own Google environment rather than ours.
Other sectors
Bring one decision your data should be helping you make.
30 minutes, no deck. We'll tell you on the call whether we're the right partner, and exactly what we'd ship in the first 30 days.