Software for parts distributors and wholesalers

No. You choose “supplier” as your business type when you set the account up, and the supplier side is switched on for you. What you should know is that there is no separate distributor product: you get the whole platform — stock, a counter, invoices, customers and reporting — with Supplier Operations on top of it. For most wholesalers that is useful rather than surplus, because a trade counter is still a counter.

For the connected order, yes. The whole point is that their purchase order and your sales order are one record, and that only works when both businesses are on it. Everyone else is still an ordinary customer with ordinary invoices — you are not locked out of trading with them, you just re-key their orders the way you do now.

You decide, per catalogue. Quantity can show as an exact figure, as availability only, or not at all. Prices are the wholesale price you set per item, and an item left without one shows as price on application. Cost prices, margins, internal notes and reorder levels are never shared, in any mode.

Two steps, and the second one catches people out. First you apply from your settings, which is where the trading details, categories and delivery terms go. Once that is approved you still have to publish your public profile — a description, at least one supplier type, at least one category and a fulfilment method — and until you do, you are approved but not listed.

Not before the fact, and it is fairer to say so plainly. A shop already on the platform can add you as their supplier and you appear as their business customer straight away, without an approval step. What you control is everything after that: you can turn new orders off, decline an order with a reason they see, set credit terms and a limit per customer, or archive the relationship once nothing is outstanding.

They book the delivery in line by line — accepted, damaged, missing or the wrong item — and raise a discrepancy against the lines that were not right. You accept it, accept part of it, or reject it with a reason. Then you send a replacement, authorise a return, or issue a credit, and the shop confirms it is settled before it closes.

The order becomes an invoice, and when a shop pays it they submit the payment against it. That submission is a claim until you verify it, and an unverified claim never reduces the balance you are owed. Each business customer has a statement showing what has been invoiced, what has been verified, what is outstanding and what is overdue, against the terms and credit limit you set for them.

Supplier Operations is part of the Supplier Pro plan rather than an extra you bolt on, so one price covers the platform and the supplier side together. The trial runs fourteen days on that plan with every feature available and no card, which is long enough to take a real order from a real customer before you decide.

Three shops is a month you do not pay for, and two is a month if they are on Professional or above — so the arithmetic starts working at two or three rather than at thirty. What it will not do is pay you: credit only ever cancels your own bill. The plan prices it is measured against are on the pricing page.

No. Credit follows their subscription, not their orders. If a shop you introduced starts buying from another wholesaler as well, or instead, the month you earned is still yours — they are still a customer here and you are still the reason. We would rather not be in the business of policing who you trade with.

As many as you like, and there is no ceiling on what you can earn — nine on Starter is three free months, eighteen is six. Because credit is earned once per shop rather than paid out every month, bringing more is the only way to keep earning, which is exactly the way round we want it.

Not yet, and it is worth being straight about it. You tell us who you are bringing before they sign up, we match them when they arrive, and we apply the free month to your subscription when you ask for it. That is the whole mechanism. We would rather run it by hand and honestly than build a dashboard around a programme nobody has used yet.