The FMCG distribution pack is for a distributor who buys from principals and sells on credit to retailers along fixed beats, often from a van. It adds a Distribution page and a few extra fields and buttons on screens you already use: price lists, the client form, the payment form, Orders and Outstanding.
Where to find it
Open Inventory and tap Distribution. The page is one long board of cards, with Today's beat at the top.
Run your beats, step by step
Bring in your retailers
On Import retailers, choose a CSV (a Tally, Marg or spreadsheet party list saved as CSV) or a Tally masters XML. Beat, credit limit, credit days, tier and outlet type columns are read too. Tap Check file first: it shows how many are new, to update or already up to date, and every row with an error and why, and writes nothing. Then import. A retailer is matched by GSTIN, then PAN, then name and phone, and a match only fills blank fields, so importing the same file twice adds nothing.Set up your beats
On Beats, tap New beat: name it, tick its visit days and pick the retailers on it, in the order you visit them. Archive keeps a beat and its retailers; Restore brings it back.Already kept a Beat field and a Visit days field on your retailers? The workspace owner can tap Preview under Move beat fields into beats to see what would be made, with nothing written, then Move beat fields into beats to turn those fields into real beats. Running it again adds nothing, and the fields stay on your retailers.
Walk today's beat
Today's beat lists the beats due today: your own if you are the salesman on a beat, otherwise every beat due today. Each shop shows in visit order with its last order, what it owes and how many days it is overdue. Only people who can read reports see what a shop owes; others see "Not shown". Record each visit with one tap: Ordered, No order (then pick why, such as "Has enough stock"), Collected or Shop closed. Off-beat visit records a retailer who is not on today's beat. With no signal, the card shows the list this phone last loaded today, but visits cannot be recorded until you are connected. Recording visits needs a setup step on your workspace; until it is done, the card says it is not set up yet.Check your retailers
Retailers lists each retailer with outlet type, beats, credit limit, credit days, tier and GSTIN, or "Unregistered - B2C rules apply" when there is no GSTIN. Filter by beat or outlet type, and open a retailer to change anything. Each row's share menu sends that retailer their own price list on WhatsApp: it opens WhatsApp with a link ready and you tap send. The link shows only that retailer's prices and offers, expires after 30 days, and you can stop sharing it.Take an order
On Take an order, choose the beat, then a retailer on it, and find items by name, SKU or barcode. Enter cases and pieces; the scheme price and any free units show before you book. If the retailer is over their credit limit, has bills past their credit days or has had a cheque bounce, a warning shows. It warns and never stops the order. Set Taken to In the field, At the counter, On WhatsApp or From the van. The owner or an admin can tick Book in the name of this beat's salesman. Book order saves an ordinary sales order, in the same series as Orders, stamped with the beat and the salesman. Unless offline order taking is switched on (see below), booking is online only: nothing is saved until you are connected. The screen also shows Save shop location, but it cannot read the phone's location yet, so no shop point is saved today. Nothing tracks where a salesman goes.Add your vans
At the bottom of the page, Your vans lists every van. Tap Add a van, enter the Van name and its Vehicle number (for example KA01AB1234; leave it blank if the van has none), and tap Save van. Edit changes either later. The vehicle number shows on Van sales and prints on the challan. A role that cannot write sees the list and why there is no form. Vans need a setup step on your workspace; until it is done, the list says your vans could not be checked.Load the van and close the day
Load a van records what left which godown on which van. Close a van day records the cash expected, the cash counted and the UPI received; a final close cannot be changed after saving. Van sales shows each van's load-outs and day closes.Sell from the van and bring stock back
On Van stock and sales, choose a van to see what is On the van and its Load-outs (challans). Sell from this van: pick the challan the goods left on, the retailer, and items from that challan that are still on the van, in cases and pieces as on Take an order. Raise bill makes one tax invoice drawn from the van that names the challan; if your workspace needs approval, it waits for approval before it is issued. You cannot sell more than the van holds. Bring stock back moves what did not sell to a godown: choose it under Back to godown, tap Everything left on the van, lower or remove any line that stays on the van, and tap Bring back.Print challan on a load-out opens the Delivery challan: your business and GSTIN, the godown the goods left, the van and its vehicle number ("Not recorded" when there is none), each item with its HSN, quantity and value at its sale rate, and the total. The challan number is the load-out's transfer number. It records your own goods moving to your van, not a sale, and it does not make an e-way bill: raise that separately where the movement needs one.
Mark deliveries
Mark a shipment delivered lists shipments booked with a courier that are not yet delivered, by invoice number, retailer and status (Booked, Picked up, In transit or Out for delivery). Pick one and tap Mark delivered; it then shows on Proof of delivery. If nothing is waiting, the form says so and links to Book a shipment.Collect and follow up
When you record a payment on the payment form, the person signed in is saved as the collector. Collections lists a day's receipts bill by bill, by beat or by collector. Cheques shows the last 90 days of cheques as received, deposited, cleared or bounced; a bounce, once confirmed, re-opens the bill it paid and the retailer is flagged on new orders. On Outstanding, a retailer's row has Send reminder on WhatsApp, which opens WhatsApp with every open bill listed; you tap send.Take back returns and claim damage
Retailer return: pick the retailer and the bill, and enter how many came back good and how many damaged or expired. Good stock goes back to the godown it was sold from; damaged and expired stock goes to your damage godown (a godown of kind Damage), and a credit note is issued to the retailer. Then Claim from damaged returns adds those lines to that principal's draft claim. Its values are before GST.Claim from your principals
Draft a principal claim: pick the principal, the period, the claim type (scheme, damage, expiry, rate difference or display) and the amount. On Principal claims, submit it, mark it accepted, part accepted or rejected, and settle it with the principal's credit note reference. Download CSV saves your claims, one line per claim line. It is a generic format, not any principal's own, so check the columns before you send it. Open claims by age shows, for each principal, how many claims are waiting, their total and the oldest, counted from the end of the claim period because the date a claim was sent is not recorded. Drafts, rejected and settled claims are left out.Read the reports
Stock statement gives opening, purchases, sales, free, returns and closing for each principal's items in a period (the principal is the Principal field on the item), and downloads as a generic CSV. Outlet coverage shows how many outlets on each beat were billed each month. Scheme leakage sets the scheme value you gave retailers against what you claimed from principals and what they settled.Beat productivity covers a period of up to 92 days, by beat or by salesman. Planned is the shops on each beat today times its visit days in the period. Visited is a shop with a visit recorded or an order booked, Productive is a shop that ordered, and Lines/call is order lines per productive call. Off-beat visits are counted on their own. The card says when visits or beat orders are not set up yet, and when a period is too large to read in full.
On Sales analysis, the Secondary sales card splits the report's period by principal, brand, SKU, beat, salesman, outlet type and month. The beat and salesman tabs read the beat orders your bills came from, and say so when beats or beat orders are not set up yet.
Paste an order from WhatsApp
On Take an order, after choosing the retailer, tap Paste a WhatsApp order. Paste The retailer's message as they sent it, one item per line (for example "Parle-G 5 cs 3 pc"), and tap Read order. Lines that match your items are added to the order. Lines it could not match are listed under Not added - check these lines, and a line that could be more than one item asks Which item did they mean? with a button for each. Only the first 200 lines are read. The order is marked as taken On WhatsApp, and nothing is booked until you check the lines and tap Book order.
Taking orders with no signal
This depends on whether offline order taking is switched on.
- Switched off. Take an order is online only. The card says an order is not saved until you are connected.
- Switched on. The card says the order waits on this phone. With no connection, Book order keeps the order on the phone and sends it when you are back online, while the Distribution page is open. The card shows how many orders are waiting to send. If a send got no answer, the order waits under Check before sending again rather than being sent twice: check Orders, then tap Send again or Discard.
Each order carries one request number, so it is booked once however often it is sent, once that part is set up on your workspace. Recording a visit on Today's beat always needs a connection.
Schemes, free goods and combos
Schemes live on Price lists. Besides a price or a discount, a rule can give free goods (buy a quantity, get a quantity of the same or another item), run only between a valid-from and a valid-to date, need a minimum line value, pair two items as a combo, and name the principal who funds it. The order screen and the invoice form add the free units to the line, and the invoice form offers Apply combo when two items of a combo are on the bill.
Order-value slabs and bigger combos
- Min. order value. A slab applies when the bill's items in the rule's scope add up to this value at list price. Each of those lines then gets the better of the slab's discount and its own scheme.
- Combos of 3 to 10 items. Pick the second item under Combo with, then tap Add an item to the combo for each further item, up to 10 in all. A combo applies only when every item is on the same bill in its quantities. Each line gets the better of the combo and any single-item scheme, and free units are given once per complete set.
- A combo at a set price. Choose Fixed price with a combo and enter the Set price (₹) for one set.
- Funded by. Name the principal who funds the scheme, or leave it as No principal.
On the invoice form, Combo schemes on this bill lists each combo and slab the bill reaches, with Apply combo beside it. A free-goods combo asks you to add a line for the free item, because free units go on that item's own line. At the counter, the till applies the same combos and slabs by itself for a customer on a price list, and names the scheme in green on the cart line. There is no Apply combo button on the till. Slabs, bigger combos and set-price combos each need a setup step on your workspace; until it is done, the rule editor does not offer them or says they are not set up yet.
Tell retailers about your schemes
On Price lists, beside a selling list that has a scheme, the Publish schemes to retailers card shows. Tap Publish to retailers: the list is switched on and the publication is recorded, and the card says how many retailers are on the list. A retailer is told once on WhatsApp per set of schemes, only if they agreed to marketing messages and retailer messages are live for your workspace. Until they are live, the card says nothing was sent. Free-goods schemes are not announced yet.
Offer near-expiry stock to retailers
On Inventory, the Expiring soon list has Make an offer on each batch that has not expired. In Offer near-expiry stock, read the batch's expiry date (the offer tells retailers that date), enter the Offer price per unit (₹) and the date the Offer ends on (no later than the expiry), pick the Retailers to offer it to, and tap Save offer. A retailer can hold only one open offer on a batch at a time. As with schemes, a retailer is told once per offer, only if they agreed to marketing messages and retailer messages are live for your workspace; until then the dialog says nothing was sent. Near-expiry offers need a setup step on your workspace; until it is done, saving says they are not set up yet.
Your FSSAI licence
The FSSAI licence card on the Distribution page keeps your own business's licence: the Licence number (14 digits, as printed), Issued by, Valid from and Valid until. Tap Save licence. Each licence then reads Valid, Renew soon (from 30 days before it lapses), Lapsed or No expiry recorded. To record a renewal, add the licence again with its new dates. What you type is kept as you typed it; nothing is checked with FSSAI, and no renewal reminder is sent today, so look at the card. The FSSAI number box on each invoice stays as it is: that box is what prints on the bill. The card's words are in English only for now, and it needs a setup step on your workspace before it can save.
Credit days
The client add and edit screens carry Credit days. The order form's credit check and a new invoice's payment terms read it. Credit limit and overdue bills warn; nothing is held or blocked.
What it does not do yet
- Take an order offline, unless offline order taking is switched on. Without it, booking needs a connection.
- Record a visit outcome with no signal.
- Save a shop's location. The button shows but cannot read the phone's location yet.
- Give retailers a login of their own to order. The price-list link is read-only.
- Send reminders or price lists by itself. You open WhatsApp and tap send.
- Hold or block an order on credit. It warns only.
- Keep a retailer's FSSAI number, or remind you to renew your own licence.
- Produce a principal's own stock-statement format; the CSV is generic.
- Take back free units on a return, or recover a bank's bounce charge.
Parts made for your trade
Each part below opens only where it is switched on for your workspace. Ask your administrator if one is missing.
- Outlet type on every retailer
- Beat and visit days
- Credit days and credit limit
- Principal and brand on each SKU
- MRP on the item
- FSSAI number on the bill
- Dispatch details
- Godown, buying and accounts roles