Agriculture Distributor Management Cloud DMS for South African Agribusiness

Each consignment carries its own tier history. Primary movement into the distributor and secondary movement out to farm-supply retailers, co-operative branches and growers sit on separate ledgers. Every tier has its own rand price list, credit window and scheme rules, so stock being pushed down the channel is visible in-month rather than at the close.

Containers of crop protection, biological products and feed take their lot number and manufacture date at goods receipt. Dispatch defaults to FEFO, so the shortest-dated lot leaves first, and near-expiry alerts arrive early enough for the brand team to redeploy or discount the stock. A recall search runs on the lot number alone.

Planting calendars differ by province: summer-rainfall maize and soya on the highveld, winter grain in the Western Cape, cane in KwaZulu-Natal and citrus in Limpopo. The planning board sets warehouse cover against expected demand for each of them, and AI proposes depot-to-depot transfers so fertiliser and seed already sit in Bloemfontein, Polokwane or the Cape before growers start ordering.

Rand price trees are configured per tier: lead distributor, regional depot, seed agent, animal-feed wholesaler and co-operative branch. Off-invoice, on-invoice and post-invoice trade discounts hang off each of them. Co-operative overrides and seasonal promotions apply themselves on the order screen, so nothing has to be edited by hand.

Seasonal schemes are layered over base rand pricing as slab bonuses. An early-season stocking offer is live only inside the date window it was given. Crop-specific deals — maize top-dressing, wheat seed, cane herbicide, citrus nutrition — test eligibility as the order is keyed, and scheme ROI moves against the month-to-date target as it happens.

Terms are held on the account and enforced the moment an order is captured. The ageing dashboard surfaces accounts nearing their ceiling, and a booking stops automatically once the limit is passed. Co-operative accounts frequently run through to a harvest payout while farm-supply retailers settle on a shorter cycle; both patterns are configured side by side.

The retailer logs the return on the app with a photograph, the invoice reference, the lot number and a reason code. On approval the credit note and the replacement dispatch are raised in one action. Crop protection and stock remedies carry tighter return caps and a full audit trail, which supports SAHPRA stock-remedy and SABS traceability requirements.

A bulk co-operative order draws on a ring-fenced allocation pool priced on volume slabs. Day-to-day retailer reorders keep pulling from general stock, so a single large tender cannot empty the shelves the rest of the territory depends on. The slab discount is calculated on the rep's screen while the order is still open.

Yes. REST APIs connect to SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage and in-house distributor systems. Orders, invoices, GRN, returns, lot records and card or instant EFT payment entries pass in both directions. Bulk master loads and ledger reconciliation run over SFTP feeds.

Brand teams read secondary sell-out, range coverage, scheme ROI and progress against month-to-date targets. Operations watch on-time dispatch, expiry exposure and the exception queue. Finance works through credit ageing, the cost of returns, and card or instant EFT settlement matched back to dispatch. Every view drills down to the individual lot transaction.