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Custom DMS software for brands and distributors

A distributor management system built around how you actually distribute.

You know what you billed your distributors. What they sold to the shops — that is the number you are missing. We build DMS software that captures it: distributor stock, secondary billing, schemes, claims, collections, and a field app your reps will actually open. Custom. Owned by you. And once your network has any real size to it, costing about what you would spend renting a DMS for a few years — well, sometimes less.

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Sound familiar?

When distribution has outgrown Excel

Secondary sales arrive as an Excel sheet from each distributor. Every Monday. In a different format each time.

You know what you billed to distributors. What they sold to shops — no idea.

Scheme claims pile up for a quarter, then one person spends two weeks reconciling them.

A distributor says he is out of stock. Your system says he has plenty. Both are guessing.

Your current DMS cannot do your slab scheme, so it lives in a spreadsheet on the side.

Every new sales rep you hire means another seat on a monthly bill.

Two of these and you are already paying for a DMS. Just not in a way that shows up as a line item.

Rent or own

Custom DMS for about what you’d pay to rent one

Ready-made DMS products charge by the head. Per distributor login, per sales rep, per month. A brand with sixty distributors and thirty-five reps is paying for ninety-five seats — every month, and more the month after it hires. The bill follows your growth. It never stops.

A custom build is paid for once. Put the two side by side over a few years and they usually land in the same range, except one of them runs your schemes exactly, talks to your Tally, and belongs to you when the few years are up. Small network, standard schemes? Rent. We will tell you that on the first call, and mean it.

The basics

What is a distributor management system?

A distributor management system (DMS) is software that connects a brand to its distributors and, through them, to retailers. It records what each distributor bought, what they sold to shops, what stock is left in the godown, which schemes applied, and who owes money to whom. The whole point is secondary sales — knowing what reached the market, not just what left your factory.

01 · Primary sale

Brand

You bill the distributor or super stockist. The number your ERP already knows.

02 · Secondary sale

Distributor

The distributor bills retailers. This is where most brands go blind, and what a DMS exists to capture.

03 · Tertiary sale

Retailer

The shop sells to the customer. You see it through orders, returns and reorder patterns.

04 · One view

Your dashboard

Stock, sales and money at every level, as it happens rather than at month end.

Distributor management vs distribution management

People use the two terms interchangeably. They overlap, not completely.

Distributor managementDistribution management
FocusYour relationship with each distributor — stock, billing, schemes, claims.The whole route to market — distributors, field team, retailers, logistics.
Main usersDistributors, their billing staff, your sales ops team.Everyone above, plus field reps, area managers and leadership.
Usually includesInventory, secondary billing, scheme and claim management, collections.A DMS plus sales force automation, retailer ordering and analytics.
What it does

DMS modules, and what each one replaces

Eight modules. You probably need five of them on day one. Which five depends on where it hurts — we would rather build those well than ship eight that half work.

01

Purchase orders and GRN

Distributor raises a PO to you, you dispatch, they confirm receipt against it. Shortages and damages recorded at the door, not argued about later.

Replaces: POs on WhatsApp, receipts on paper.

02

Distributor inventory

Live stock at every distributor, by SKU, batch and expiry. Near-expiry stock flagged before it becomes a return.

Replaces: calling the distributor to ask.

03

Secondary billing

Distributor bills retailers from the DMS itself — GST invoice, e-invoice, e-way bill — so every secondary sale is captured the moment it happens.

Replaces: the Monday Excel sheet.

04

Schemes and claims

Slab discounts, quantity schemes, free goods, display schemes, region-specific offers. Applied on the bill, claimed back to you automatically, proof attached.

Replaces: the quarterly claim reconciliation.

05

Retailer credit and collections

Credit limits per retailer, outstanding by age, collections recorded in the field by UPI or cash, and a hold when a shop crosses its limit.

Replaces: a ledger and somebody’s memory.

06

Field sales app

Beat plans, retailer visits with location check-in, order taking against live distributor stock. Works offline.

Replaces: order books and phone calls.

07

Returns and damages

Expired, damaged, wrong item — logged with a reason, credited correctly, visible to you so a pattern shows up before it becomes a habit.

Replaces: a pile in the corner of the godown.

08

Dashboards for each role

The brand sees the whole network. An area manager sees a territory. A distributor sees their own business. Same data, different doors.

Replaces: MIS reports built by hand.

The field app ships as a proper Android and iOS app, not a website squeezed onto a phone — the same way we build mobile apps for our other clients.

Why brands buy one

Problems a DMS actually fixes

What happens todayWith a DMS
No secondary sales dataYou plan production on what you billed distributors, then find stock stuck in their godowns.You plan on what actually reached shops.
Scheme leakageDiscounts given that should not have been. Claims paid that nobody can verify.Schemes apply by rule on the bill. Claims arrive with the invoices behind them.
Stock-outs at the retailerThe shop runs out, the distributor had it, nobody connected the two.Reps order against live stock. Low stock at a distributor triggers a reorder.
Expiry write-offsOld batches sit at the back while new ones get sold first.Batch and expiry tracked. Near-expiry stock flagged while it can still move.
Slow collectionsOutstanding is a number someone calculates at month end.Aged outstanding per retailer, live. Credit holds that enforce themselves.
A field team you cannot seeVisits reported at the end of the day, from memory.Check-ins with location, orders with timestamps, beats you can actually review.
Custom vs ready-made

Ready-made DMS or custom-built?

Ready-made is the right call sometimes. Fifteen distributors, one flat discount, no plans to double — rent, and do not overthink it. Everyone else, read the last row first.

Ready-made DMSNexona custom DMS
What you payPer distributor, per rep, per month. Grows every time you grow. Never stops.Paid to build. Then it is yours — no seat count, no annual rent.
Your schemesWhatever scheme types the product supports. The rest go to Excel.Your exact slab, region and free-goods logic, applied on the bill.
IntegrationsStandard connectors. Anything else is a paid customisation, if they agree to it.Built to talk to your Tally, SAP or ERP from day one.
ChangesRaise a ticket. Join the queue behind every other customer.Tell us. Small things land in days.
Your dataLives on their platform. Exports on their terms.Your database, your retailer list, your code.
Adding distributorsEach one is another licence.Onboard as many as you have. Nobody bills you per head.
Best forA small network with standard schemes. Honestly.A growing network, unusual schemes, or a bill that keeps climbing.

Want the arithmetic, not the adjectives? We ran the three-year cost of a ready-made vs custom DMS in seat-months, so you can plug in your own vendor’s quote.

Who we build for

DMS for the way your industry sells

A pharma distributor and a paint dealer both “manage stock”. That is about where the similarity ends.

FMCGThousands of small retailers, small drop sizes, van sales, and schemes that change every month.
PharmaBatch and expiry on every line, drug licence numbers on invoices, near-expiry returns, recall by batch.
Paints and building materialsDealer credit limits, project pricing, and tinted or cut-to-size items that are not a simple SKU.
Agri inputsSeasonal credit — goods out before kharif or rabi, money back after harvest — and dues tracked across months.
Consumer electronicsSerial numbers on every unit, warranty registration at sale, service returns kept apart from sales returns.
BeveragesReturnable crates and glass, deposits per retailer, and a summer peak that doubles the beat overnight.
Auto sparesTens of thousands of part numbers, fitment by vehicle model, and mechanics buying on credit.

Make the product as well as distribute it? The factory side lives in our custom manufacturing ERP, and the two can share one database, so factory stock and distributor stock never need reconciling. Plant in Thane, Bhiwandi or Navi Mumbai? See ERP for Mumbai manufacturers.

Integrations

Talks to what you already run

Your distributors will not give up Tally. Nobody should ask them to. The DMS syncs invoices, receipts and stock into whatever they and your accounts team already use.

Tally PrimeBusyMarg ERPZoho BooksSAP Business OneSAP S/4HANAGST e-invoice (IRP)E-way billWhatsApp orderingUPI and payment gatewaysYour existing ERP, via API

The repetitive parts — claim reminders, low-stock alerts to distributors, retailers reordering over WhatsApp — run on the same workflow automation we build for other teams. Nobody chases a claim by phone.

How we build and roll it out

STEP 1

Discovery

We sit with your sales ops team and two or three distributors. We map your schemes, your billing, your claim process — the real one, not the one in the SOP document.

STEP 2

First working module

Usually distributor stock and secondary billing, because that is where the blindness is. Software you can click through, early.

STEP 3

Pilot with three to five distributors

One friendly distributor, one busy one, and one who hates change. If it works for the third, it works.

STEP 4

Rollout in waves

Region by region. Schemes, claims and the field app come in as distributors settle. The old process runs alongside until nobody opens it.

Getting distributors to actually use it

This is where DMS rollouts die. Not in the code — at the distributor’s billing counter, when the new screen is slower than the old register.

Their language

Screens in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil — whatever your distributors and reps actually read.

Cheap phones, bad signal

Built for a three-year-old Android with 2GB of RAM, in a shop with no network.

Fewer taps than paper

If billing takes longer than the old way, the distributor goes back to the old way. So it does not.

Something in it for them

Faster claim settlement, clear outstanding, their own stock view. Distributors adopt what helps them. Not what helps you.

Before you buy anything

Twelve questions to ask any DMS vendor

Including us. Take these into every demo — the salesperson who answers number ten without changing the subject is rare.

  1. 01Can it handle every scheme you ran last year, without a spreadsheet on the side?
  2. 02Does it track batch and expiry, not just quantity?
  3. 03Does it sync with the accounting software your distributors already use?
  4. 04Can distributors bill retailers from it, with GST e-invoicing?
  5. 05Does the field app work offline?
  6. 06Will it run on the phones your reps actually carry?
  7. 07Are claims raised automatically, with invoices attached?
  8. 08Can you set credit limits per retailer and have them enforced?
  9. 09Does each role — brand, manager, distributor — see only what it should?
  10. 10What does it cost in year three, with the number of distributors and reps you plan to have?
  11. 11Can you export all your data, in a usable format, whenever you want?
  12. 12Who changes it when your scheme structure changes next quarter, and how long do they take?
What we have built

The parts of a DMS we have already shipped

A DMS is not one exotic piece of software. It is multi-party access, stock that lives somewhere else, sales follow-up and reporting — stitched together around your rules. We have built each of those.

Multi-tenant platform with role-based access

Full data isolation between organisations and a three-level role hierarchy. A DMS has exactly that shape — brand, distributor, rep, each seeing only their own slice.

See the project

Sales and rental system

For Froven, a commercial refrigeration business. Rentals mean stock sitting at someone else’s site instead of your own — the same problem a DMS solves for distributor stock.

See the project

Sales tracking and follow-up engine

A lead and order tracker that flags accounts going cold and follows up on its own. The same logic finds retailers who have quietly stopped ordering.

See the project

Profit dashboards

Sales, spend and bank data pulled into one daily view. The reporting layer of a DMS is built the same way.

See the project

A DMS is one kind of custom business management software. Spotting the retailer who quietly stopped ordering is the same job our customer retention software does for subscription businesses — different customer, same signal. See all our projects.

Cost

What a custom DMS costs depends on four things

No number on this page. Anyone quoting a DMS before seeing your scheme sheet is guessing. We scope first, then quote.

Evaluating ready-made vendors and want someone technical on your side of the table, not theirs? That is what our fractional CTO work is for.

How many modules

Stock and billing alone is one project. Add schemes, claims, a field app and retailer ordering and it is a bigger one.

Scheme complexity

A flat discount is simple. Stacked slab schemes that differ by region and retailer class take real work.

Integrations

One Tally sync is straightforward. Tally at distributors plus SAP at head office plus e-invoicing is three jobs.

Offline and multilingual

Offline sync and regional languages add effort up front — and save the rollout later.

Questions

Straight answers

Software that connects a brand to its distributors and, through them, to retailers. It tracks what the distributor bought from you, what they sold to shops, what stock is sitting in their godown, which schemes apply, and who owes whom. The point is secondary sales visibility — knowing what actually moved to the market, not just what you billed to the distributor.

DMS runs the distributor: stock, billing to retailers, schemes, claims, collections. SFA — sales force automation — runs the field team: beat plans, retailer visits, order taking, attendance. They share the same retailers and the same orders, so most brands need both, and they work far better as one system than as two products passing data back and forth overnight.

Not once your network has any size to it. A rented DMS charges per distributor and per sales rep, every month, for as long as you use it — so the bill grows every time you do. A custom build is paid for once and then it is yours. Over a few years the two usually end up in the same range, and only one of them fits your schemes. Small network, simple schemes? Rent. We will tell you that on the call.

Yes. Tally, Busy, Marg, Zoho Books, SAP Business One — whatever your distributors and your own accounts team already use. Sales invoices, receipts and stock movements sync across, so nobody types the same bill twice. Most distributors will not give up Tally. They should not have to.

It has to. Reps take orders in shops with one bar of signal, or none. Orders, visits and collections save on the phone and sync the moment a connection comes back. It also runs on older, cheaper Android phones, because that is what field teams actually carry — not the phone in the vendor demo.

Yes — e-invoices generated through the government IRP, e-way bills for stock transfers above the limit, HSN codes, and the right tax treatment for inter-state versus intra-state bills. Built in, not bolted on at month end.

The first working piece comes early. We usually start with distributor stock and secondary billing, pilot it with three to five distributors, fix what they complain about, then roll out across the network in waves. Schemes, claims and the field app follow. The exact timeline depends on how many modules and integrations you need, and we give you that after discovery, not before.

Yes. Distributor masters, retailer lists, product and price lists, open balances and scheme history all come across. The old system runs alongside for a cycle while distributors get comfortable, then you switch it off. People usually come to us from a rented DMS that stopped fitting, or from Excel sheets emailed every Monday.

You do. Both. The code, the database, the retailer list you spent years building. Nobody gets to raise the price on your own sales data at renewal time.

FMCG, pharma, paints and building materials, agri inputs, consumer electronics, beverages, auto spares — any business that sells through distributors to a long tail of retailers. The core is the same everywhere. The rules are not, and the rules are where a ready-made DMS usually breaks.

Send us your scheme sheet

The messy one. The Excel file with eleven tabs and a column nobody remembers adding. That tells us more about the DMS you need than any requirements document — and we will tell you honestly whether to build or rent.

We are a software agency in Mumbai, working with businesses in Navi Mumbai and Thane, building for brands across India.

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