A worked example · Dairy & chilled foods
Kavira Dairy makes shrikhand, curd and paneer, sells through two brands and delivers to independent stores six days a week. Here is every step of how a business like this runs on DistributeIQ — what happens, who does it, and what the system records at each point.
Kavira Dairy is a fictional company, built to be typical of a chilled-dairy distributor. Names, routes, products and figures are illustrative — no customer data appears anywhere on this page.
The business
Two brands under one roof, a chilled catalogue that has to move the day it is made, and a few hundred independent stores across western India — most of them buying on credit.
2
Brands
Kavira Fresh and Sahaj. Separate bank accounts, invoice series and FSSAI licences — one company, two sets of books.
70+
SKUs
Priced in boxes, crates and jars with kilogram and litre conversions behind them, on four tiers.
200+
Distributors
Dealers, super-stockists and sub-dealers — each with a credit limit, credit days and an opening balance.
12
Routes
A fixed vehicle and driver per route, with the stop sequence planned the night before.
6
Roles
Admin, Supervisor, Executive, Driver, Accountant and Distributor — each seeing only their own slice.
The hard part
A carton of biscuits forgives a slow week. A crate of shrikhand does not. Six assumptions a general order tool makes — and what a chilled route does instead.
Generic tools assume
Stock sits in a warehouse until someone sells it
What dairy does
Stock made this morning has to be on a van by eight. Orders reserve stock as they land and are allocated to a trip the same morning, so nothing waits overnight for a planning cycle.
Generic tools assume
Orders arrive when a customer happens to need something
What dairy does
A store that skips today is revenue gone, not deferred — there is no catching up on yesterday's milk. Order Pulse makes daily coverage the number the team works to.
Generic tools assume
Packaging is a cost, and it is gone once it ships
What dairy does
Every delivery sends returnable crates out and brings empties back. Balances are held per party and reconciled at the door, not counted in the yard at month end.
Generic tools assume
A return is an exception worth raising a ticket for
What dairy does
Returns are a routine part of the day, not an exception. They are captured line by line with a reason code, raise a credit note automatically, and post to the ledger without a second entry.
Generic tools assume
One SKU has one unit of measure
What dairy does
The invoice says boxes and crates; the dairy floor and the intake weighbridge speak kilograms and litres. Both are held against one SKU with the conversion in between.
Generic tools assume
Credit is a finance problem, checked after the month closes
What dairy does
Three-day credit at every door adds up faster than anyone tracks by hand. The limit is checked when the order is placed and again before the van is loaded — while it still costs nothing.
The walkthrough
Every step Kavira Dairy takes, in order. Each one names who does it and what the system writes — because the record it leaves behind is what the next step reads.
Kavira is onboarded as a tenant, then each brand is created with its own bank account, invoice prefix, state code and FSSAI licence. From here on, a Kavira Fresh invoice and a Sahaj invoice are numbered and banked separately — but roll up to one company.
Writes
SKUs are loaded with HSN codes, GST rates and four price tiers. Routes get a vehicle and a driver. Distributors are onboarded with KYC, a credit limit and credit days. Opening stock and opening balances are set, so the books start from a known position rather than zero.
Writes
A PO is raised against the brand's dairy — manually, from low-stock alerts, or generated from actual downstream demand. It moves through its own stages, and the status is derived from what has been received rather than set by hand.
Writes
Stock is received against the PO and the purchase bill is booked. Inventory rises, the supplier ledger is posted, and the payable enters the payment-out queue under the supplier's agreed terms.
Writes
The Order Pulse board shows the day's coverage — which distributors have ordered and which have gone quiet. Executives work the gaps by phone, and each call is logged against the distributor so the follow-up is a record, not a memory.
Writes
The distributor orders from their own app, or an executive places it on their behalf. The right price tier resolves automatically, the credit limit is checked before the order is accepted, stock is reserved, and a GST invoice is raised on that brand's series — one transaction.
Writes
Orders for a route are grouped into a trip: vehicle, driver and the sequence of stops. Stock is allocated against each line, so what is promised and what is on the vehicle are the same numbers.
Writes
The warehouse works the load sheet line by line, adjusting quantities where reality differs. Credit warnings appear here — before the goods leave the gate, which is the only point where they still cost nothing. The driver confirms the load and the trip is dispatched.
Writes
At each stop the driver follows a fixed sequence: verify the items, add anything extra the store asks for, record damage, take payment, swap empty crates for full ones, capture a proof photo. It works with no signal — each step is checkpointed and the queue resumes exactly where it stopped.
Writes
Short-dated or damaged stock comes back line by line with a reason code. A credit note is raised against the distributor, or a debit note against the dairy, and the ledger follows it without a second entry.
Writes
The driver submits what they collected and what they spent. A supervisor verifies it or raises a dispute. Cash to deposit is set against advances and trip expenses, and anything still outstanding becomes a tracked due against that driver rather than a note in a diary.
Writes
Cash, UPI, cheque and bank transfers are verified as they clear. The distributor's ledger and credit headroom update together, so the limit that gets checked on tomorrow's order already reflects today's payment.
Writes
Revenue, route performance, distributor growth and credit health are already computed — on business dates, not system timestamps, so a late-night sync lands on the day the work happened. Statements go out, and the ledgers export as Tally XML the accountant imports as-is.
Writes
The surfaces
A store owner, a driver, a supervisor and an owner all work in the same system on the same day — each seeing only what their job needs, and every tap landing in the same ledger.
The store owner sees their own catalogue at their own price tier, with credit headroom on screen before they add anything to the cart. Invoices, statement, crate balance and returns all sit behind the same login.
Today's trip arrives as a stop list. Each delivery follows the same fixed sequence — verify, extras, damage, payment, crates, proof — and every step is checkpointed, so a dead signal in a basement pauses the queue instead of losing it.
Allocate stock, build the trip, then work the load sheet line by line with credit warnings in view. Later the same screen verifies what the driver brought back and settles the trip against advances and expenses.
Pricing tiers, purchase orders and supplier ledgers on one side; revenue, route performance, credit health and the Tally export on the other — all computed on business dates so a late sync still lands on the right day.
Order Pulse
By nine in the morning most stores on a route have ordered. The ones that have not are the whole game. Order Pulse puts the day's coverage on one board — ordered, called, still silent — so the team works the gaps instead of reading yesterday's report.
Connected, not integrated
Orders in one place, stock in another, purchases on paper and accounts in Tally at month end — with somebody re-keying between them. Here they are one system, and a single delivery moves all four at once.
One delivery
A driver taps “delivered”
Order closed, invoice final, proof of delivery attached
Reserved stock released as delivered, crates moved to the store
Consumption feeds tomorrow's demand-driven purchase order
Collection posted, distributor ledger and credit headroom updated
No export, no overnight job, no month-end reconciliation to find the difference.
The data trail
A store on the City East route orders four boxes. Nobody re-keys anything between the first tap and the ledger — this is every record that changes on the way.
Order trail
10 records
Order placed
Tier price resolved, credit checked, stock reserved
Invoice raised
GST and HSN snapshotted onto each line, on the brand's series
Trip planned
Line allocated to a vehicle, driver and stop position
Load confirmed
Warehouse count reconciled against the order
Delivered
Proof photo stored, delivery timestamped against the stop
Payment taken
Collection recorded at the doorstep, offline if needed
Crates swapped
Empties in, fulls out, balance held against the store
Trip reconciled
Cash matched to collections, expenses and advances
Ledger posted
Distributor balance and credit headroom move together
Books closed
Row lands in analytics, statements and the Tally export
Manual re-entries
0
The people
Everyone signs in to the same system and sees only their own slice of it. Nobody is handed a spreadsheet, and nobody has to ask another department for a number.
Admin
Catalogue, pricing, network and the numbers
Supervisor
Stock, purchase orders, trips and load sheets
Executive
Their distributors, daily coverage and orders
Distributor
Ordering, invoices, payments and returns
Driver
The run — delivery, collection, crates, cash
Accountant
Payments, ledgers, dues and the GST export
Different brands, routes, price tiers and payment habits — same thirteen steps. Tell us how your distribution runs and we will show you where it lands.