Wholesale Handler
Beer credit terms are set by statute, not agreed with the pub
Most trade-credit advice assumes the supplier and the buyer negotiate terms. In US alcohol they largely do not. Credit from a supplier to a licensed retailer is a regulated trade practice, because long terms were historically used to lock a bar into one brand, and the rules that killed that practice still set the clock.
Two consequences for a small producer selling direct. First, a pub that asks for longer terms is often asking for something you cannot legally give, which makes the awkward conversation shorter than it looks. Second, in several states the regulator already runs the escalation - a delinquent retailer goes on a list, and every wholesaler in the state has to sell them cash-only until they clear. Your job is to report accurately and on time, not to invent a chase.
Federal rules also let you keep selling to an account that is behind, provided each new order is paid for at or before delivery, and it does not matter that you book the cash against the old balance. Stopping supply is not the only lawful option.
Self-distribution moves the collections job onto the producer
Going through a distributor means one payer, on that distributor's terms. Selling direct means the receivable is yours, spread across every account. Brewing-trade accounting guidance puts market-practice terms at 30 to 60 days and names the recurring work that comes with them - generating account statements, re-sending invoices the pub has lost, resolving disputed lines, and absorbing short payments. It also names the structural problem, which is that the person selling next week's order is usually the person asking about last month's money.
How small breweries take orders from pubs without a distributor covers the ordering side of that same shift.
Attaching each pub's terms to the account rather than remembering them
In Wholesale Handler a payment term belongs to the customer record, not to your memory. Each account trades on its own - cash on delivery, Net 15, Net 30 - and every invoice that account is sent carries the due date those terms produce. The due date and the term's trade shorthand print together on the PDF, so a buyer is not left working out which agreement produced the day.
Terms are effective-dated rather than overwritten. Graduating an account from cash on delivery onto Net 30 records who agreed it and when, and invoices already issued keep the terms they were issued under. That matters beyond tidiness: US produce sellers operating under PACA are required to retain the credit agreement, and an overwritten field destroys it.
How to charge different prices to different wholesale customers covers the price-list half of the same account record.
Getting an itemised invoice out while the delivery is recent
A large share of chasing is not refusal. It is a pub whose accounts payable did not receive a document it recognises, or received one it disagrees with.
Invoicing in Wholesale Handler starts from orders that have already been processed. You select them, they collate into one draft per customer, and finalising emails the PDF. Because a placed order cannot be edited after the fact, the lines on the invoice are the lines the pub actually ordered, which removes the most common dispute before it starts. The delivery document and the billing document stay separate - Packing slip vs invoice in wholesale covers why the packing slip carries no prices.
Invoices are raised when you raise them. Nothing generates them on a schedule, so the discipline of running invoicing on a fixed day of the week is still yours to keep.
Replacing the "have you paid yet" email with a recorded declaration
The weekly email most producers send asks one thing - whether an invoice has been paid. Both sides usually hold part of the answer, and neither can see the other's part.
A payment in Wholesale Handler is a two-sided handshake. The pub can record that it has sent payment, which puts the invoice into a status of its own, so a declaration does not read as money received. Only you can mark an invoice paid, and you can do that without the pub acting at all when you spot the money first. The two acts are separate recorded events, so the gap between the claim and the clearance is measurable rather than remembered.
When a declared payment has not landed, the invoice offers a "Payment not arrived?" action. It changes no status and the pub does not see it. It records that you looked, and it holds a 24-hour cooldown, because bank feeds settle overnight and re-checking an hour later tells you nothing.
If the money still is not there, disputing the declaration sends a written email and reopens the invoice. To the pub the invoice simply reads as owing again and they can declare a second time - the email carries the awkward part, not a badge on their screen. Both sides read the same timeline, filtered to what each is allowed to see, so neither is reconstructing the sequence from an inbox. Wholesale customer portal - what it is and how it cuts your workload covers the rest of what the buyer sees there.
Seeing who is late against their own terms
An aging list that counts days since the invoice was sent is useless once accounts run on different terms, because a cash-on-delivery account and a Net 30 account at the same age are two different problems. The Wholesale Handler dashboard bands outstanding money on the due date the terms produced, so the two do not read alike.
How to know which of your wholesale customers haven't paid you covers reading that view week to week.
What Wholesale Handler does not do about collection
- It does not touch the money. No card acceptance, no bank transfers, no stored card details, no payouts. You get paid on the rail you already use, and Wholesale Handler records that it happened. Card acceptance is not planned.
- It does not enforce state credit law. Terms are yours to set and yours to keep legal. Nothing blocks you from putting a Texas account on credit terms it may not hold.
- You are not told when a declaration arrives. Recording a declaration writes the status and stops - no email, no dashboard count. You learn of it by opening the invoice.
- Nothing chases automatically. There is no reminder ladder, no overdue email, and no nudge when a declared payment has sat uncleared for a week. A follow-up that depends on someone remembering is one that often does not happen, and that limit is real.
- There are no credit notes against a sent invoice, so a correction after sending is a conversation rather than a document.
- A customer cannot download their own invoice PDF. The PDF arrives by email when you finalise, and re-sending it is your action.
- One business, 50 customers and 500 products. Dozens of pubs fits. Hundreds does not.
