Wholesale Handler
Where the invoice is raised
Now Commerce does not invoice. Orders placed in its portal are added to QuickBooks as sales orders or invoices, and everything after that - consolidating, statements, payment terms - is QuickBooks doing its job.
Wholesale Handler raises the invoice itself, from the orders you have marked processed, and exports finalised lines to CSV for whatever your accountant uses. Neither arrangement is better in the abstract. They differ on one question: whether your ledger should be the system that holds your orders.
If you are not on QuickBooks
Now Commerce is sold to wholesalers already running QuickBooks Desktop or Online, and the two-way sync is most of what you are buying. On Xero, Sage, FreeAgent, a spreadsheet or an accountant who wants a file, that value is unavailable rather than reduced.
Wholesale Handler is accounting-agnostic by decision. It integrates with no accounting package at all, which means it cannot strand you when you change one.
Customers who will not order online
Now Commerce's pitch is moving your wholesale customers from phone and email to online ordering. That is the right goal for most accounts, and it is also where portals usually stall - the chef who sends a voice note and the shop that has texted the same order for nine years.
Wholesale Handler covers those accounts as managed customers. You hold the record and place their orders yourself, so they do not sign in and do not have to be persuaded, and their lines still reach the same order list, production totals and invoices as everyone else's. One invitation promotes them later if they change their mind.
Modules against one price
Now Commerce is sold modularly - a base portal, a separately-priced sales rep portal charged per rep, and add-ons for shipping, 3PL and spreadsheet order import. It is month-to-month with no contract, which is a point in its favour, but working out your real monthly cost means adding up which modules you need.
Wholesale Handler is one flat fee with everything in it, and no per-user or per-order charge.
Where Now Commerce is the better fit
- Your inventory lives in QuickBooks and you need buyers seeing real-time stock from it.
- You run outside sales reps who need assigned customers and a rep portal. Colleagues get their own sign-ins on Wholesale Handler, but every one of them sees the whole customer list.
- You need backorders, returns or multi-location fulfilment - all things Now Commerce has and Wholesale Handler does not.
- You are already on QuickBooks Desktop, which not much modern software still supports.
