Wholesale Handler
A minimum written into your price list or email footer is a suggestion. A minimum that stops the order from going through is a rule. Most advice on this only covers the first part - the number - and skips the part that does the work.
How to pick a minimum order value
The minimum is the floor where a delivery stops losing money. Work out what one drop costs you to fulfil - the fuel and time to drive it out, plus the time to pick and pack it - then set the minimum comfortably above that so there's margin left over once the order is served.
Round it to a clean number. Most wholesalers run a single figure for everyone and only adjust for the odd outlier.
Don't agonise over it. It's a setting, not a tattoo - you can move it whenever the maths changes.
A minimum in your terms is only a suggestion
A number in your price list, your signature, or your terms relies on the customer remembering it and choosing to comply. Plenty won't.
So a small order lands, and now you pick between two bad options. Fulfil it at a loss, or send the "sorry, you're under our minimum" message and have the awkward conversation. Either way you've just done by hand the admin a rule should have done for you.
That's why choosing the number is maybe a tenth of the job. The other nine tenths is enforcement.
The minimum has to live where the order is placed
The only place a minimum reliably holds is the moment the order is created. It has to be checked before the order reaches you, and an under-minimum order has to be refused outright, not waved through for you to sort out later.
If the customer can still submit an order below your minimum, it isn't a minimum. It's a preference they're free to ignore.
Different customers can need different minimums
A cafe round the corner and a customer two hours away don't cost the same to serve. A flat minimum that works for the near one quietly loses money on the far one.
So the floor often needs to vary - a higher minimum for the distant or expensive-to-reach accounts, your standard one for everyone else.
How Wholesale Handler enforces a minimum order
Every customer has a minimum spend, set on the order profile they belong to. Put your standard figure on your default profile once and it applies to everyone.
When a customer builds their order, a progress bar shows the running total against your minimum and fills as they add items. The Place order button stays disabled until they reach it. They can't submit an order below your minimum, so a too-small order never lands on your desk to chase or apologise for - the customer just adds another item to get there.
You can waive the delivery charge for any order that meets the minimum spend. A customer sitting just under it then has a reason to add another item rather than send a part-order - the delivery charge disappears at the point you want them to reach.
For accounts that cost more to serve, you don't have to raise the floor for everyone. Put those customers on their own order profile with its own minimum spend. You can run up to 10 profiles - your standard customers on the default, the distant or expensive ones on a profile with a higher minimum - and changing a profile updates every customer on it at once.
The minimum is measured on the value of the goods, before delivery and tax, so it reflects what the customer is actually buying rather than what the trip happens to cost on the day.
When you need an exception, you have one. Placing an order for a customer yourself - a genuine top-up between deliveries, say - you can switch that one order from Enforce to Allow below and let it through, without changing the customer's normal minimum.
Standing orders are covered too. A recurring order that would come in under the minimum is held and flagged rather than placed quietly, so a regular weekly slot can't silently drop below your floor without you knowing.
What enforcing a minimum actually buys you
The system says no so you don't have to. No awkward message, no delivery run that lost money before it left, no order you'd rather not have fulfilled.
The minimum stops being a line in your terms that you police by hand and becomes a rule that polices itself.
