Wholesale Handler
Wholesale Handler is built solo and ships fast. Here's a live view of what's just landed (last 90 days), what I'm building right now, what's queued up next, and ideas I'm still mulling over.
Shipped recently
- Pricing by weight and catch weight
18 June 2026
Two new ways to price a product alongside the usual flat per-unit price. Catch weight is for goods counted by the piece but billed by weight - a whole salmon, a leg of lamb, a wheel of cheese, a box of grapes - where every piece weighs a little differently. Customers order a count ("2 salmon") at your price per kg or lb and see a typical price based on a typical weight, so they know roughly what to expect; then at pick you record the real weight for each line and the order settles to the actual amount, which is what flows through to the invoice - "5.1 kg at $4.00/kg". Pricing by weight is for goods ordered as an exact weight directly, at a per-kg or per-lb rate settled at order time. No more averaging everyone out or hand-correcting invoices after the scale.
- Managed customers
13 June 2026
Bring your existing customer list onboard on day one without sending a single email. Take orders yourself by phone, text or in person and Wholesale Handler does the back-office. Optionally add their email for invoice delivery; optionally upgrade them to a full login when they're ready. One customer record across every stage, so order history is never lost in migration.
- Seasonal updates for customers
10 June 2026
Customers can subscribe to a weekly email that tracks their supplier's whole seasonal calendar - what's just come into season and what's about to go out, with a heads-up before a favourite's last week. It always looks forward: on a quiet week it widens its horizon up to a month rather than sending an empty "nothing changed". This is the plan-ahead companion to the existing per-product "Notify me", which still pings the instant one specific item is orderable again - turn on either or both. One-click unsubscribe from any email, no sign-in needed.
- Product codes - SKUs and barcodes
5 June 2026
Give every product its own SKU - a stock keeping unit, the short reference code wholesale buyers reconcile their orders against - on your records, packing slips and accounting export. If you already use SKUs in another system, type or paste your own. Otherwise Wholesale Handler suggests a short, memorable three-word code like "oak-hawk-fox" - far easier to read over the phone to a customer than a string of digits - and you can shuffle for a different one or clear it entirely if you don't use codes. Each product can also store the manufacturer's own barcode - a GTIN, UPC, EAN or produce PLU, the universal code printed on the carton - kept separate from your own SKU.
- Per-day cutoffs
3 June 2026
Give each delivery day its own ordering cutoff on an order profile, so a Saturday run can close to new orders Friday lunchtime while a Monday run stays open until Sunday evening - because each day's production starts at a different time. You set it the way you'd say it out loud, "order by noon, one day before", and the storefront locks each day to match. This also simplifies the old setup - the separate cutoff time and lead time, which interacted in confusing ways, collapse into a single clear cutoff per day.
- Seasonal availability
3 June 2026
Set a product as "available March to April" once and it repeats every year on its own - no re-entering dates each season. Out of season, customers aren't left guessing: instead of the product quietly disappearing, they see exactly why it can't be ordered and when it's coming back - "asparagus is out of season, back in March". It works for any recurring run, whether that's a summer crop, hot cross buns around Easter, or Christmas cakes in December, and a single product can carry more than one season across the year. Knowing when their favourites return is one of the things wholesale buyers value most.
- Order profiles
31 May 2026
Group customers who share a delivery schedule into a reusable profile - delivery days, cutoff time, lead time, delivery charge and minimum spend in one named bundle. A customer two hours away who can only be served Wednesday or Thursday goes on a "Far North" profile; update the profile once when the run changes and every customer on it follows. Merchants who deliver to everyone on the same days just keep the single default.
- Product availability windows
31 May 2026
Mark a product unavailable for one or more date ranges instead of letting it silently vanish from the catalogue. Each window carries a reason (weather delay, limited stock, discontinued or other) and an optional note customers see - "back in April", "frost damage" - or leave the end open for "until further notice". Customers can't order it for a delivery date inside a window.
- Install Wholesale Handler on your phone
24 May 2026
Open Wholesale Handler in your phone's browser and use "Add to Home Screen" (iPhone Safari) or "Install app" (Android Chrome). It opens in its own window with no browser chrome - the experience is the same as a native app you'd download from an app store, with none of the App Store gatekeeping. Same install for merchants and customers.
- Standing orders
23 May 2026
Weekly, fortnightly, three-weekly or four-weekly recurring orders, set up by the customer or by the merchant on their behalf. Three days before each order, the customer gets a preview email with today's prices and a one-click "Skip this order" link that doesn't need a login - if they do nothing, the order fires normally at the cutoff. Pause to a specific resume date or indefinitely, skip a single occurrence, or edit any line anytime.
- Custom cutoff message
16 May 2026
Optional message that shows on a customer's order page once it's locked for changes but not yet processed - for example, telling them to call if they need a last-minute change.
- Terms & conditions
13 May 2026
A plain-English contract covering subscriptions, billing, your data, and what happens if things go wrong.
- Detailed order emails
11 May 2026
Optional order receipt emails for customers and merchants, with itemised line items and price changes when an order is placed, updated or cancelled.
- Choose your billing currency
10 May 2026
The currency you pay your subscription in can be set separately from the currency you trade in with your own customers.
- Order lock window
5 May 2026
Choose how long customers can edit or cancel an order after placing it, from "until the delivery cutoff" all the way down to "immediately on placement".
- Merchants can place orders on a customer's behalf
4 May 2026
Take an order by phone or text and enter it yourself - the customer never has to log in. Receipt emails fire to both parties just like a customer-placed order.
- Public storefronts
22 April 2026
Opt-in public page for your business so customers can find you. Choose which products to display, show prices to everyone or hide them behind "Contact us for pricing", and list the delivery areas you cover.
Building now
- Bulk import customers and products
Bring your whole book onboard in minutes by pasting straight from a spreadsheet. Copy a block of rows out of Excel or Google Sheets, paste it into an editable grid, and Wholesale Handler checks every row as you go - flagging a bad email or an unmatched price list before anything is saved, so you fix it in place and import only what's clean. Customers come in as quiet records with no email sent until you choose to invite them, so you can populate your whole list and start taking orders on day one. Products follow the same paste-and-check flow.
Next up
- Addresses and business details on your paperwork
Put the details that make a packing slip useful and an invoice look professional onto every document. Each customer gets an optional delivery address, phone number, and your own account reference for them; your own business address, phone, and tax or VAT number go in your settings once and head every invoice. The delivery address prints on the packing slip so the box gets where it's going, and the invoice reads like one from an established supplier - your full details up top, the customer's ship-to address and account code in the bill-to block. All optional, and Wholesale Handler still doesn't route or track delivery for you.
Considering
- Automatic invoicing
Pick an invoice day for each customer and Wholesale Handler collates their processed, un-invoiced orders into a draft invoice on that day automatically - no more remembering who's due. Drafts land ready for you to review, amend and send, so the system does the boring aggregation while you keep the final say.
- Live orders page
A dedicated page that alerts you within a second of every order placed, updated or cancelled. Choose your alert style - a ringtone-style alarm that repeats until you acknowledge it, a single ding per arrival, or silent with a visual notification only.
- Smart availability alerts
Let customers opt in to hear the moment an unavailable product comes back, and give regular buyers a heads-up when something they often order is about to go out of stock.
- Credit notes
Issue a credit against an already-sent invoice for returns, missing items or post-delivery discounts. Keeps your accounting audit trail clean by leaving the original invoice untouched.
- Keep cancelled orders visible
Cancelled orders stay in the list with a "Cancelled" status instead of disappearing, so both you and your customer have a record of what was cancelled and when.