What is wholesale?

An account is one wholesale customer: a pro shop, a chain, a distributor. A wholesale order is what that account has committed to buy, from the first draft through to the last payment.

Wholesale has its own area in the menu, Wholesale, with three pages: Orders, Invoices and Accounts. If What are suppliers and purchase orders? is the money going out, this is the money coming in from everybody who is not a retail customer.

Your workspace may use its own word for accounts and orders; Settings › Terminology shows both.

Why does wholesale need its own section?

Because a wholesale order behaves nothing like a Shopify order. A Shopify order is paid, then shipped, then finished, usually within a week.

A wholesale order is agreed in February for delivery in August, confirmed in April, shipped in two parts and paid sixty days later. Fairgreen Golf Co. sells to forty pro shops, and at any moment they need to know what is committed for next season, what is confirmed, what has shipped and who owes money.

Those are four questions with four answers about the same order. That is why each order carries three separate statuses, and why the money lives on invoices of its own.

When would you use it?

Any time a business buys from you on terms rather than at the till. Three common cases:

• Writing up a season. A rep comes back from a trade show with prebooks from twelve pro shops. Each becomes an order against its account, dated for the spring ship window.
• Holding stock for a dealer. A pro shop wants forty polos now. Confirming the order sets those units aside in your Shopify store, so the website cannot sell them twice.
• Chasing money. Invoices raised from the order carry a due date from the account's payment terms, so the overdue ones surface on their own.

What are the three statuses?

Each order shows three chips side by side, and they move on their own clocks.

• Order: Draft, Submitted, Confirmed or Cancelled. This is the one you set.
• Fulfilment: Unfulfilled, Partly shipped or Shipped. It follows the shipments you record.
• Payment: Not invoiced, Invoiced, Part paid or Paid. It follows the invoices you issue and the payments you record against them.

Together they let the book say "confirmed, partly shipped, part paid", which a single status cannot. Until an order is confirmed, the words Confirm the order first sit beside the Fulfilment and Payment chips, because shipping and invoicing start from a confirmed order.

What does confirming an order do?

It sets the ordered units aside in your live Shopify store, within about five minutes, and the website stops offering them. This is what stops a dealer's order and a web customer claiming the same polo.

Only lines picked from your Shopify catalogue hold stock. A prebook with a ship window start holds nothing until that date arrives; one with no ship window start holds straight away. When there is not enough stock to cover a line, the line says how many are short, and Short on stock on Wholesale › Orders lists every such line.

See How to write and confirm a wholesale order and How to find dealer orders that are short on stock.

What is a prebook?

An order placed ahead for a future season, as against an at once order to ship now. On screen the two order types read Prebook and At once.

The ship window start and cancel date on each order say when it can go and when the buyer can walk away. The order book on Wholesale › Orders lists open orders by ship window, nearest first, so what is about to ship is at the top.

Where does the money side live?

On invoices. From a confirmed order you raise an invoice for everything not yet billed, or for one shipment. You then issue it, send it to the buyer and record payments against it.

Every invoice is listed on Wholesale › Invoices, and each order in the book carries an Aging chip, from Not invoiced and Current through to 60+ days. An invoice carries your company's legal name and address, set in How to set the company details your invoices show.

See How to invoice a wholesale order and record payment and How to find overdue invoices and quiet accounts.

When is something else the better fit?

Use a purchase order instead when you are the one buying. Suppliers, purchase orders and bills sit under Buying, covered in What are suppliers and purchase orders?.

Use What are special orders? instead when a single retail customer asks you to get something in for them. Wholesale is for businesses that buy from you on terms.

What has to be switched on?

Two switches in the Wholesale group of Settings › Modules: Wholesale orders gives you Orders and Accounts, and Invoices adds the Invoices page. Both come on with the Also sells wholesale switch on the same page. See How to switch parts of Tideswell on and off.

Six rows on Settings › Permissions decide who can do what: View wholesale orders, Edit wholesale orders, View wholesale accounts, Edit wholesale accounts, View wholesale invoices and Edit wholesale invoices. Each starts at lead.

Opening any wholesale page, Accounts included, needs View wholesale orders. See How to set who can do what.

Read this section in order

How to add an account and set payment terms comes first, because an account's payment terms are what give an invoice its due date. Then How to write and confirm a wholesale order, How to record a wholesale shipment and invoice it and How to invoice a wholesale order and record payment follow one order through its life.

How to read your wholesale order book is the screen you will check most often. How to find dealer orders that are short on stock covers dealer lines that could not get all their units, and How to find overdue invoices and quiet accounts covers who owes money and who has stopped ordering.