Excel for a distributor: what it does well, and seven signs you have outgrown it

Almost every distributor starts on Excel, and for good reason. It costs nothing extra, the accountant knows it, and you can make it do exactly what you want. For a business with one van and a careful owner, it can work for years.

The trouble starts slowly. A second salesman. A second person in the office. A copy of the file sent on WhatsApp “just for today”. Then one day the stock in the sheet and the stock in the godown are two different numbers, and nobody can say which one is right.

Seven signs you have outgrown Excel

1. There are several versions of the file. “Stock_final”, “Stock_final_new”, and the one on the office computer.
2. Sales are typed in at night, from paper. The sheet is always a day behind, and every copy from paper is a chance for a mistake.
3. Stock never matches the godown count. And nobody can trace where the difference came from.
4. Shop balances disagree with the shop. The shop says it owes ₹8,000. Your sheet says ₹11,500. You have no bill-by-bill record to settle it.
5. Simple questions take an hour. “What did this product sell this week?” means filtering, copying and adding up.
6. A formula got overwritten, and the totals were wrong for weeks before anyone noticed.
7. Only one person understands the sheet. When they are on leave, the business runs blind.

One or two of these is normal. Four or more, every week, means the sheet is costing you more time and money than it saves.

Try these Excel fixes first

Before you buy anything, these often help:

• One file, one owner. One person updates it. Everyone else only reads it.
• Use Google Sheets instead of sending files around, so there is only ever one copy.
• Lock the formula cells, so nobody types over a total by mistake.
• Enter the same day. Bills and payments go in before the office closes, not at the weekend.
• One sheet per job: stock, shop credit, and sales, instead of one giant sheet that does everything.

For a simple way to keep shop credit in any tool, see how to track shop credit without a notebook.

The one thing Excel cannot fix

Excel stays in the office. The sale happens at the shop. Everything in between, the paper bill, the salesman’s memory, the photo on WhatsApp, is where numbers go wrong. That is the real reason distributors with vans move to software: so the bill is made once, at the shop, and the office sees it without anyone typing it again.

If you move, protect your data

• Ask the vendor to import your shop list, product list and opening balances from your sheets.
• Ask whether you can export everything back to Excel, any time, without asking them.
• Keep your accounts software. Tally or Vyapar can stay for the books.
• Start with one van for two weeks before moving everyone.

For more questions worth asking any vendor, see seven tests to run before choosing a van sales app.

How Mulberry Sales helps

You do not have to retype your sheets. For the first 5 businesses each month, you send your shop list and price list in any Excel sheet, and we enter them and train your salesmen at your godown. After that, bills are made on the salesman’s phone at the shop, so nothing is copied from paper. Reports export to Excel and PDF when your accountant wants a sheet (Growth plan and up), and you can back up to your own Google Drive and take everything out in Excel whenever you like (Growth plan and up). See moving from other software.

Questions people ask