B2B Customer Web Portal for Wholesale Distributors

Most wholesale distributors still take a majority of their orders by phone, email, and fax. Customers call in an order, someone writes it down, someone else keys it into the ERP, and a confirmation gets emailed back. It works, but it burns hours every day, introduces typos, and limits your office to business hours.

The Ask the Ledger B2B Web Portal replaces that workflow — or runs alongside it — with a self-service site your customers log into to browse the catalog, place orders, check invoice history, and view their account. Everything a customer sees and does is tied to the same live database as your desktop ERP. There is no sync layer, no nightly batch, and no third-party integration to maintain.

Login with per-customer controls

Each customer account gets a login tied to their customer number. From the Web Access tab on the customer record in the ERP, you control what they can do: view-only versus ordering, require a PO number, a maximum order amount, whether orders auto-approve or queue for review, whether they see stock levels and price breaks, whether their catalog is restricted to authorized items, and more.

Customer-specific pricing, everywhere

When a customer logs in, every price they see — on the catalog, on item detail pages, in the quick order form, in the cart, on their order history — uses their contract pricing. The same 5-tier pricing engine that runs the desktop ERP runs the portal. There is no duplicate price list to maintain and no risk of the portal showing one price and the invoice showing another.

Tier-level pricing is visible on the item detail page when lower tiers exist, so customers can see the full pricing picture at a glance. Each item also shows their previously ordered quantity and date — a simple but surprisingly useful cue for reorder decisions.

Quick order and reorder

Customers who know exactly what they want do not need to click through the catalog. The Quick Order screen is a multi-row form with live item lookup: start typing a code or description, pick the match, enter a quantity, and add the next row. A typical ten-line order takes under a minute.

For recurring orders, every past order and every past invoice has a one-click Reorder button. It copies all lines into a new cart using today's pricing. The customer reviews, adjusts if needed, and submits. Returning customers place most of their orders this way.

Order tracking with granular status

The moment a customer submits an order on the portal, it lands in the ERP sales order queue with source = WEB. As your team processes it — approves, picks, ships, delivers — the portal shows the current status in real time with clear badges: Submitted, Approved, Picking, Shipped, Delivered. No more "did my order ship yet?" phone calls.

The invoice history section gives customers full access to their invoices, with a print-friendly view and a reorder button on each one.

Account balance, statement, and delivery schedule

The Account section shows each customer their current balance, open invoices grouped into aging buckets (current, 30, 60, 90+), and recent payments. They can pull a statement and print it from the browser. For distributors on a route schedule, the profile page shows their assigned route and the next delivery date, so customers know exactly when to have their order in.

You control visibility per customer: if you prefer a particular customer not see their balance online, toggle it off on the Web Access tab.

Returns and credit requests

Customers can start a return directly from a past invoice line. They pick the item, enter the quantity, and choose a reason. The credit request goes straight into the ERP for your team to review, approve, and issue the credit memo. Customers see the status of their request on the portal until it is resolved.

No sync layer, no integration tax

The portal and the desktop ERP connect to the same PostgreSQL database. When a customer clicks Submit, a sales order is inserted into the same table the desktop app reads from. When your sales rep adds a new item in the ERP, it is on the portal the moment the transaction commits. No nightly job. No staging database. No webhook to debug when it fails silently.

This is the single biggest advantage of running the portal on an on-premise ERP built for it. The portals that bolt onto cloud ERPs have to reconcile two systems forever, and every reconciliation has failure modes. Here, there is only one source of truth.

Hosted on your server, on your domain

The portal runs on the same server as your ERP or on a small VM alongside it. Deploy it at portal.yourcompany.com — your customers never see the words "Ask the Ledger," only your brand. SSL is standard. Authentication uses bcrypt hashing, lockout after repeated failures, and per-user session handling.

Who benefits most

• Food and bakery distributors — recurring orders from restaurants, cafes, and grocers reorder in seconds
• Hardware and plumbing distributors — contractors place after-hours orders for next-day pickup
• Janitorial and paper distributors — facility managers reorder monthly supplies without calling
• Beverage and specialty distributors — accounts order with confidence using their negotiated pricing
• Any wholesale distributor whose office spends hours every day keying in phoned-in orders

Portal as part of the full system

The B2B Web Portal is a module of Ask the Ledger, not a separate product or a separate subscription. Every customer, item, price, order, invoice, and credit memo you see on the portal is the same record you see in the ERP. That is the point.

For the full feature set, see Features. To see the portal with your catalog and your customers, request a live demo.

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