By sector
Wholesalers and distributors
A trade supplier does not have an automation problem. It has a counter, a phone, a shared inbox and a delivery round, and the same twenty questions arriving through all four.
The work is the order, and everything around the order #
101,000
Wholesale businesses registered for VAT or PAYE
ONS, March 2025
2.73m
UK businesses in total
ONS, March 2025
Wholesale and retail trade together held the largest share of SME turnover of any industry at the start of 2025, at 32 per cent, on the Department for Business and Trade's business population estimates. Almost all of those wholesalers are small enough that the person who takes the order also answers the phone, checks the stock and hears about it when the delivery is short.
That is the shape of the sector's admin. An order is rarely a single clean instruction. It is a phone call with three edits, an email with a photo of a handwritten pad, a text asking whether you have got something before the order is placed at all, and a follow up asking where the van is.
Around each order sits a second layer.
- The account it has to be charged to
- The price that customer is on
- The credit limit it has to pass
- The delivery note somebody will want a copy of in six weeks
- The invoice that will need chasing
How to tell which parts run on rules #
The test is the same one we use everywhere.
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Does the job start from a trigger you could describe in one sentence?
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Does it produce the same shape of output every time?
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Would two competent people doing it on the same day produce the same answer?
In a wholesaler, more work passes that test than in almost any other trade, because so much of it is lookup and transcription.
Lookup and transcription
- Reading an order out of an email and putting it into the order system
- Answering whether a line is in stock
- Telling a customer what they pay for a product, against their price list
- Finding a signed delivery note from May
None of that needs judgement.
Relationship calls
- Whether to release an order that takes a customer over their credit limit
- Whether to substitute a line
- Whether a complaint about a short delivery is the third one this month from the same customer, and what to do about it
The point of clearing the lookups is that the people who are good at those calls get more time to make them.
Why the depot inbox is the real system #
Most trade suppliers have a proper order system and a shared mailbox, and the mailbox is where the business actually runs. It holds the orders, the stock queries, the price requests, the proof of delivery chases and the credit note arguments, all in one undifferentiated stream that somebody has to sort by hand every morning.
The Federation of Wholesale Distributors says its members supply over 400,000 retail and catering businesses, and every one of those relationships generates that stream.
Start with the depot inbox, or count the hours first with the free tools.
Wholesalers and distributors
Orders, stock questions, pricing requests and the inbox that runs the depot.
- Orders by phone and email What it costs when trade orders arrive as calls, emails and photos of an order pad
- The depot inbox What lands in a shared sales inbox in a day, and why sorting it becomes a job
- Stock and availability questions Why "have you got it in stock" costs more to answer than the answer is worth
- Trade prices and quotes Why customer specific pricing turns a two line quote into a twenty minute job
- Repeat ordering The most predictable work in the building, and why it still takes a person
- Proof of delivery Why POD requests arrive weeks later, and what a delivery record has to prove
- Credit control and late payment What the law allows on terms, interest and recovery costs, and how the chase runs
- Opening a trade account What has to be collected and checked before a new customer can order on account
- Picking errors and credit notes Why a short delivery costs more in admin than it ever did in stock
Where these numbers come from
- ONS, UK business: activity, size and location, 2025 , read 19 September 2026
- Department for Business and Trade, Business population estimates for the UK and regions 2025 , read 19 September 2026
- Federation of Wholesale Distributors , read 19 September 2026
Last checked 19 September 2026.
Our workings are on the methodology page .
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