Case Study: A UAE Mobile Accessories Distributor Went From 7 Vans to 15
A mobile accessories distributor in the UAE used to run their business on three separate systems. Today they run it on one. Along the way, their fleet grew from 7 vans to 15. Here is what changed.
The problem: three systems that did not talk to each other
When they came to us, they were running:
- Tally for accounts
- A separate app for van sales
- A third app for payroll
Each system held one piece of the truth. None of them held all of it. So the office spent its day copying numbers from one place to another.
Stock in the van was always a day old
The van sales app never got live stock. Salesmen went out with yesterday’s numbers. The system caught up the next day.
That is a real problem when stock moves fast. A salesman would promise an item that was already sold. Or he would skip an item that was sitting in the warehouse the whole time.
Their old vendor moved the app to cloud and promised live sync. The app only got slower. The gap never closed.
Cash stayed in the salesman’s hands
Customers paid cash on the route. That cash stayed with the salesman, and the system kept no record of who was holding how much.
The company knew what it had invoiced. It could not answer a simpler question — how much of our money is out in the field right now, and who has it?
Anyone could invoice from anywhere
There was no location check on invoicing. A sales executive could raise an invoice from any place, for any customer. Nothing in the system checked whether he was actually standing at the shop.
What we put in place
We replaced all three systems with ERPNext and Sellbee, our van sales app. Everything now runs on one ledger.
The full changeover took 40 to 50 days.
Live stock in the van
The salesman now sees real stock on his phone. What he sees is what the warehouse actually holds, at that moment. No overnight update. No next-day catch-up. When he raises an invoice on the route, the stock moves and the accounts update at the same time.
A cash wallet for every salesman
Every cash collection goes into that salesman’s wallet in the system. The balance is his responsibility, and the office can see it live. When he deposits the money, the deposit is reduced from his wallet.
Cash in the field is now a live number with a name on it.
Invoicing only at the customer’s shop
A sales invoice or a payment receipt can only be made within 100 metres of the customer’s location. The admin sets that distance, so the company can change it whenever they want.
If the salesman is not at the shop, the invoice does not happen.
One payment split across many invoices
A customer hands over AED 5,200 against five open invoices. Sellbee splits that payment across the invoices automatically.
If the customer wants it applied a certain way, the salesman can do it by hand instead. Either way it is correct the first time, on the route. Nobody has to fix it later in the office.
Payroll on the same system
Payroll moved into ERPNext too. The third app is gone. Accounts, stock, van sales and salaries now sit in one place.
The result: 7 vans to 15
Since going live, the distributor has grown from 7 vans to 15.
That is the number worth reporting, because it is about the business and not the software. A fleet does not double while the team is guessing at stock and chasing cash. Live stock made the routes work. The cash wallet made the field accountable. Location-locked invoicing kept both honest. Together that made the operation steady enough to grow.
Why ERPNext and Sellbee work better together
Most van sales apps stand on their own. They work in the field, then hand the office a file to import. Every problem in this story comes from that gap.
Sellbee runs on ERPNext. The van and the accounts are the same system, not two systems trying to stay in sync. Stock, invoices, collections, customer balances and payroll all settle in one place. That is why “live stock” here is a plain fact, not a feature with an asterisk.
If you run van sales in the UAE on separate systems — a field app on one side, Tally or something else on the other — these problems will look familiar. TABSYST implements ERPNext and Sellbee for distributors across the UAE and India. Read more on van sales software in the UAE, or book a Sellbee demo and we will walk through your own routes with you.