Buyer’s guide
B2B order management software, without the enterprise tax
Take orders from reps, customers, and APIs in one pipeline — with per-buyer pricing, credit limits, and a clean audit trail.
What to know about B2B order management software
B2B order management software is what you reach for when email threads and Google Sheets stop scaling — usually somewhere between your 20th and 200th order a week. The category covers everything from lightweight portals to full OMS suites, and the right fit depends less on feature count and more on whether the tool handles the messy parts of B2B (per-customer pricing, credit limits, returns) without forcing workarounds.
Distribu sits in the 'lightweight but complete' end of this category: real per-buyer pricing, real credit limits, a real API — without an enterprise contract or a three-month implementation.
Evaluating tools
What to look for
Ask these of every tool in your shortlist — including ours.
- 1
All order sources land in one queue
A good OMS doesn't care whether an order came from a rep on the phone, a buyer on the portal, or your ERP hitting the API. Same state machine, same webhooks, same report. If you need a different dashboard per source, you haven't solved the problem.
- 2
Per-buyer pricing enforced server-side
Tier A, Tier B, special deals for the top five accounts — fine, but they have to be enforced where the order is validated, not in a spreadsheet sales has to remember to consult. Look for price-list overrides that are visible to the buyer in their own portal.
- 3
Credit limits that actually block bad orders
Tribal knowledge of who's past due doesn't scale. The platform should refuse (or flag for approval) new orders when an account hits its limit — and give finance and sales the same view of open balance, not a nightly email digest.
- 4
Returns as a first-class flow, not a support ticket
Returns are how your customers lose trust. If your OMS treats returns as 'zero out the line item and refund manually,' stock counts will drift and refunds will get missed. Look for a defined return → approve → receive → refund loop with store credit as an option.
- 5
An audit trail you'd be comfortable handing to your accountant
If an auditor asks why a SKU count dropped by six yesterday, you want a row, not a guess. Every order, refund, and manual adjustment should have an actor, a timestamp, and a reason — automatically, not as a bolt-on.
How Distribu handles it
What you get on day one
One order queue across every channel
Orders from the storefront, the staff dashboard, and the REST API all hit the same queue with the same server-side semantics — stock decrements, tax applies, webhooks fire. You move them through submitted → processing → shipped → delivered from whichever surface you're in.
Order docs →Per-buyer pricing and credit limits
Override any product's price per customer, and block new orders server-side when the open balance hits the limit. Finance and sales read the same numbers — no spreadsheet that drifts a week after the last revision.
Pricing docs →Credit limits enforced at order creation
Distribu blocks new orders server-side when a customer's open balance hits their credit limit, across the portal, the staff dashboard, and the API. Finance and sales read one number — no shadow spreadsheet to reconcile against.
Credit docs →Returns, refunds, and store credit without a detour
Customers request returns right from the storefront. Staff approve, receive, and refund — to the original payment method or as store credit that auto-applies on the next order. The stock ledger updates in lockstep, so returned units don't ghost your counts.
Feature tour →An audited stock-movement ledger
Every adjustment — new orders, returns, manual edits, CSV imports — lands in a stock-history row with actor, timestamp, and reason. Finance and production close the books from the same data, and a missing unit always has a row to explain it.
Inventory docs →Frequently asked
What is B2B order management software?
B2B order management software handles the whole order lifecycle for a business-to-business seller — from a customer placing an order (via portal, phone, or API) through fulfillment, returns, and refunds. It differs from consumer OMS tools in handling per-buyer pricing, credit terms, multi-user buyer accounts, and negotiated contracts.
How is order management different from an ERP?
An ERP covers order management as part of a much bigger surface (accounting, HR, manufacturing, procurement). A dedicated order management tool covers only the order/inventory/customer loop, integrates with your accounting tool, and is typically 10x faster to stand up.
Do I need order management software if I use QuickBooks?
QuickBooks is an accounting tool — it books invoices and journals. It isn't built to run a customer portal, enforce per-buyer pricing, or keep an audit trail of stock movements. Most distributors pair the two: orders and stock in an OMS, journals in QuickBooks, synced automatically.
Can sales reps still take phone orders?
Yes — in Distribu, reps place orders on behalf of customers from the staff dashboard. Those orders land in the same queue as portal orders, with the same pricing rules, the same credit check, and the same audit trail. The portal doesn't replace reps; it just removes data re-entry.
How are returns handled?
Customers request returns from the storefront. Staff approve, receive, and refund — to the original payment method or as store credit that auto-applies on the next order. The stock ledger updates in lockstep so refunded units come back into available stock without manual cleanup.
Is there an API?
Yes. Distribu ships a REST API in the base plan with scoped API keys, per-key rate limits, and twelve webhook events with HMAC signatures and zero-downtime secret rotation. Everything the dashboard does is available to your code.
See it in your own tenant
14-day trial, no credit card. Or walk through it with us first — 20 minutes, your catalog, your questions.
Built for
Built for
Wholesale distributors
Per-buyer price lists, credit limits, and one shared order queue. Your reps, your ops team, and your customers all look at the same record.
Built for
Multi-brand retailers
One catalog, per-brand pricing, shared customer records — plus a REST API and webhooks for when your stack gets opinionated.