Wholesale, Stock & Distribution

AI for Wholesale, Stock & Distribution

Merchants · Trade counters · Multi-branch distributors · Warehousing

Orders arrive in every format a customer can invent and price files in every format a supplier can, while goods-in paperwork gets captured twice and reconciled later. Cortex answers the stock questions; these handle the paperwork around them — including the physical side of the warehouse and the yard.

Five fixed-price automations for wholesale, stock and distribution

These are the jobs we are asked for most often, written down with a fixed scope so you know what you are buying before you buy it. Each is quoted as a fixed price from £1,495, usually off the back of an operations audit that says which of them is worth doing first. Most of this is ordinary software automation with no AI in it at all.

What actually happens, in order — built from your enquiry channel through to the finished job, not a generic flowchart.

Solution 01

Order email to sales order

How do you get orders off email and into the system without retyping?

Orders arrive in every format a customer can invent: an email body, a PDF, somebody's spreadsheet, a photograph of a written list. Each one is read by a person and typed into the system by the same person.

What we build. Incoming orders are read, the lines extracted and matched against your catalogue and pricing, and staged for one-click confirmation. Your team verifies rather than retypes. Ambiguous lines wait for a human instead of being guessed at, and nothing commits without confirmation.

Not included, and said so before you buy

  • Customer-facing ordering portal
  • EDI onboarding with a specific customer, unless quoted
  • Cleaning a catalogue that cannot be matched against

When we would tell you not to bother. If almost all your orders already arrive through a portal or EDI, the retyping is somebody else's problem and you should not pay us to solve it.

Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.

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Solution 02

Supplier price file ingest

How do you load a new supplier price list without a day of spreadsheet work?

Every supplier sends a different shape of file, on their own schedule, with their own idea of what a column is called. Loading one is a day. Loading one badly is a month of wrong margins.

What we build. New price lists are normalised and loaded, with a change report showing what moved and by how much before anything is applied. You approve the change rather than discover it.

Not included, and said so before you buy

  • Negotiating with suppliers
  • Deciding your margin rules — we apply yours
  • Historic price correction

When we would tell you not to bother. If you take price files from one supplier twice a year, do it by hand.

Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.

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Solution 03

Backorder and shortage chase

How do you keep on top of what suppliers have promised?

A shortage becomes a series of phone calls, and the answers live in whoever made the call. When that person is off, the commitment is off too.

What we build. Supplier commitments are chased on a schedule and every acknowledgement is logged against the line, so the promise sits with the order rather than in somebody's memory.

Not included, and said so before you buy

  • Supplier relationship management
  • Automatic reordering
  • Committing to your customer on the supplier's behalf

When we would tell you not to bother. If your suppliers are reliable and shortages are rare, this is a solution looking for a problem.

Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.

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Solution 04

Goods-in and delivery capture

How do you capture delivery notes and PODs without double entry?

Paperwork is captured at the door, then again in the office, and reconciled later — which is where the discrepancies are found, long after anybody could have done something about them.

What we build. Delivery notes and signed PODs are matched to the order at the door, and discrepancies are flagged while the driver is arguably still in the yard rather than at month end.

Not included, and said so before you buy

  • Handheld hardware, unless quoted
  • Carrier system integration, unless quoted
  • Resolving disputes — the system surfaces them

When we would tell you not to bother. If goods-in is already scanned against the order, you have this.

Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.

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Solution 05

Stock and site status display

How do you show the counter and the warehouse what is actually on site?

“Have we got one?” gets answered by somebody checking three systems, or worse, by memory. Multi-branch makes it worse, and van stock worse again.

What we build. A wall screen for the counter or the warehouse: what is on site, what is due in, what is late. Driven by your own records, so it is as true as they are — which the audit will tell you honestly before you buy a screen.

Not included, and said so before you buy

  • The screen and mounting hardware, unless quoted
  • Stock accuracy — a display shows your data, it does not fix it
  • Stocktaking

When we would tell you not to bother. If your stock records are known to be unreliable, a screen broadcasts that unreliability faster. Fix the records first; we will say so.

Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.

Get this quoted →

Every solution has a written scope and a written list of what it excludes. The price is fixed before work starts. If we find the scope was wrong, we requote before building rather than invoicing the difference afterwards. There is no day rate, and no meter running.

How does Inferred automate order entry for wholesalers and distributors?

Local open-weight models read incoming orders — emails, PDFs, spreadsheets, web forms — extract every line, match them against your catalogue and pricing, and stage them for one-click confirmation. Your team verifies instead of retypes.

Nothing ships on a guess: every order is staged for human confirmation. In practice the review takes seconds, and accuracy improves because your team is checking rather than retyping under time pressure.

Customers stop waiting for “have we got one?” to be answered by somebody checking three systems. Plain-English stock queries across every location get answered from your own data — on the counter, on the phone, on a warehouse tablet.

Does this cover the warehouse floor and the yard, not just the office?

Yes — goods movement, picking, yard management, weighbridge capture and site status displays are part of the same picture. This page used to be split in two; it is one page now because the paperwork and the physical movement are the same problem seen from two ends of the building.

Weighbridge and gate tickets are captured at source into a structured record rather than a spike file, and the status display is driven by what was actually scanned.

Can local AI manage multi-location stock across branches and vans?

Yes. When spreadsheets can’t keep up, we build stock tracking designed around how your branches actually work — transfers, reservations, van stock, returns — with the AI layer built in from day one rather than bolted on.

Supplier pricing files, delivery notes and invoices are read automatically, matched against purchase orders, and flagged only when something does not add up.

Is our pricing data and customer list safe from AI providers?

Yes. Your stock levels, buy prices and customer terms are your competitive position. Everything runs on your premises, on your network, under your control — no cloud dependency, no third-party AI providers, no data sharing. Add branches and users freely; the system is yours.

We already have a stock system or ERP. Do we have to replace it?

No. Most of our work sits alongside your existing system — reading from it, writing to it, and adding the intelligence it lacks. Replacement is only on the table when you have genuinely outgrown what you have.

Legacy formats are the normal case rather than the exception: fixed-width exports, old CSV dialects, scanned delivery notes and PDFs from suppliers who have not changed their template since 2009.

Not sure which one you need?

That is what the free fifteen-minute call is for — bring the job that actually costs you time and we will tell you honestly whether it is one of these five, something else, or not worth automating at all.

Book a 15-minute call →