Wholesale Management System — Desktop + Field Sales Apps
A distribution business platform: an Electron desktop back office for stock, ledgers and reporting, paired with two React Native apps — one for administrators and one for salesmen working routes in the field.
Case study
How this was built, in the order I'd walk someone through it.
- 01
Users
Owner / adminOffice staffSalesmen in the fieldCustomersSuppliers - 02
Architecture
Three applications over one domain: an Electron desktop app (Express server plus a React interface) as the back office, and two React Native apps — an admin app and a salesperson app — for use away from the desk.
- 03
My responsibility
Built the desktop back office and both mobile applications.
- 04
One important feature
Ledgers as first-class objects
Customers, suppliers and salesmen each carry their own running ledger rather than balances being derived on the fly at report time. In a distribution business the ledger is the source of truth people argue over, so it's modelled directly and every transaction posts to it.
- 05
How it works internally
The server splits along the business's own vocabulary — stock and stock history, salesman stock and salesman history, customer / supplier / salesman ledgers, transactions, suppliers, customers, staff, expenses and expense categories, plus dashboard and reporting controllers. Salesman stock is tracked separately from warehouse stock, which is what makes van sales reconcilable: what a salesman took out, what they sold, and what came back are three distinct quantities.
