Trade price lists, dealer credit and waybills

Keeping dealer price lists with quantity breaks, credit limits, holds and dispatch waybills together in Achekam's Wholesale add-on, and its limits.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Manufacturing businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

A manufacturer that sells through dealers usually keeps its commercial rules in three places that never quite agree. The price list is a PDF a sales rep e-mails out, sometimes last year's. The credit limits live in the accountant's spreadsheet. The waybill is written by hand at the dispatch window. When a dealer orders a pallet at the carton price, or takes stock while their account is already over the limit, nobody notices until the month-end statement.

Achekam's Wholesale add-on brings those three things onto one screen: price lists with quantity breaks, trade customers with credit limits, terms and a hold, and orders that are confirmed, dispatched and given a printed waybill. This article explains how to use it in a factory or distribution business in South Africa, Nigeria or Kenya, and the one gap you need a routine for.

Price lists with quantity breaks

With the Wholesale add-on, a business keeps price lists, and each list can carry quantity breaks: a lower unit price once an order reaches a set quantity. That is how most manufacturers already think about trade pricing. A single unit, a carton and a pallet are different sales, and a dealer who commits to volume expects a better price.

A few habits keep price lists useful rather than confusing:

• Keep one list per kind of customer, such as appointed dealers, contractors and occasional trade buyers, rather than one list per dealer.
• Set breaks at quantities that match how goods are actually packed, so a break never encourages a dealer to order a quantity you would have to split.
• When prices change, decide the effective date and tell dealers before orders start arriving at the new price.

Trade customers: credit limit, terms and a hold

Each trade customer in the Wholesale add-on carries three controls:

The hold is the one to use with care. It is the quickest way to stop more goods going to a dealer who has stopped paying, and it is equally quick to upset a good customer if it stays on after the payment arrives. Decide who in the business may put an account on hold and who may lift it, and make sure dispatch knows to check before goods leave.

Trade customers are created on the Wholesale screen. The same accounts can also be used at a factory shop or trade counter: a till sale can be charged to a trade customer's account, and the till checks the hold and credit limit before it lets the sale through. That is covered in selling to trade customers on account at the counter.

From confirmed order to printed waybill

A wholesale order moves through three steps: it is confirmed, it is dispatched, and a waybill is printed for it. The waybill travels with the goods and gives the driver and the dealer one document that lists what left the factory. Filing the signed waybill when it comes back is a simple habit that settles most "we never received it" arguments later. DP World's explanation of proof of delivery covers what a delivery record shows (recipient, time and condition of the goods), paper versus electronic proof, and why it matters for billing and disputes.

The gap: dispatched orders are not invoiced

Here is the limit to plan around. At the time of writing, dispatched wholesale orders are not invoiced or posted to the ledger. Dispatching an order does not create a customer invoice, does not raise a debtor and does not post a sale.

So the invoice is a separate step in receivables. In Achekam, a customer invoice is created as a draft, and issuing it gives it the next number in your sequence and posts it as debtors, sales and output VAT. Without a routine, dispatched goods can go uninvoiced for weeks.

A simple daily check closes the gap:

1. At the end of each day, list the orders dispatched that day.
2. For each one, raise the customer invoice in receivables for exactly what the waybill shows.
3. Tick the order off only once the invoice is issued.
4. Once a week, someone other than the person who raised the invoices compares dispatched orders against issued invoices and follows up anything missing.

Products and locations behind the orders

Behind every order are your products. The Item Master, in the Accounting menu, lists and creates products with a SKU, name, category, selling and cost price, opening quantity and VAT treatment. It needs the Point of Sale, Warehousing or Wholesale add-on.

Take care when you create products: at the time of writing, no screen lets a business change a product's price, cost or VAT treatment after creating it, or deactivate it. Check each product's details before you save it.

If you hold stock in more than one place, the Warehousing add-on keeps stock locations such as warehouses, stores, bins and vans, with the quantity on hand at each. Moving goods between them, for example from the factory store to a regional depot, goes from draft to dispatched to received, and a short delivery is recorded as wastage.

Getting started

Begin with the price lists and the credit controls, because they protect margin and cash from the first order. Then agree the daily invoicing check with whoever runs dispatch and whoever runs receivables, so the gap between a waybill and an invoice is closed every day. When goods come in rather than go out, the matching problem reverses; see matching supplier invoices to orders and deliveries.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.