Founderwright for wholesale distribution
AI for wholesale distributors. Margin by the line, not the month.
We connect your ERP, warehouse system, pricing files, and books into one AI brain, then build the margin, pricing, and inventory tools your team now runs out of exports. Everything above the compliance line is built in-house, around your customers, your SKUs, and your vendors.
Private-equity-grade tools. Without giving up equity. Built by an operationally minded CFO, not a software vendor.
- Industrial & MRO
- Building products
- Food & beverage
- Electrical supply
- Plumbing & HVAC
- Janitorial & packaging
- Pool & landscape
Operator-CFO built
Not generic software. What a CFO would put in front of a distributor.
Founderwright is built by an operationally minded CFO. The numbers that grow a company organically are the same ones that make an acquisition work and hold up when you sell. Every build starts there: surfaced before you ask and ranked by dollar impact.
Sales by customer
Margin by customer after freight, rebates, terms, and returns
Some of your biggest accounts cost more to serve than they pay.
Inventory value
Cash tied up in slow and dead stock, by vendor line
It’s working capital you can free this quarter without selling another order.
Sales totals by rep
Margin given away through price overrides, by rep
Small discounts, repeated daily, are the most expensive decision in the building.
The same numbers carry a distributor through every stage: recovery, growth, acquisitions, and exit prep.
The morning brief
Surfaced before you ask. Ranked by what it’s worth.
Agents watch every connected system overnight. By morning, the issues that matter most are ranked, assigned, and drafted.
Tuesday, 6:30 a.m. · What the owner sees before the trucks load
Ranked actions
From your own numbers, across every system- 1Review 14 orders priced below matrixTodayTwo reps · $6.2K of margin given up last week
- 2Backorders aging on a top accountThis week23 lines past 10 days · $41K in open orders
- 3Rebate tier within reach on a key lineThis week$38K more in purchases by quarter end · $11K more back
- 4Fill rate at 96% this weekOn trackUp from 93% · freight per order down $4
Illustrative data. Every build is designed around your company’s own systems and numbers.
Voice notes that take action
Or just say it.
Between jobs, on the drive, or walking the floor: record a thought and the platform drafts the tasks, schedule changes, and answers. Nothing happens until you approve it. How voice notes work.
“Have the sales manager review the two reps pricing under matrix, get purchasing to reorder the fast movers at the east branch, and how close are we to the next rebate tier?”
- New taskSales manager: review 14 orders under matrix from 2 reps · due today
- New taskPurchasing: reorder east branch fast movers below reorder point
- Answer$38K more in purchases by quarter end reaches the next tier · $11K back
Illustrative. Nothing changes until you approve it.
Sound familiar
Margin leaks one order line at a time.
Price overrides go unnoticed
Reps knock a few points off to close the order. Each one looks small. Across a quarter, the overrides add up to a margin you never agreed to.
Earned rebates go unclaimed
Vendor programs pay on tiers, growth, and specific SKUs. The tracking lives in one person’s spreadsheet, so claims go in late, short, or not at all.
Cash sits on the shelf
Slow movers and dead stock tie up rack space and working capital, while the items customers actually order run out and go on backorder.
Freight eats the small orders
Small orders ship free, expedites get absorbed, and freight lands in one expense account. Nobody sees which customers and lanes lose money once the truck leaves.
What we’d build
What we’d build for a distributor.
We design each module from one conversation about how you buy, price, and ship. Every one is built in-house by Founderwright, owned by you, and running on your real orders, SKUs, customers, and vendor programs from the day it launches.
Owner’s command center
Sales, gross margin, fill rate, inventory, and cash by branch and customer segment, with this week’s margin leaks at the top and every figure traceable to the order line.
Margin by customer and SKU
Gross margin after freight, rebates, returns, and terms for every customer and item, so you know which accounts are profitable and which only look busy.
Pricing matrix guardrails
Your price matrix and contract pricing checked on every order. Anything below the floor is flagged to a manager, and agents log who approved each exception and why.
Vendor rebate tracker
Every vendor program, tier, and qualifying SKU tracked against actual purchases, with claims drafted on schedule and a heads-up when the next tier is within reach.
Inventory health
Turns, days on hand, slow movers, and dead stock by warehouse and vendor line, with reorder points checked against real demand and return candidates queued for the buyer.
Fill rate and backorders
Line and order fill rate by customer, with every backorder aged, tied to its open purchase order, and flagged to the rep in time to substitute or split the shipment.
Rep scorecards
Sales, margin, new accounts, and price overrides by rep and territory, tied to the orders each rep wrote, so commissions and coaching start from the same numbers.
Order to cash
Orders, shipments, invoices, and payments followed end to end, with short pays and deductions surfaced by customer and collection drafts ready for anything past terms.
The compliance line
We build above the line. We connect to everything else.
For distributors, the line sits under your books and inventory valuation, sales tax and exemption certificates, lot records where your products require them, payroll, and banking. Buying, pricing, selling, and the warehouse floor sit above it.
Above the line
Built custom, in-house by Founderwright, around how you run. Owned by you.
Below the line
The regulated systems you’re required to keep. We read from them, and where they offer a write API, approved work is written straight back in.
Keep any tool you like. We integrate with it. Distributors often keep their ERP, their warehouse management system, and their EDI connections with key customers. We build the margin, pricing, and rebate tools on top. See the systems we connect.
The build
How we’d build it for a distributor.
Follow an order through the building
We sit down with you and trace one order from quote to cash: how it’s priced, who can override, how it’s picked and shipped, which vendor programs it counts toward, and what you look at when margin slips.
Connect your ERP
Your ERP is connected, and the first command center is live on your real orders, items, customers, and purchase history. No export files, no new data entry, and your people keep working the way they do today.
Add the warehouse, freight, and vendors
Warehouse data, freight bills, vendor rebate agreements, payroll, and the books join the same brain, so margin by customer includes the costs that actually land on each order.
Build what your ERP doesn’t
Above the compliance line, we build the pricing review, the rebate tracker, and the margin reports your ERP was never shaped for. Each one retires an export or a spreadsheet, and you own every one of them.
The numbers it runs on
Your definitions. Measured the same way everywhere.
Every metric is defined with you once, tied back to the source systems, and checked by agents before anyone makes a decision on it.
Questions
What owners ask us.
Do we have to replace our ERP?
No. Keep any tool you like. Your ERP stays, and it’s the first system we connect. It can remain the record for orders and inventory while we build the pricing, rebate, and margin tools it was never good at. If you later retire something above the compliance line, we replace it with software built around how you buy, price, and ship.
What stays below the compliance line for a distributor?
Your books of record and inventory valuation, sales tax and customer exemption certificates, lot and traceability records where your products require them, payroll, and banking. Those systems stay in charge. We read from them, and where one offers a write API, approved entries go straight back in. Each write is approved by a person and recorded in a log, so the books stay the books.
Can it show which customers actually make us money?
Yes. Margin by customer is calculated after freight, rebates, payment terms, returns, and price overrides, not just on the invoice line. You see which accounts carry the business, which ones break even once the cost to serve them lands, and which items drive the difference, down to the individual order.
How do the agents handle pricing and rebates?
They watch every order and every vendor program, then hand what they find to a person. When an order goes out below the matrix floor, an agent flags it to the sales manager with the rep and the reason given. When a rebate claim is due, it drafts the claim from actual purchases for your buyer to review. Nothing goes to a vendor or a customer without an approval.
If we part ways, what do we keep?
Everything. The system is yours: the tools we build above the compliance line, your pricing and margin history, and the data behind them. You can keep building on it with us or run it on your own. There’s no lock-in, and no per-seat fee standing between you and your own data.
Start with one conversation.
Recovering, growing, buying, or getting ready to sell: tell us how your company runs. We’ll show you what it could run on.
Start a conversation logan@founderwright.com