This 4-minute video will show you how distributors are entered and used in ShipCompliant. 

Subtopics and where they begin

Video transcript

Petra:
Hi, I'm Petra and this is Hannah from ShipCompliant University.

Hannah:
Do you know there's only one boss?

Petra:
Like Tony Danza from Who's the Boss?

Hannah:
No, the customer, the customer's the boss.

Petra:
Right. Yes. We're going to be covering customers today. How to put your customers and distributors in ShipCompliant.

Hannah:
Cool. Let's get started.

Zoe:
In the next three minutes, I'll walk you through why you want to enter distributor information in ShipCompliant and how to enter it, both one at a time, and in bulk. When you import your invoices into ShipCompliant for your state reports, you provide a distributor key. It represents the customer associated with each order. The key is the code you use in your accounting system to uniquely identify customers. It could be called a customer number, customer code, or if you use QuickBooks, could even be just the name of your distributor.

Zoe:
So here's a sample order import. We use the distributor key to determine the address the order shipping to and to which state report the order belongs to. So, let's take a look at this distributor, GA1, and find out who this distributor is and where this order is shipping. To do that, I'm going to go into your account and look up, Set Up Distributors.

Zoe:
Got it. So it looks like around 230 cases are being sold to Beverage Sales Company Incorporated in Savannah, Georgia, and the order needs to appear on the Georgia April Wholesale Gallonage report. Let's take a look at that report. Go under Reports, View Reports, and open the Georgia ATT-29 report. And bam! Here's that order, and here's the distributor it's going to be sent to.

Zoe:
So, it's really easy to add a distributor in ShipCompliant. The nice thing about entering them one at a time, is that, as long as you know the region where the distributor works, you can select from a list of distributors in our database and we'll populate shipping information. Then all you have to do is enter the effective date, click the checkbox at the bottom of the page, and you're done. The effective date is the date you began your relationship with your distributor. If you don't know it, don't worry, it's really just for your records. You can just enter the first of the year here.

Zoe:
So, if you're just setting up your ShipCompliant account and have more than 10 distributors, it can be easier to import your distributors in bulk, and I'm going to show you how to do that. So, if you go to Upload Distributors, this is where you can find the Distributor Import Template. Let's download it. The only fields that are required are those that are in red here. I'm just going to fill them out real quick. The key, the distributor's name, the effective date, and the shipping address, same information we just entered manually.

Zoe:
So, after you're finished, just save the file somewhere in your computer where it's easy to find. And if you're not sure you completed it correctly, feel free to send it over to our support team and we can look it over and make sure everything's good to go. But I think this one looks great. So we're going to go back to the Upload Distributor page, choose the file and upload. Check this box, it shows you understand that we recommend before selling wine, you enter into a written supply agreement with your wholesaler. There's also a handy checklist of things you might want to consider including in those agreements. And then upload your file. And that's it.

Zoe:
You're now a pro at adding and updating your distributors, so your reports and registration forms are accurate and your distributor relationships are organized and easy for anyone to find.

Petra:
Thanks for watching. Now we've got brands, products and distributors. I'm stoked. Great job.

Hannah:
You're like butter because you're on a roll. Check out the next video and you'll be ready for reporting. Petra, remind me what's next.

Petra:
Importing Orders. And then we party.