Bottling is distribution with the difficulty turned up: heavy cases, thin margins, daily drops — and two inventories moving in opposite directions at every doorstep: fulls going out, empties coming back. xMatix runs the bottler's route to market — carbonated drinks, packaged water, juices, beer — as one system where the beat, the van, the crate ledger and the books are the same records.
The route: daily beats, vans that reconcile
Bottling outlets buy small and often, so coverage runs on beats with daily or alternate-day rhythm, and most selling is van sales: the morning load is a documented stock movement picked against the route's own offtake, the rep sells and invoices at the doorstep — GST-compliant, offline, with schemes applied — collects against open invoices, and the evening settles as arithmetic: opening load, minus sales, plus returns, equals the count at the gate. Cash and crates reconcile the same way, on the same documents.
Empties and crates: a ledger, not a notebook
Returnable bottles and crates are real inventory on xMatix, not a memo field. The load-out issues them with the cases, the doorstep visit takes them back onto van stock, and movement documents carry the returnable classification the paperwork requires. Because every issue and return is a ledger fact, the per-outlet and per-route balance is a query — which outlets are sitting on crates, how long, and how much working capital that is — instead of a month-end treasure hunt. Deposits, where the trade runs on them, ride the same documents through finance.
Schemes, collections and the brand's view
Volume trades on promotions, so schemes are defined once and computed server-side at the point of sale — what the route gives is what the brand designed, and settlements accrue into claims rather than disputes. Collections and outstanding are worked on the route, invoice by invoice, with credit limits that have teeth. And because vans, counters and portals post through one platform, secondary sales are visible the day they happen — by route, SKU and outlet — not reconstructed from distributor statements.
Coolers in the trade
The cooler placed in an outlet is the brand's asset in someone else's shop. xMatix tracks it as an installed asset with placement terms and a service life, and services it with the same machinery a service network uses — visits planned and executed in the field, history on the asset — so "where are our coolers and who last saw them" is a report, not a rumour.
Common questions
How are empty bottles and crates tracked?
As inventory, on the same documents as the product: the morning load-out issues crates with the cases, doorstep returns come back onto van stock, and the depot count closes the day. Per-outlet balances fall out of the ledger — which outlets hold crates, for how long — so returnables are managed like the working capital they are.
Can reps invoice at the outlet without connectivity?
Yes. The catalogue, outlet pricing, schemes and history live on the device, and the rep raises a GST-compliant invoice at the doorstep offline. For businesses under the e-invoicing mandate, IRP registration completes automatically when the device reconnects, and the IRN attaches to the invoice record.
How does a bottler see secondary sales?
At source: van invoices, counter sales and portal orders all post through the same platform, so sell-through by route, SKU and outlet is visible the day it happens. There is no separate reporting feed for a distributor to fill in late — the operational documents are the data.
Can it manage the coolers we place in outlets?
Yes — a cooler is an installed asset with a location, placement terms and a service history. Field visits, breakdown jobs and preventive care run through the same service machinery as any installed base, so the asset register and the service record stay one thing.
Does the same system work for water, CSD and beer distribution?
The route model is the same discipline — beats, van sales, returnables, schemes — and the product, tax and document rules are configuration rather than code, so category differences (batch rules, deposit conventions, statutory paperwork) are set up per business rather than bolted on.