Maruti Distributors Pty Ltd

Modernising Food Wholesale Operations with Odoo

Agostino Wholesalers is a well-established food wholesaler based in Wangara, Western Australia, supplying restaurants, pubs, clubs, and retail partners with a comprehensive catalogue that includes oils, pulses, sauces, condiments, seafood, chocolates, beverages, dairy products, frozen items, and speciality Asian, Mexican, and Italian products. Over time, the business evolved from a niche supplier into a national distributor with a large and fast-moving product range, with more than 2,400 stock items managed across dry, chilled, and frozen storage facilities.

To support this growth, Agostino needed a platform that could serve both B2B wholesalers and retail buyers, offering bulk ordering, packaging-based pricing, dietary tagging (e.g., gluten-free, vegan), and complex delivery conditions, while still keeping the web experience intuitive and mobile-friendly. 

The Odoo implementation for Agostino by Odoo partner (Aarav Solutions) was therefore designed as a unified commerce and operations backbone, replacing multiple legacy tools and bringing all data into a single source of truth.



Business Challenges

Before the transformation, Agostino operated on several disconnected systems, including Reckon, QuickBooks, and Magento, which led to data silos and repeated data entry across accounting, sales, and eCommerce. This fragmentation made it difficult to manage real-time stock visibility, maintain accurate pricing, and enforce credit limits or purchase policies, particularly as the product catalogue and customer base scaled.

Manual, non-standard registration processes for wholesale customers caused onboarding delays and inconsistent credit and pricing configurations, while the absence of differential pricing based on package sizes, quantities, or contract arrangements constrained commercial flexibility. Delivery operations also suffered from manual route planning and generic pick slips that failed to distinguish between dry, chilled, and frozen items, reducing efficiency and increasing handling risk.

In addition, there was no robust mechanism to restrict interstate purchases of perishable goods, which added compliance and logistics complexity for temperature-sensitive products.

Solution for Modern Food Wholesale Operations
The new platform for Agostino Wholesalers was rolled out in phases. This gradual implementation by Aarav Solutions introduced a suite of applications that systematically transformed the food wholesaler's operations. The changes ranged from foundational areas like product setup and web commerce to more sophisticated functions such as advanced automation, pricing control, and logistics optimisation.

a. Product Configuration Solution

● Delivered a single, reliable product foundation that ensures consistent catalogue data across all channels, supports controlled product lifecycle management, and enables role-based product access - improving governance at scale.

● Enabled operations-ready product data aligned to its state (Dry, Chilled, and Frozen) with corresponding workflows, with clear sellable and packaging structures.

● Strengthened merchandising and discovery by enabling intelligent cross-sell, substitution, and promotion visibility, while ensuring website navigation and operational documents stay aligned with storage and dispatch realities.

● Improved buyer clarity and conversion through richer product presentation and cleaner selling information.

● Established end-to-end product traceability across sales, purchasing, inventory, and finance, improving operational control and financial visibility.

● Supported differentiated B2B and retail experiences by dynamically controlling product visibility based on customer type, ensuring the right products are exposed to the right audience.

b. Sales & Pricing

● Sales operations are driven by a single, reliable pricing and taxation foundation, ensuring that quotations, sales orders, invoices, and reports consistently reflect accurate prices, margins, and volumes across all customers and channels.

● Centralised pricing framework supporting both wholesale and key accounts by enabling clear margin control, structured discounts, and customer-specific pricing.

● Customer pricing is automatically applied based on the customer’s commercial agreement (e.g., wholesaler, retailer, contract), ensuring that the correct prices flow seamlessly across sales, invoicing, and financial reporting without operational intervention.

● Pricing, SKUs, taxes, and product identifiers remain aligned across POS, sales, and back-office channels, enabling consistent customer experiences while simplifying multi-channel operations and stock management.

c. Website & E-Commerce Solution

● Branded e-commerce storefront that supports complex pricing, packaging, and wholesale operations without operational overhead.

● Secure, role-based payment experiences, ensuring wholesalers and retailers see only the payment options and pricing flows relevant to them - eliminating misuse and checkout friction.

● Intelligent delivery and fulfilment controls that align orders with geography, perishability, and order value, reducing failed deliveries and compliance risk.

● Advanced controls for perishable goods, ensuring the right products are visible, sellable, and deliverable based on location, category, and handling constraints.

● Improved repeat purchasing and customer retention by making re-ordering faster and simpler through saved preferences and purchase history.


d. Customer, Contacts, & Credit Solution

● A unified customer and contact framework that supports complex B2B relationships, improves data accuracy, and streamlines billing, shipping, and internal coordination.

● Differentiated buying experiences for retailers and wholesalers, ensuring the right pricing, terms, and order rules are applied automatically for each customer segment.

● Strengthened credit and payment governance to reduce B2B risk, enforce approval controls, and maintain healthy exposure without slowing down order processing.

● Improved delivery reliability by aligning order placement with customer-specific delivery schedules, reducing fulfilment errors and customer service exceptions.

e. Point of Sale and Purchase

● Faster, more reliable in-store and outlet operations through a unified POS experience that supports multiple sales channels, accurate pricing, and seamless checkout for both standard and weighted products.

● Real-time inventory visibility and pricing consistency across outlets by tightly aligning POS, warehouses, and storage conditions - driving accurate stock valuation, and consistent promotions and loyalty benefits.

● Stronger procurement governance and cost control through structured vendor management and clear visibility into purchasing performance

e. Point of Sale and Purchase

● Faster, more reliable in-store and outlet operations through a unified POS experience that supports multiple sales channels, accurate pricing, and seamless checkout for both standard and weighted products.

● Real-time inventory visibility and pricing consistency across outlets by tightly aligning POS, warehouses, and storage conditions - driving accurate stock valuation, and consistent promotions and loyalty benefits.

● Stronger procurement governance and cost control through structured vendor management and clear visibility into purchasing performance, enabling proactive decisions, reduced delays, and improved supplier accountability.

f. Fleet & Logistics Solution

● Improved last-mile delivery reliability and transparency through centralised delivery oversight, structured delivery management, and clear proof of delivery.

● Enabled real-time, end-to-end visibility across orders, deliveries, invoices, and payments - simplifying order management and issue resolution.

● Empowered administrators and support teams with live visibility into order, product, and delivery status, enabling faster and more confident customer interactions.

● Standardised picking, packing, and delivery flows with product handling and storage needs, while providing route and region-level visibility, improving operational control and execution consistency.



g. Security, Roles, & Reporting Solution

● A secure, role-driven operating model provides teams with necessary access, maintaining strong governance, auditability, and cross-functional alignment.

● Created a single, consistent system of control for settings and work flows, ensuring data integrity and reducing dependency on manual oversight as the business scales.

● Enabled leadership and functional teams with unified, role-based insights across sales, inventory, purchasing, and finance.

Custom Features Developed
Aarav Solutions delivered a customised Odoo implementation for the Australian food wholesalers, combining native Odoo modules with industry-specific enhancements.

● Enabled paperless customer onboarding and simplified reordering via wishlist, Bought Before, configurable delivery methods (standard, local, pickup), and contract-specific ribbons on the website.

● Automated credit management, risk checks, and contract-based pricing rules tied to customer credit limits, minimum order values, and payment terms across the website, Sales, and POS.

● Implemented advanced packaging controls across Sales, Website, Inventory, and POS, enabling multiple package types per product (unit, sack, CTN), default website packaging, wishlist by packaging, packaging-aware replenishment, and packaging visibility in pick, pack, and delivery operations.

● Automated pricing management with contract-based pricelists, CTN-based price rules, margin visibility, POS pricelist selection, and packaged-product pricing driven by the active pricelist and package configuration.

● Enabled POS-specific enhancements, including packaged product pricing, POS QR-code generation (excluding UPI), surcharge handling, refunds and corrections, wrong-payment corrections, and sales-order transfer to POS with packaging-aware deliveries.

● Enforced delivery and product-handling controls aligned with pick–pack digitalisation, pick-slip sorting, putaway rules, damage and internal-use write‑offs, and batch-based driver routing.

● Provided visibility into customer purchase history through Bought Before views on the portal and backend, customer-level insights reporting, and packaged-quantity tracking on orders.

● Expanded delivery operations with cut‑off times, out-of-stock pickup ordering, batch transfers, and delivery-fee identification in Accounting.

● Introduced a dedicated driver portal role for execution and tracking, featuring digital proof of delivery, status updates, and batch-level sequencing, along with map-based delivery visualisation. 

● Automated ABA payments to comply with Australian banking requirements, including trusted-bank checks, batch payment generation, and supplier remittance copies.

The implementation of these sophisticated capabilities by Aarav Solutions, meticulously integrated atop Odoo's powerful suite of existing modules, fundamentally transformed the company's operational landscape. By creating a unified and centralised platform, the solution delivered an indisputable "single source of truth" across all critical business functions, including sales management, real-time stock and inventory tracking, complex logistics and fulfilment, and comprehensive financial reporting.



This strategic technological overhaul yielded immediate and quantifiable benefits that demonstrably improved business performance and efficiency. Key measurable gains included:

● 25% Reduction in Stockouts: The improved visibility and predictive analytics within the new system allowed for more accurate demand forecasting and optimised inventory levels, significantly minimising costly and disruptive stockout incidents.

● 20% Lower Operating Costs: Streamlined processes, reduced manual data entry, and enhanced efficiency in logistics and inventory management collectively contributed to a substantial reduction in overall operational expenditure.

● Order-to-Invoice Cycle Completed Twice as Quickly: The automation and integration of the sales, fulfilment, and financial processes drastically accelerated the order lifecycle, cutting the time taken from initial order placement to final invoice generation by half, thereby improving cash flow and customer satisfaction.

Enabling next-level Operations & Supporting Go-Live

The subsequent phase involved applying the Odoo 18 blueprint to more complex operational aspects and the associated deployment. This included a specific focus on areas like Point of Sale (POS), payment processing, procurement controls, delivery logistics, communication, and Australian payroll compliance.

The Odoo solution enables batch ABA vendor payments, automated B-Point surcharges, and QR-based POS payment redirection (excluding UPI).

● Sales orders with pack-aware quantities fl ow from Sales to POS; Cancel options are available from POS with a complete audit trail.

● Support for partial/full refunds, corrected re-invoicing, and proper payment reversals.

● POS sessions summarize payments for easier reconciliation

● Additional features include Batch vendor payments, automated payment gateway surcharges, and QR-based POS payment redirection.

b. Procurement, pricing integrity, and traceability

Vendor-level controls were implemented to ensure supplier compliance, inventory accuracy, and cost integrity across the procurement and receivable process, and support for:

● Vendor-level MOQs and replenishment rules

● Track receivals with capture item details

● Price deviation alerts to identify mismatches between vendor bills and POs

The solution streamlines end-to-end delivery and warehouse operations, automating dispatch workflows and enforcing structured inventory fulfilment for sales, logistics, and fulfilment.

● Standardisation of delivery cut-off times to synchronise sales, warehouse, and POS operations

● Allows out-of-stock pickup orders to remain pending until stock is replenished & automated delivery batching and assignment

● A lite portal with route visualisation, status updates, and proof-of-delivery capture; Support for structured pick-slip sequencing with category-based putaway rules

● Clear handling and reporting of stock damage, internal use, and replenishment exceptions

The Odoo solution standardises customer communications, strengthens multi-channel engagement, and delivers consistent reporting and documentation across the platform.

● Centralised email CC fi elds and reusable templates for consistent multi-recipient communication; QWeb-based framework for consistent branding, reporting, and compliance across all documents

● Email diagnostics to identify, resolve delivery issues, and enhance customer portals and backend tools for statement access and batch distribution

● WhatsApp integration with Live Chat handoff, and fallback channels

● Australian payroll and compliance (Australian payroll localisation) to support ATO-compliant STP reporting with CSV-based STP submissions; addressed superannuation, salary sacrifi ce, and recurring payroll deductions

● STP code mapping, year-to-date (YTD) balance imports, and end-of-financial-year (EOFY) processing

Implemented an integrated approach to website optimisation by combining advanced page-level SEO configuration for improved performance and search rankings:

● Monitored indexing, visibility, and performance using Google Search Console

● Managed SEO configuration for page metadata, robots.txt fi le, and product visibility

● At the POS Level - Surcharge is optional and can be applied on a per-transaction basis. Users can add a surcharge during checkout for card payments only.

● At Website Level - Surcharge functionality for credit card payments is configured at the customer level through payment gateway settings (via BPOINT)

● Surcharge is calculated and applied during the payment process, with clear visibility of the surcharge amount before final confirmation.

● Supports both percentage-based and fi xed surcharge amounts, depending on payment method and configuration

● Automatically logs out internal & portal users after a defined period of inactivity.

● The timeout duration can be configured through system parameters in the technical settings, along with preventing unauthorised access on shared devices.

By the end of this phase, Agostino will benefit from an integrated, highly specialised Odoo 18 environment that supports end-to-end food wholesale operations - from digital storefront and pricing all the way through procurement, warehouse execution, delivery, payments, and Australian payroll compliance.

Conclusion

The Odoo-led transformation of Agostino Wholesalers demonstrates the capability of a modern, integrated platform to scale and modernise complex food wholesale operations. By replacing fragmented legacy systems with a unified digital backbone, Agostino achieved end-to-end visibility and stabilisation across crucial business areas, including eCommerce, sales, pricing, inventory, logistics, and finance.

The phased rollout stabilised core processes fi rst and then introduced advanced automation, compliance controls, and customer-focused capabilities without disrupting operations. Custom features tailored for Australian food wholesaling delivered measurable improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and customer experience, while the next phase extended these gains into POS, procurement governance, delivery orchestration, communications, and STP-compliant payroll.

Together, these capabilities position Agostino Wholesalers with a scalable, future-ready operating model that supports sustained growth and consistent service across wholesale and retail channels.

Reach out to marketing@aaravsolutions.com for more details on the case study.

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