Bought by the kilo, sold by the piece — an ERP for a fastener wholesaler

Contents

1. Quick facts
2. The business
3. Who this fastener ERP software is for
4. The challenge
5. Before vs after
6. Before vs after, step by step
7. Why not Tally or a generic ERP
8. KG to PCS conversion
9. Automation workflows
10. Solution architecture
11. The modules
12. Every feature and its business benefit
13. How it helps sell more
14. Challan to invoice and job work, in detail
15. AI and automation
16. Roles and role-by-role benefits
17. How it was built
18. What was delivered and current status
19. Technology and roadmap
20. FAQ

Quick facts

Who is this fastener ERP software for?

This system was designed for one specific kind of business: an industrial fastener wholesaler that buys material by weight, sells it by weight and by count, keeps a long price list of sizes and finishes, and does a good part of its selling over WhatsApp. If you run a nut bolt trading business, a hardware and fastener wholesale counter, or an industrial fastener inventory that spans hundreds of sizes, the problems on this page will sound familiar.

It is a good fit if most of these are true for you:

• Your purchase bills are in kilos but your customers order in pieces, and someone converts KG to PCS on a calculator every day.
• Your rate list is per KG, with different rates for MS, GI and other finishes, plus set rates for nut, bolt and washer combinations.
• Regular customers take material many times a month on an open challan, and you raise one GST bill at month end.
• You send material out for zinc plating or other job work and get back a little less weight than you sent.
• Enquiries and internal orders arrive as WhatsApp shorthand, and your staff coordinate in WhatsApp groups.
• You use Tally (or similar) for books, but nothing runs the enquiry, stock, packing and dispatch side of the business.

The same design also suits wholesale distribution ERP needs in nearby trades: steel and pipe traders, bearing and tool distributors, and electrical or plumbing wholesalers. Laxmi Fastener is in Ankleshwar; Yukti AI is in Surat and builds these systems for traders across Gujarat and the rest of India.

What Laxmi Fastener was doing by hand

These points are our description of the manual work the system was built to replace, drawn from the client's own price-list workbooks and the staff WhatsApp group messages we were shown. They are not quotes from the owner.

• Every quotation needs a calculation first. The customer asks for 500 pieces, the rate list is per kilo, so someone works out the weight, then the rate, then the total — per line, on every enquiry.
• Orders arrive on WhatsApp in shorthand. Messages like Ms bolt 12x50 20kg-77 … Ready karavo had to be read, understood, checked against stock and re-typed into a bill.
• The team runs two WhatsApp groups to coordinate. One group for godown stock in and out, another for orders. Nothing was tracked, nothing was searchable, and a slip missed in a busy group meant material that never moved.
• Running challans are reconciled at month end. Regular customers take material a dozen times a month against one open challan; totalling it and turning it into one invoice was a manual job, with nothing stopping a challan from being billed twice.
• We don't know what plated stock actually costs. Send 100 kg for zinc, get 98.5 kg back, pay a processing rate and transport — but the finished item was still valued at the raw rate.
• Stock is what the godown says it is. No separation between material physically present, material already promised to an order, and material sitting at the plating vendor.
• Tally has the books, but nothing has the business. Accounts existed; enquiries, quotations, orders, dispatch, challans and stock did not.

How does a typical day change, task by task?

The short lists above give the headline. The table below walks through the actual jobs in a fastener trading day and what each one looks like in the system. The “before” column is a general description of the manual way of working, not a measurement, and no time savings are claimed.

Why not Tally, or a generic distribution ERP?

Laxmi Fastener already used Tally and wants to retire it eventually, but not in one jump. The question was what runs the business day to day. A generic distribution ERP handles stock and invoices, but not the things that make a fastener business specific:

The recommended path keeps Tally for the CA and GST returns in phase one, and moves accounting into the system in later phases only once the operational side is running.

This is the calculation that sits under every screen in the system, taken from the client's own workbooks (the rates themselves are the client's commercial data and are not shown here):

So a salesman quotes 500 pieces, the godown issues 19.1 KG, the customer's purchase order says 500 nos, the invoice can print either, and the stock ledger records both the quantity as entered and the converted quantity. Nobody does the arithmetic, and nothing drifts. The same table drives the fastener calculator, which reproduces the method in the client's KGS-NOS CALCULATION workbook for set pricing — nut plus bolt, nut plus bolt plus washer, nut plus bolt plus two washers — plus stud cutting tables and thread pitch.

Why the KG to PCS conversion matters beyond quoting

Because the weight of 100 pieces is stored on the product, the conversion is used everywhere, not just in quotations. Stock is kept in one base unit (pieces for almost every item), and any document can be entered in PCS, KG, BOX, PKT, SET, MTR or BAG where that unit makes sense for the item. A bag is weight-based and defaults to 50 KG, matching the price list's “nos per 50 KG”; that default is an assumption still to be confirmed with the owner, and it can be set per product.

For the business this means three things. Valuation is right, because the stock figure behind the KG number and the PCS number is the same. Challans and invoices can bill a KG-rated item by weight and a piece-rated item by count on the same document. And the godown can count in bags while the office thinks in pieces, without anyone reconciling the two at the end of the month.

WhatsApp enquiry → invoice

Staff shorthand → tracked work — replacing the two WhatsApp groups

Zinc job work → true cost

Running challan → one monthly invoice

Stock falls → purchase

The modules

Dashboard — the command centre

KPIs, today's work, charts, alerts, the packing queue, the WhatsApp feed, follow-ups due and a live activity stream on one screen. Benefit: the owner opens one page and knows what needs attention today instead of asking four people.

CRM — enquiries, customers, pipeline, WhatsApp

Enquiries and a customer 360 view that carries the ledger, the WhatsApp timeline and that customer's own agreed rates. A sales pipeline as a drag-and-drop board where moving a card actually performs the step — drop a deal into the next column and the system creates the order, reserves the stock, queues the packing or raises the invoice. Follow-ups are created automatically when a quotation is sent. Benefit: the enquiry, the conversation, the price history and the money owed are one record, not four.

The WhatsApp workspace and message parser

Incoming customer messages are read by a parser that matches fastener descriptions to catalogue products, pulls live stock and the correct rate for that customer, and totals it. A suggested reply is drafted for the salesman to send or edit, and a quotation can be created from the same screen. Benefit: the slowest, most repetitive part of a trading day — reading an enquiry and working out a price — becomes a review-and-send step. The parser is rule-based (pattern matching against the product master, with a confidence score per line); it does not call an external AI model.

Quotations, orders and the stock guard

A quotation builder where every line shows its stock position and its price source — standard rate, this customer's rate, or a manual override — and can be entered in KG or PCS with live conversion. If a line exceeds available stock the system stops and offers three choices: raise a purchase order, accept it as a backorder, or cancel. Accepted quotations convert into sales orders and reserve stock. Benefit: nobody promises material that is already committed to somebody else.

Running challans

For regular industrial customers who collect material many times a month, each has an open challan. Adding material takes stock out immediately and grows the running total, the customer signs on delivery, and at month end a consolidated statement becomes one GST invoice. A challan that has been invoiced is locked, and trying again gives a clear warning. Benefit: month-end totalling becomes one consolidation step, and the system refuses to bill the same challan twice.

Inventory — stock states, product 360, movements

Stock overview with valuation, a product master presented as the price list the team already knows, and a product 360 page showing the KG↔PCS conversion, every stock state, the full movement ledger and a side-by-side comparison of what each supplier charges for that item. Every change writes a movement recording the quantity as entered, the converted quantity, the change to physical and available stock, the resulting balance, the rate, the party, the reference and the user. Benefit: any number on any screen can be traced back to the transaction that caused it.

Zinc and coating processing

Send raw material to a plating vendor at an agreed rate per kilo; it leaves available stock but stays on the books as under processing. On receipt the actual returned weight is entered, the loss is recorded, and a landed cost is computed from material value plus processing, transport and other charges — then the finished quantity is added to the plated variant of that product at that cost and the vendor bill is raised. Benefit: plated stock is valued at what it really cost, so margins on plated items are honest.

Godown IN/OUT and Quick Order

The two WhatsApp groups the team used for coordination are now screens. Any staff member posts a godown slip or types an order in exactly the shorthand they already use; the godown taps Done to move stock or Return with a reason; an order becomes a sales order with stock reserved and a packing task, with a “ready karavo” instruction raising its priority. Benefit: the same speed as a WhatsApp message, but tracked, searchable and connected to stock.

Purchase and suppliers

Suppliers, purchase orders and RFQs, goods received with a QC step, supplier bills and payments. Receiving goods updates the weighted average cost and creates the bill. Benefit: buying cost stays current, so profitability reports mean something.

Accounts and receivables

Receivables and payables, payment recording with FIFO allocation against invoices and bills, party ledgers, outstanding and aging, and a management financial overview. Benefit: who owes what, and for how long, without exporting anything.

Operations and reports

Packing queue, dispatch queue, team tasks and an activity log; reports for sales, purchase, stock including dead stock, outstanding, profitability and a business summary. Benefit: the floor and the office see the same queue.

Settings and access

Company profile, users and team, roles and permissions, WhatsApp, invoice, tax and GST, and notification settings. Seven roles are defined (Owner, Admin, Sales, Purchase, Accounts, Warehouse, Dispatch), and a role switcher lets the owner preview what each role can see; real per-user logins arrive with the backend phase. Benefit: a warehouse user sees the packing queue, not the ledger, and only the Owner can sell below the minimum rate.

Across all of it: a command palette on Ctrl K that searches products by size (typing “M10 x 50” finds the item), a notification centre, quick-add actions, and a responsive layout with a mobile bottom bar so the godown can use it on a phone.

Every feature, and what it does for the business

Here is the full feature list of this fastener ERP software in one place, each with the concrete benefit it is meant to bring. Everything in this table is built and working in the prototype on sample data; the right-hand column is the purpose of the feature, not a measured result.

How do challan consolidation and zinc job work run, step by step?

These are the two workflows that most generic GST billing software handles worst for a fastener trader, so here they are in full.

Running challan to one GST invoice

1. Open the customer's running challan (each regular customer has one open challan for the month).
2. Add material: pick the product, enter the quantity and toggle KG or PCS. The conversion shows live, and the entry is added to the challan.
3. Stock leaves immediately as a “Challan Out” movement, and the running totals on the challan grow.
4. Record the customer's signature against the delivery.
5. At month end, generate the monthly statement and convert it to an invoice. Lines are grouped by product, rate and unit, so the same item at the same rate becomes one invoice line.
6. The challan is marked Invoiced. Trying to invoice it again stops with a clear message naming the invoice it was already billed on. Challans from different customers cannot be mixed on one invoice.

Zinc plating job work with landed cost

1. Choose the raw item (for example an MS bolt) and the quantity, and send it to the plating vendor at the agreed processing rate per KG.
2. The quantity moves to “under zinc”. Available stock drops, so nobody sells material that is at the vendor.
3. When material comes back, enter the received weight. The system records the loss (for example 100 KG sent, 98.5 KG received, 1.5 KG loss).
4. A landed cost is calculated from material value plus processing, transport and any other charges.
5. The received quantity is added to the plated variant of that product at the landed cost, the raw item's physical stock reduces, and the vendor's bill is created.

The result is job work software built into the stock system rather than kept in a separate register. Plated stock is valued at what it really cost, and the loss on every batch is on record for each vendor.

What changes for each person in the business?

The roles above describe what each person can open. This table describes what the system is designed to take off their plate.

Technology

• React 19 + Vite + TypeScript, Tailwind CSS 4 — the application, responsive from a 1440 px desk monitor down to a 390 px phone for godown use.
• Zustand with Immer — the in-memory database and state store, persisted and versioned.
• shadcn/ui — the component layer and design system, with Recharts for charts, dnd-kit for the drag-and-drop pipeline and a Ctrl K command palette.
• A pure business engine — CRM, sales, challan, purchase, processing, inventory, accounts and operations logic written as pure mutations behind a single API entry point, so it can be lifted into Postgres functions without touching the screens.
• Derived read models — receivables, ledgers, KPIs, valuation, profitability and search are computed selectors rather than stored numbers, so nothing can go stale.

The planned backend is Supabase Postgres, with the WhatsApp Business API, the NIC E-Way Bill API and GST e-invoicing plugged into the points already stubbed for them. Laxmi Fastener owns all product, customer and transaction data.

Moving off Tally, in phases

The client uses Tally and wants to retire it. Doing that in one jump is how ERP projects fail, so the plan is staged and the gaps are stated openly:

Not yet built, and openly listed rather than glossed over: double-entry vouchers, statutory P&L and balance sheet, bank reconciliation, GSTR-1/3B and 2B reconciliation, TDS and TCS, cheque printing, payroll and the CA export.

Summary