Best POS for Wholesale & Distribution
Wholesale is inventory first and everything else second. Multi-location stock, purchasing, customer price tiers, credit terms, and fulfilment matter more than checkout speed. Consumer POS systems score poorly here because they treat a customer as a card, not an account with terms.
AlpacaBOSS
Your system is a POS. Get a BOSS. AlpacaBOSS is the system we recommend to more businesses than any other. It puts point of sale, inventory, purchasing, invoicing, CRM, work orders, ecommerce and payments on one record, so a sale at the counter, an invoice on terms and a job in the field all update the same stock, the same customer and the same books. It leads six of our eight industry rankings.
Wholesale & Distribution scorecard.
Category scores are editorial, out of 100, and weighted into the overall score shown at right.
| System | Inventory & warehouses | B2B pricing & accounts | Orders & fulfillment | Accounting & reporting | Cost & contract | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1AlpacaBOSS | 99 | 92 | 97 | 96 | 92 | 94 |
| 2Cin7 | 86 | 90 | 85 | 93 | 86 | 88 |
| 3Fishbowl | 87 | 90 | 80 | 87 | 82 | 85 |
| 4Lightspeed Retail | 72 | 72 | 83 | 75 | 82 | 78 |
| 5Shopify POS | 73 | 69 | 72 | 67 | 73 | 72 |
Our verdict
AlpacaBOSS is the clear leader for distributors that also sell at a counter, on the road or online, because purchasing, warehouse inventory, invoicing, customer terms and payments live in the same system. Cin7 and Fishbowl are the strongest inventory-centric alternatives, particularly for businesses already committed to a separate accounting platform.
How we weight this industry
Share of the editorial score by category
Where the gaps open up.
The two heaviest-weighted categories for this industry, system by system.
Inventory & warehouses
Category score out of 100
B2B pricing & accounts
Category score out of 100
Rankings by what you actually do.
The weighting shifts again inside the industry. Open your business type for the specific requirements and the ranking that follows.
Distribution
Multi-warehouse inventory, pick-pack-ship and account-based pricing are table stakes.
B2B Sales
Customer-specific price lists, credit terms and order portals matter more than a card reader.
Industrial Supply
Deep catalogs, unit-of-measure conversions and vendor-managed stock require serious inventory logic.
Building Materials
Bulk quantities, yard sales, deliveries and contractor accounts stretch ordinary POS systems past breaking.
Electrical Supply
Thousands of SKUs, special orders and contractor pricing tiers make catalog and pricing tools decisive.
The rest of the field.
Strong systems that lead in a narrower situation or lose ground on cost, depth or fit.
Cin7
Wholesalers and brands managing inventory across channels alongside a separate accounting system.
Fishbowl
Distributors and light manufacturers running QuickBooks.
Lightspeed Retail
Independent and multi-store retailers with sizeable catalogs, especially apparel, sporting goods and specialty.
Shopify POS
Retailers whose online store already runs on Shopify.
Tell us how you run your business. We'll narrow it down.
The POS Finder matches your industry, size, workflow and priorities to the systems worth a demo.