Bringing trade sales online is about convenience. Convenience for you with tools and integrations. But also convenience for your customers.

Sellar set out to eliminate the unnecessary back and forth between you and your trade customers. Less time spent dealing with questions that could be easily answered with a purpose-built online trade store. More time spent building relationships and growing sales. 

One of these questions is typically: "when can you deliver my order by?"

Today, we aim to answer this question for your direct customers with the new delivery areas feature.

The system is built upon postcodes. With a complete set of delivery areas defined, Sellar will be able to present your customers with the next appropriate delivery day and order cut-off time based on their delivery address. This gets displayed on your storefront.

Delivery areas

The areas you define apply to your existing, direct customers plus all new customers who find you through Sellar and have a postcode which falls within one of your delivery areas.

We believe this is going enhance your customer's experience; reassuring them of when to expect delivery prior to ordering. In addition to this, we'll pre-fill the delivery date on the order when you're ready to confirm it. An extra little bit of convenience for you.

Let's take a look at an example from the perspective of a new customer.

I'm a bar manager and my venue is located in London, N4 postcode. It's Monday morning so I browse the discover page on Sellar. I see a local supplier who I haven't ordered from before and view their storefront. I'm presented with some delivery info and given a clear cut-off time of Monday by 16:00 if I wish for my order to be included in the Wednesday delivery run. I hit 'view info' to see the supplier's full schedule for my area along with their usual delivery notes. I see they also deliver to me on Fridays each week.

The supplier has a default price tier setup so I can go right ahead and place my order with confidence it'll be with me by Wednesday. 

Get started

Here's how our example supplier was able to make this possible; and how you can too:

First, head to your direct delivery tier page. 

From here, you'll see a new prompt to add your delivery areas. Delivery areas are flexible and you can create as many as you need. For each delivery area you can:

Define an area

Define a schedule

You can select one or more days of the week with a frequency of every 'N' weeks.

Define an order cut-off time

This update is great for direct customers, but don't worry, customers outside of your direct delivery areas will still get today's ordering experience. We'll indicate that you're able to deliver to them via courier or haulier.

Set up my delivery areas

As always, comment below or email me at neil@sellar.io if you have feedback and suggestions.

Your customers can access invoices for all their orders on Sellar. We've taken steps make this as convenient as possible. 

Sellar will pull the invoice number from the accountancy or BMS integration you have set up and display it on the downloadable PDF you and your customer can access. And popping in your bank details here will ensure your customers can see where to transfer payment. 

Rest assured, you can rely on Sellar to be the source of truth for your invoicing.

But we're not stopping there. We've made further updates to streamline the issuing of an invoice.

Invoice settings

Control when the invoice gets issued, and when the payment due date is calculated forward from. Choose from order confirmed, order dispatched or order delivered. Simply update the status of each of your customers' orders to automatically issue the invoice on Sellar. 

Your customers will be notified as usual and will be able to download the PDF from within the Sellar app. In addition to this, we'll send an email the PDF invoice attached to the invoice email address(es) on each customer account. 

Pro-forma payment and reminders

For some customers, you may wish to request payment upfront before confirming their order. You'll see a 'request pro-forma payment' button on all order requests. Choose this and the invoice will be issued to the customer before having to confirm the order. If you've processed pro-forma card payment orders on Sellar before, this will feel very familiar. 

Need to remind that customer to make payment? Just hit the 'send payment reminder' button and we'll notify your customer via email.

Payment terms

For accounts which you have assigned a number of days credit, we've added more control over how the payment due gets calculated. This can be one of three ways:

• From the invoice issue date - which is determined by your invoice settings mentioned above
• From the end of the current month 
• From the end of the following month

And, as expected, when processing a customer's order and you are about to issue the invoice - be that on order confirmed, dispatched or delivered - we'll pre-populate the payment due date field with the correct date.

We hope this is yet another step forward to make Sellar your tool for running trade sales with all your customers. Keen to see additional improvements to invoicing and payment terms? Comment below or email me at neil@sellar.io

Being able to show different customers different pricing is an essential part of trade sales. It's one of several features which Sellar has to make it a more appropriate solution for the drinks industry when compared with a general purpose e-commerce platform.

We've had price tiers since day one. They've allowed you to define pricing for groups of customers. From today, we're giving you the tools to define pricing on an individual customer level. 

Here's how...

Simple discount rules

Head to your customer list, and select a customer. Hit the 'terms & pricing' tab on the newly re-organised customer page. From here, you'll be able to set a percentage discount for that customer relative to their assigned price tier. You'll be able to do this at two levels of granularity:

1. A single discount applied to all products on that price tier. 
2. Percentage discounts applied to specific container types of products on that price tier

With this initial release, the container types supported are bottle, can, cask and keg.

Easier pricing management

The ability to set a customer's pricing in this manner should reduce the overall number of price tiers you need to manage in Sellar. And, as expected, if you change any of your prices on a particular price tier, any customers assigned to that tier will have their pricing updated accordingly factoring in any discounts applied.

You'll be able to see your customer's pricing directly from the same 'terms & pricing' tab on your customer's page.

A familiar customer experience

Your customers will also be able to see their pricing on your storefront. And as is typical practise, any customers with discounts will see their discounted price next to the 'base' price. Yet more reassurance they're getting their usual, direct price.

We will keep improving pricing tools to help you manage your trade customers on Sellar. So we'd love to get your feedback. Would you like to see other container types supported? Or perhaps you have additional ways in which you define pricing? Whatever it may be, it'd be great to get your hear from you so simply add a comment below or send me an email at neil@sellar.io

You can now control if VAT should be applied or not on a customer-by-customer basis. This update will now allow many of you to accept export orders via Sellar. 

To get started, head to your customer list. Then find or add customers who you export to. When assigning or editing terms, you'll now see a VAT percentage field from which you can choose:

• 20% VAT
• No VAT

Until you set this value for a customer, all of their orders will default to the VAT percentage defined in your business details area of settings. 

Quickly navigate to an order in your orders list with the new search bar and filter menus. 

With the search bar, you can choose to search against your customer's business name or the order number. With filters, you can filter the list by order status and fulfilment type.

You can use search and both filter menus in combination with each other to truly drill down to the exact order you're looking for.

Looking to filter by other criteria? Let us know here or via the usual email.

Go To My Orders

Sellar has gradually become a blend of customers. From regular customers who know your core range like the back of their hand. To new venues who are discovering your brand for the first time.

Attempting to serve up a great user experience for both customers often leads to compromise across the board. 

The customer we've targeted with this most recent update is that person who opens up Sellar with a strong idea of what they would like to order from you.

• A more scannable list to quickly navigate to the product you might have in mind
• More product information in immediate view at-a-glance
• Search and filter controls in a more prominent location in order to drill down on the specifics of what you're looking for

This design is all about speed of ordering. Yet we didn't want you to lose the ability to showcase all that is great about each of your products. This is where we've carefully used interactivity to place product details and imagery within reach should your customers want to dive deeper.

A table view...so what?

Here's the plan from here:

• We're actively surveying buyers who have ordered from your storefronts via the table view layout. This will be over the next few weeks. 
• We'll be using their feedback along with quantitive data we collect to make further refinements.
• As always, we'll be keen to hear your feedback on how you'd like the table view to evolve and incorporating that in to future updates. Send us an email or pop your input here.
• If proving successful, we'll look to bring the table view to medium sized screens (most laptops). We'll also introduce a way to switch between the two different layouts so your customers can choose based on their preference.

Ultimately, this is another step towards making your storefront on Sellar THE place to do direct ordering for ALL your customers.

Trade sales are built around relationships.

It may be two businesses transacting on paper but it's two people who interact and do business together in the real world.

We've strived to enable that personal touch with messaging. Being able to chat with your customers has been a core part of Sellar for a long time. It's a convenient way to keep in touch. And order comments help keep conversations in context. But for all of the messages exchanged on Sellar, we felt something was missing.

You!

Putting a name to a face goes a long way in building trust and a relationship. So we've added a long overdue feature to Sellar. Profile pictures.

Every user on Sellar can now upload their profile picture which will get displayed in all messages and comments. You can do this right now by heading to Settings -> Your Account. 

In addition to profile photos, we've also added support for job titles. So be sure to update that too so your customers can see who they're dealing with. You can do this from the same place in settings. Alternatively, we'll provide a shortcut to upload a photo and add your job title from the messaging and comments sections if you haven't done this yet.

Recent upgrades to Sellar Shipping give you the best service available for shipping your products. You can now compare and pick between DX and UPS for each of your shipments. This is available to use now. Head to the app and we'll help you weigh up the pros and cons of each provider on an order-by-order basis.

DX Summary

See pricing and info

• Cost effective rates on plastic kegs
• Lowest damage incidents of packaged products
• Next day collection for orders submitted to DX before 4pm
• Next day delivery and option for Saturday delivery
• Your customers will receive email tracking with a 2 hour ETA

UPS Summary

See pricing and info

• Can ship all product formats including steel kegs and casks
• Cost effective on single item orders
• Same-day despatch is available if collections are pre-booked. Otherwise, the next working day collection.
• 1-2 day delivery
• Packaged products should be well packaged, not recommended for glass
• Your customers will receive email and SMS tracking with option to leave notes

Getting started with Sellar Shipping

Take a look at the 1 minute walk through video or read on below to see how easy it is to create a shipment with Sellar Shipping. In this example, we'll be creating the shipment with DX. 

1. Confirming an order

When confirming an order, choose the fulfillment type "Sellar Shipping" and complete the other remaining details. You'll then see a "next' button which will present you with the option to choose between UPS and DX.

2. Creating the shipment

After confirming the order, you'll be prompted to create your shipment. If you've used Sellar Shipping UPS, then this process will be very familiar. A great benefit of creating your shipment via Sellar Shipping is that we'll populate all addresses and contact info automatically!

3. Adding shipment items

When creating your shipment, use the '+ item' button to indicate to DX how you intend to package your items. If you add multiple products to one shipping item, DX will only generate one shipping label as they will expect this item to be a single box. 

4. Preparing your packages

Unlike Sellar Shipping UPS, you won't need to print any labels. The delivery driver for DX will bring the shipping labels with them when they come to collect your shipment.

If you are using the UPS option, your shipping labels will be available to download and you will be required to book a collection next.

Our goal at Sellar is to minimise the time you spend on sales admin and processing orders.

Have your customers help themselves and place orders via your storefront is one way to do this. But what about those regular orders of the same products? When it's (roughly) 4 kegs of the pale ale each week, wouldn't it be great if those orders got raised automatically?

Well, today, you can now create repeat orders for any of your customers on Sellar. And it couldn't be easier to set them up. Let's take a look.

Simple 

Select the 'Set Up Repeat Order' button for any of your customers from your customer list and you'll see a familiar looking screen. Setting up a repeat order is just like placing a one-off order on behalf of your customer. Once defined, simply select a day of the week you'd like the order request to be raised.

Helpful

The benefit of having your customers set up in Sellar is that they can be notified whenever you send them a message or update the status of their orders. With repeat orders, both you and your customer will receive an email and/or text message notification when the order request gets raised automatically. A useful reminder - especially during the course of a busy day.

Flexible

Once notified, both you and your customer have the opportunity to adjust the order. Tweak the quantities or add any extras. Just like any order request in Sellar. You're both in control here. And should you need to, you can cancel a repeat order schedule at any time.

How to get started

Step 1: Head to your customer list and choose a customer who has a regular order with you each week

Step 2: Select the 'Setup repeat order' button and proceed to add product line items, discounts and delivery charges. 

Step 3: Choose the day of the week you'd like the order request to be raised on. The system will automatically create it at 7:00am on the day you choose. Note: you'll still have to confirm the order each week when you and your customer are happy. 

Step 4: Manage your repeat order from your customer's profile page underneath the 'Orders' tab.

Let us know how you get on and, as always, get in touch here, or at hello@sellar.io to share any feedback or suggestions.

Some customers require a purchase order number to be referenced on their invoice. Today we've added support for this for all orders on Sellar. 

So not only will your customer be able to add their PO number when placing orders with you; you'll also have the ability to add/edit this when confirming orders. Perfect if you've received a customer order via phone, email or in-person but need to place it in Sellar on their behalf.

Importantly, we've add support for all integrations. So your purchase order numbers will find their way into Xero, Quickbooks, FreeAgent and Stripe. Brewery management systems which integrate with Sellar will be adding support for this soon.