Order management & delivery.

Client

N1 Restaurant Suppliers

Sector

Wholesale food · hospitality supply

Region

South Africa — Cape Town & Johannesburg

System

Order management & logistics platform

Scale

5 order channels unified · same‑day delivery across two cities

Built on

CloudCore VNext · Microsoft Azure

Results

5 channels order capture unified into one production pipeline

Per‑line margin enforcement before any order moves

Same‑day delivery across Cape Town & Johannesburg

Halaal separation enforced structurally through every step

QC sign‑off actual weights captured per line on tablet before invoicing

Auto‑Pastel invoices posted on QC sign‑off — no finance keystrokes

3 native apps commercial (iOS+Android) · N1②HOME (iOS+Android) · Android dispatch (loading + GPS + proof of delivery)

QR‑tracked every invoice, jobcard & tripsheet QR‑coded; scanned back in by a local bot & auto‑filed

Route P&L each trip's full delivery cost vs gross profit, classified Good / Neutral / Bad before invoicing

Knowing every customer down to the loading dock

1. One account, many branches. The system models a restaurant group or hotel chain as a single customer account with separate delivery units for each physical location. Each delivery unit holds its own address lines, GPS coordinates, buyer contact details, strategic route assignment and order and delivery specifications. A hotel group with kitchens in Sandton, Rosebank and the Waterfront carries one set of commercial terms but three independently configured delivery points, each with its own contact person, delivery schedule and location pin. When a rep opens a new order, the system already knows where it is going and what that branch expects.
2. Prices that resolve themselves. Each delivery unit inherits pricing from a layered hierarchy: a base price list, customer-level overrides with their own sales prices and rebate percentages, and branch-specific overrides — each with effective date ranges. The system tracks positive and negative deviation from the base price, override gross-profit percentage and base gross-profit percentage on every overridden item, so the commercial impact of any discount is visible before it takes effect. A hotel kitchen that orders chicken fillets by the case but is invoiced per kilogram sees the correct figures at every stage without anyone looking up a rate card. Future-dated price changes activate automatically on their effective date, and changes that breach policy are held for approval before they take effect.
3. Product preferences baked into the branch. Each delivery unit carries its own Halaal designation, order specifications and delivery specifications. The system ties every product specification to a branch, a production station within a specific factory, and a Halaal status flag. When a Halaal-designated delivery unit places an order, the system routes it to the correct certified facility and production area, enforces that designation through production, packing and labelling — all without anyone selecting a checkbox. For a supplier handling both Halaal and Non-Halaal from separate ICSA-accredited facilities, this is not a convenience — it is a compliance requirement the system enforces structurally.
4. Full history on one screen. When a buyer calls about a missing delivery or a price query, the system surfaces the complete relationship on one screen: every quote, sales order, order status, current task, order total, delivery status, credit note and invoice. The order history shows exactly which order number, reference, date, current workflow step and value applies. For a team handling hundreds of deliveries a day across two cities, this eliminates the back-and-forth that turns a thirty-second query into a ten-minute investigation.

Five ways an order enters the system — one pipeline out the other end

1. Sales rep orders with live margin visibility. The system loads the correct price list the moment a rep selects the customer and delivery unit, resolving base prices, customer rebates and overrides automatically. Gross profit is calculated on every line in real time — the order carries a running total of order value, VAT, net price, discount and overall GP percentage. Any line that falls below the margin threshold is flagged before the order is submitted. A rep quoting a new restaurant never has to wonder whether the deal makes money — the system shows the margin on every product as it is added.
2. Quick-order and clone tools. For repeat business, the system offers two shortcuts: a quick-order view that pulls a customer’s historic order lines — showing the product specification, previous quantities, unit price, unit of measure and lot number for each item — and a clone function that copies a previous order with all quantities and specifications intact in one step. A weekly standing order for a hotel kitchen that took ten minutes to re-key takes thirty seconds. Both tools are available to reps and corporate portal users alike.
3. Self-service for commercial buyers — web portal and a native iOS / Android app we built for them. Commercial customers log in — either through the corporate web portal or the N1 commercial ordering app we built for them on iOS and Android — and build their own orders against their negotiated price list, without involving a rep. The user is linked to a customer account and delivery unit, so they see only their own products, prices and delivery addresses. Order history, quick-order and clone tools are all available. For a restaurant group placing the same order every Tuesday, this turns a phone call into a two-minute self-service task — placed from the kitchen, the back office or a phone in the car park.
4. Prepaid home delivery through the N1②HOME app — another native app we built for N1. The N1②HOME app on iOS and Android lets the public order direct, paying via SnapScan or PayGate at checkout. The system polls the payment providers, matches the payment to the order, records the transaction, and advances the paid order straight into production — no call centre, no order desk in the loop. Home-delivery orders surface alongside commercial ones in the operations dashboard, but on their own pre-paid path. This lets N1 serve the public alongside their wholesale business without adding headcount.
5. Email capture and B2B integration. Orders arriving by email are captured as pre-orders and processed into the same pipeline. External systems push orders through the B2B integration point, where the system validates the account, delivery unit, branch and price list, then creates the order or rejects it with a specific error. The integration generates a pre-order number and a URL for tracking, so the originating system can follow the order through its lifecycle. Whether the order comes from a buyer’s procurement system or a forwarded email, it enters the same automated path as every other channel.

Protecting margins before anything moves

1. Automatic margin enforcement. When an order is submitted, the system checks every line against the margin threshold, comparing the actual gross-profit percentage against the floor. If every line clears, the order advances straight to production with a proforma invoice and no human intervention. Only margin breaches trigger a review. For a business selling hundreds of product lines at negotiated prices across multiple price lists and rebate tiers, this catches underpriced deals before they consume production capacity.
2. Targeted approval routing. When a line falls below the floor, the system holds the order and notifies both the creator and the designated approver. The approver sees the customer name, who requested the pricing, the effective date range, and exactly which items breached and by how much — with an approve-or-reject decision and a mandatory reason field for rejections. The order does not advance until it is either approved or corrected. This means margin protection does not slow down the ninety percent of orders that are priced correctly.
3. Duplicate detection. The system checks for orders already created for the same customer and delivery unit within the last forty-eight hours, surfacing matches before the new order reaches production. The user sees a warning and must explicitly confirm before proceeding. For a team of reps covering the same accounts, this prevents a Friday afternoon double-order from wasting a production slot and generating a credit note on Monday.

Running the factory floor from a live queue

1. A prioritised production queue. Every confirmed order enters a production queue filtered by station, route and urgency level. Each order line carries a production priority, a target delivery date and a link to its assigned tripsheet and route. Each product specification is mapped to a specific production station within a production area and factory, so each station — deboning, the sausage line, vacuum packing — sees only its own ranked work. A same-day hotel order for deboned chicken sits ahead of a next-day order for frozen patties, and each station works from its own sequenced list without anyone shuffling paper on the floor.
2. A holding area for future deliveries. Orders confirmed ahead of their delivery date are parked in a holding area, organised by route and target delivery date. Each production station has a designated holding area, and the system groups held orders by route so dispatchers can see exactly what is waiting. The system releases them into the production queue automatically when their delivery date arrives. For a customer who orders on Monday for Thursday delivery, the order is visible but does not compete for production capacity until the right day.
3. Automated job slips and station assignment. The system generates job slips that carry the full product specification and assigns each to the correct production station and worker. The job slip is rendered as a printable document, and where a station has a configured printer, it is sent directly to the floor. For high-volume products on a standard production path, the system generates and assigns job slips without any human decision. A run of five hundred kilograms of boerewors across three orders is consolidated and routed to the sausage line automatically.
4. Nothing moves until everything is done. The system tracks the production status of every line on every order. It will not advance an order to quality control until every line is complete. If four of five items are finished but one is still on the line, the order holds. This prevents partial shipments from reaching dispatch, which would mean two deliveries, two trips and an unhappy customer.

Quality control as an unbypassable gate

1. Weight capture and sign-off on every order. Every completed production job enters a quality control queue. QC staff record the final quantity against each line — along with lot number, fresh expiry date, frozen expiry date and any factory instructions — and must authenticate with their user pin before signing off. The system will not allow the order to move to packing without that sign-off. For a meat supplier where invoicing is by the kilogram, the captured weight is what drives the final invoice — not the estimated weight from the order.
2. Halaal and Non-Halaal separation enforced in the data. Halaal and Non-Halaal separation is structural — from the delivery unit's Halaal flag through the product specification's Halaal status, factory assignment, production station routing, QC inspection and label generation. When a delivery unit is designated Halaal, that constraint follows the order through every step of the pipeline: the system routes it to the correct factory, assigns it to the correct station and generates labels that reflect the certification. The separation is in the system’s rules, not in a person’s memory. For an ICSA-accredited supplier operating from separate certified facilities, this is the difference between maintaining accreditation and losing it.
3. Shipping labels in a hierarchy. The system generates labels at four levels — item, collection, box and pallet — each carrying the label number, customer name, delivery unit name, product specification, batch number, delivery address, production date, expiry dates and the label type. Labels are nested: items go into collections, collections into boxes, boxes onto pallets. QC staff scan and verify labels before clearance. A pallet going to a hotel chain’s Johannesburg kitchen carries labels that trace every item back through QC, production and the original order.

Getting every order from cold store to doorstep

1. Route-based tripsheet building. Every delivery unit is pre-assigned to a strategic route based on GPS coordinates and delivery days. When a dispatcher opens the tripsheet builder, orders are already grouped by route and the system calculates the most efficient stop sequence, factoring in total estimated mileage, return distance and estimated driving time. A map view lets dispatchers see delivery units geographically and adjust route assignments by dragging pins. For a supplier promising same-day delivery across Cape Town and Johannesburg, automated route planning is what makes that promise possible at scale.
2. Vehicle and driver management. Every vehicle is registered with its type, registration, registration expiry, fuel consumption, purchase cost, tyre and service intervals and assigned driver. Unassigned delivery units surface in a separate queue so they are never forgotten. The system tracks actual mileage versus estimated mileage by vehicle, and calculates delivery cost per route using fuel consumption, driver hourly rate, loader rate, tyre wear, servicing, refrigeration upkeep, insurance and depreciation. This gives dispatch a profitability view alongside a logistics view.
3. Live dispatch and driver tracking — through a native Android app we built for the warehouse and drivers. Bespoke dispatch app on Android, used end-to-end through the trip: a vehicle-inspection checklist before departure (oil, fridge temperature, tyres, brakes — over twenty checks), weight and count capture as the truck loads, GPS tracking in transit with live ETAs, customer-signature capture at every stop, photo evidence on disputed deliveries. The operations dashboard shows every tripsheet in real time — vehicle, driver, route, stops delivered, stops returned. The team sees which trucks are where without making phone calls.
4. Delivery receipts and exception tracking. On delivery, the dispatch app captures a signature against the specific tripsheet order, and the system emails a receipt to the customer showing exactly what was delivered. Outstanding unsigned receipts surface on an exception list. If a delivery is short or damaged, a credit note is raised directly from the tripsheet through a dedicated workflow, linked back to the specific order and delivery. Nothing falls into a gap between dispatch and accounts.
5. Tripsheet review and delivery cost analysis. Before invoicing, the system enforces a tripsheet review that calculates the full delivery cost for the run — fuel per kilometre, driver and loader labour, tyre and service wear, refrigeration, insurance and depreciation — against the gross profit earned on that tripsheet. The review surfaces total stops, cost per stop, total route cost, total distance, driving time, invoice totals and a profitability ratio that the system classifies as Good, Neutral or Bad. A route that costs more to deliver than it earns is visible before it becomes a pattern. For a business where delivery cost can eat the margin on a small order, this visibility is what keeps same-day delivery commercially viable.
6. Signed paperwork that files itself back in. Every invoice, jobcard and tripsheet the system prints carries a unique QR code. When the physical paper comes back into the warehouse — a customer-signed invoice from a driver, a completed jobcard from production, a returned tripsheet at the end of a run — staff drop it on the scanner. A bespoke local bot we built picks up the scan, reads the QR, and uploads the file straight onto the right record: the signed invoice becomes the proof-of-delivery on its sales order; the completed jobcard attaches to its production job; the returned tripsheet attaches to its trip. No filing clerk, no missing paperwork, no “who has the signed sheet?” phone calls. For an operation processing hundreds of orders a day across two cities, this is how the paper trail keeps up with the digital one — without a single keyboard touch between the scanner tray and the customer's order in the system.

Buying smarter on the supply side

1. Purchase orders with threshold-based approval. Procurement staff raise a purchase order against a supplier branch account at agreed prices, with rebate percentages and branded material pricing support. Each supplier branch carries its own force-approval threshold. Below the threshold the PO is auto-approved; above it, the system routes it to an approver and holds it until sign-off. For a business buying from dozens of meat and poultry suppliers across the country, this prevents overcommitment without slowing down routine purchases.
2. Automated PO distribution. Once approved, the system generates a PDF and CSV and distributes them based on each supplier branch's configuration — emailing the order directly to the supplier’s registered email where auto-send is enabled, or routing a review task first for sensitive purchases. The email includes the PO number, branch code, order notes, target delivery date, internal and supplier account numbers and a link for the supplier to view and accept the order through a public portal. Supplier price lists support future-dated changes and rebate structures, and a scheduled process activates future supplier prices on their effective date without anyone remembering to update a spreadsheet.
3. Three-way invoice matching. When a supplier invoice arrives, the system performs a three-way match — comparing each invoice line against the purchase order and the goods-received record by item, quantity, unit of measure and price. Any discrepancy is flagged as a deviation and routed through an allocation workflow before finance sees it. Scanned supplier documents are uploaded, linked to the invoice record and routed through a review process so the original paper trail sits alongside the digital record.
4. Credit tracking from request to resolution. Supplier credit requests are tracked through a dedicated workflow with their own status progression, from request through capture, review and export. Suppliers can upload credit notes through a public portal using a secure link, and the system matches them back to the original invoice and its lines. Open follow-up items and orphaned credit requests surface on the procurement dashboard so nothing sits unresolved. For a high-volume buyer, unclaimed credits are money left on the table — the system makes them impossible to forget.

Turning orders into invoices without manual steps

1. Automated Pastel integration. Once production and QC are complete, the system pushes the invoice straight into Pastel — with the correct invoice number, status and sales order reference. On failure, it logs the error and retries automatically. Supplier invoices, supplier credit notes and their reversals follow the same path on the procurement side. For a finance team processing hundreds of invoices a week across two branches, this eliminates the most error-prone step in the accounting cycle.
2. Standalone invoicing where Pastel is not configured. Where Pastel is not set up for a branch or transaction type, the system generates its own invoice number, produces the tax invoice and emails it to the customer — without a person clicking a button. The proforma invoice is generated at order confirmation; the final tax invoice reflects actual quantities captured during QC, adjusted for VAT status, zero-rated items, exemptions and any customer rebate.
3. Every document from one source of truth. Every document — proforma, tax invoice, delivery note, credit note, manifest, shipping label, job card — is generated from the same order data. The order holds the definitive record: customer, delivery unit, line items, prices, quantities, weights, VAT and GP. No re-keying, no version conflicts, no risk of a delivery note showing different quantities from the invoice. For an auditor tracing an order from quote to payment, every document leads back to the same record.

Seeing the whole business at a glance

1. A boardroom dashboard for sales performance. The system aggregates sales data from the data warehouse into gross-profit rankings by account, net GP percentage by commission type, average GP per order and price-deviation analysis — broken down by branch so Cape Town and Johannesburg can be compared side by side. Sales targets are set per rep and per account, and actuals update as invoiced orders flow through the warehouse sync. Management sees which accounts are growing, which reps are hitting target and where margins are slipping — without waiting for a month-end report.
2. A war room for operations. A real-time operations dashboard shows the status of every order, tripsheet and vehicle across both branches. Dispatch vehicle KPIs track actual versus estimated mileage, orders delivered, orders returned, invoice totals and credit totals per vehicle per period. A production report groups orders by priority and route — past due, due today, due tomorrow — giving the floor a forward-looking view of workload. The operations team works from what needs attention, not a long list of everything.
3. A procurement dashboard for supply-side visibility. Outstanding invoice allocations, pending credit requests, open purchase orders by supplier branch, orphaned credit requests and unresolved invoice deviations surface on their own dashboard, fed by dedicated KPI calculations. Scheduled-task failures are monitored separately so issues with background processes are caught early. Managers see what needs action without opening individual records. For a buyer managing dozens of supplier relationships across meat, poultry, fish and frozen goods, this is how nothing slips through.
4. Commission calculations and rep notifications. The system calculates sales commission automatically by comparing each rep’s net GP per commission type against configurable rand-value thresholds and percentage tiers. The calculation draws from the data warehouse, netting credit notes against invoiced sales to produce an accurate commission figure. Commission data feeds into the sales dashboard so managers can see rep performance alongside account profitability. No one builds a commission spreadsheet at month-end.

The work the system does while everyone is asleep

1. Scheduled data-warehouse syncs. The system runs regular data-warehouse synchronisations that shift invoiced order lines — with their full cost, price, GP, quantity and dimensional breakdowns — into the warehouse, where they feed every dashboard and KPI report. KPI caches are rebuilt on schedule so dashboards load instantly without running heavy queries against live data. The numbers management sees at 7 a.m. reflect everything that happened overnight.
2. Automated month-end statements. At month-end, the system generates customer statements automatically from scheduled report configurations, links each statement to the correct customer and financial period, and distributes them without anyone assembling a report. Missing reports are detected by a function that compares generated documents against the customer list and financial month calendar. For a supplier with hundreds of active accounts, this turns a two-day administrative exercise into a scheduled process that runs itself.
3. Price activations and expiry alerts. Future-dated customer prices, supplier rebates and branded material prices activate on their effective date through dedicated scheduled processes. Prices approaching expiry trigger notification alerts so commercial teams can renegotiate before a customer’s rate lapses to a default. The system manages the pricing calendar, not a person with a diary reminder.
4. Cart clearance and housekeeping. Abandoned carts from the corporate portal and home-delivery app are cleared on schedule. Production reports are regenerated automatically so the floor always has a current view. A procurement maintenance process runs scheduled housekeeping against supplier data. These background processes keep the system clean without anyone running maintenance tasks manually.

A full trail from quote to payment

1. Every action time-stamped and linked to a user. The system records who created the quote, who submitted the order, who captured the QC weight and authenticated with their pin, who approved the purchase order, who loaded the truck and who delivered. History tables capture every state change on key records. The audit trail is captured as work happens, not reconstructed after the fact. For an HACCP-certified, export-approved supplier, this traceability is not optional — it is what auditors and regulators require.
2. End-to-end order traceability. An auditor can trace any order from initial pre-order through margin approval, production job assignment, QC weight capture with lot number and expiry dates, label hierarchy from item through pallet, tripsheet dispatch, delivery signature and Pastel invoice sync — every step logged with its timestamp, user and status. The supplier invoice links back through the goods-received record and its detail lines to the original purchase order. For a product like Halaal-certified meat, this chain of evidence is what maintains accreditation.
3. Product specifications with version history. Each product specification is tied to its branch, production station, Halaal status, product category, specification type and a set of attributes including cost price, wastage percentage, packaging value, labour value and price adjustment. Every specification carries a revision history, and changes flow through automatically to production routing, QC requirements, cost calculations and label generation. When N1 adds a new cut or modifies a sausage recipe, the change propagates to every downstream process without anyone updating a separate system.

Management reports that generate and send themselves

1. Branch performance summaries. The system automatically generates branch-level reports covering net sales, gross profit broken down by commission type, sales price deviations, order source mix and accounting sync status. Each branch — Cape Town and Johannesburg — gets its own summary with internal and external sales separated, so management can compare the two operations side by side without compiling a single spreadsheet.
2. Customer and delivery-unit reports. Each customer account and each delivery unit within it can receive its own automated report showing order history, top-selling products, GP summary by commission type and period-over-period trends. A hotel chain's Sandton branch receives a different report from its Waterfront branch, each reflecting that location's actual ordering and spend. Reports are generated as PDF documents, emailed using branded templates and stored against the customer record.
3. Month-end closing reports. At the end of each financial period, the system generates customer-facing closing statements that summarise all orders, deliveries, invoices and credit notes for the month. These run as a scheduled process — no one triggers them, no one remembers to send them. The system tracks which reports have been generated for which period, preventing duplicates and ensuring nothing is missed.
4. Sales performance and target tracking. Sales account dashboards show each rep's performance against configured targets, with GP summaries by commission type and financial period. Monthly sales summaries break down revenue, cost, GP and commission percentage across every sales account, exportable to Excel for further analysis.
5. Production and operations reports. The system generates production reports showing order volumes by route, delivery-date urgency and workload distribution across stations. These run overnight so the factory floor and dispatch team start every morning with current numbers. A management reports screen gives branch managers access to every automated report generated for their operation, filterable by period and report type, with each document downloadable directly from the system.

---

The power of automation

A R50,000 hotel order placed by a rep, a R800 home-delivery order paid through SnapScan, a standing order cloned from last week on the corporate portal and an automated B2B purchase all follow the same path: margin check, production queue, QC gate, weight capture, label hierarchy, tripsheet, route optimisation, delivery receipt, Pastel invoice and data-warehouse sync. N1 can add a new channel, a new city or a new product line without hiring more people, because the system already runs the process. The scheduled processes — commission calculations, month-end statements, price activations, warehouse syncs — mean the system is working at 3 a.m. the same way it works at 3 p.m.

---

The commercial logic

A wholesale food supplier doing same-day delivery across two cities, from separate Halaal and Non-Halaal facilities, with HACCP certification and export approval, has almost no room for error. This is not a system that helps people do their jobs — it does the job, and only calls a person when it has to. Margins are enforced on every line of every order. Halaal separation is structural, not procedural. QC is an unbypassable gate where actual weights drive the final invoice. Invoices sync to Pastel without finance touching them. Dashboards and commission calculations refresh on a schedule, not when someone remembers. A set of scheduled processes — price activations, payment polling, production reports, customer month-end statements, data-warehouse syncs, cart clearance, procurement maintenance and supplier price expiry alerts — run the same way at 5 a.m. on a Monday as they do at 3 p.m. on a Friday.