7 Best Food and Beverage Distribution Management Software

Are inefficient routing and a lack of delivery visibility hampering your food and beverage distribution operations? Are you struggling with tracking inventory levels, ensuring compliance with quality standards, and monitoring sales?

You’re not alone. The food and beverage industry is constantly pressured by changing customer demands and stringent regulations, making manual methods and disparate systems increasingly impractical.

What if there was a solution that could streamline your operations, ensure compliance, and boost efficiency? Implementing the right food and beverage distribution management software can do just that.

With so many options available, each claiming to be the ‘best,’ making an informed choice can be daunting. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

In this blog, we dive into the 7 best food and beverage distribution software solutions, breaking down their key features, strengths, and weaknesses.

Top 7 Food and Beverage Distribution Management Software

1. NetSuite: Ideal for global distributors (4.1)

NetSuite’s cloud-based ERP solution is renowned for inventory planning. It helps balance demand and supply to ensure the availability of the right quantity of products to fulfill orders while preventing under/overstocking.

We also loved the supply chain management functionality, which is equipped with lot traceability and recall management, which gives you full control and visibility of your procurement and material processes. 

However, the complex setup and lack of price transparency didn’t go well with us. Testing revealed the search functionality sometimes freezes when typing in to search for something.

Key Features:

• Customer relationship management: This enables the acquisition of new customers and the engagement of existing ones through improved customer service.
• Warehouse management system: Provides insights into metrics, including inventory turnover or order cycle time, to facilitate data-driven decisions and boost warehousing efficiency. 
• Production control: It enables creating, releasing, modifying, and tracking work orders and managing batches to gain full control over production processes.

Pricing: Not publicly available

2. Upper: Best for optimizing routes for distribution operations (4.5)

Upper is the end-to-end route management software for your food and beverage distribution management business. It helps optimize routes for warehouses to distribution centers and local fulfillment centers based on priority, drivers’ availability, traffic, and clients’ availability.

Our USP lies in our advanced route optimization algorithms, which create the most efficient routes without crisscrossing or overlapping, increasing drivers’ convenience during navigation.

Equipped with GPS-based tracking, this platform provides real-time visibility into your drivers’ movements to determine whether they are following the assigned path. It also helps convey accurate arrival times to your clients so they stay informed and engaged.

Even when your route is in transit, you can edit the sequence of stops or add or delete stops to accommodate last-minute orders or cancellations. You can also swap routes among drivers to accommodate emergencies, driver’s sick leave, or vehicle breakdowns.

Coming to the freedom of integration and customization, our platform allows integration with major eCommerce platforms, such as Shopify or GrazeCart. By integrating Upper with your Shopify storefront, you can fetch incoming orders to the stops on the map and create optimal routes for your delivery staff to reach them on time.

Here are the other features that you may find useful for your food distribution business.

Error-free address import: It lets you upload multiple destinations from Exel/CSV files while eliminating address duplication through address validation to increase routing accuracy.

Route dispatch scheduling: This allows you to schedule your dispatch of deliveries ahead of time to prevent last-minute chaos, especially when your list of addresses is long.

One-click dispatch: It enables you to send optimized routes to multiple drivers in a single click, expediting the initiation of distribution operations.

Smart analytics: This software provides insights into your delivery performance based on total stops covered, missed, or pending to analyze individual drivers’ performance and take necessary improvement measures.

Driver management: This feature lets you create driver profiles, including names and start/end points, and assign stops to them based on delivery zones. It also lets you set maximum speed limits, curbside constraints, and preferences like avoiding tolls/highways to customize profiles.

Pricing: Upper’s pricing starts at $40/month per user, with discounts for annual subscriptions.

3. Acctivate: Ideal for QuickBooks Users (4.1)

Created to connect with QuickBooks, Acctivate helps food and beverage distribution businesses enhance inventory management without discontinuing their existing financial software.

The flexibility they provide in handling numbered products is incredible. We couldn’t stop appreciating how it enables recording, managing expiration dates by lot number, and looking up specific lot numbers by product or customer. 

What left us disappointed was the unintuitive interface, which had no instructions and took us time to learn how to use it. Report generation is also slow and glitchy, as our testing found, which aggravated our inconvenience. 

Key Features:

• Order management and fulfillment: This lets you deliver full or partial deliveries, price products by quantity, standard weight, or catch weight, and copy a previous order for re-delivery.
• Integration capabilities: Syncs with popular online eCommerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce to help update inventory and orders, preventing lost sales. 
• Electronic Data Interchange: This allows for the smooth exchange of important documents with trading partners, expediting order processing while ensuring legal compliance.

Pricing: Starts at $960 per month

4. SysPro: Ideal for manufacturers (4.2)

SYSPRO is a customizable solution specifically designed to address the challenges of the food and beverage industry, including changing fuel prices, potential food spoilage, and safety compliance. 

We were impressed by their advanced tools for matching supply with customer demand and gaining visibility across the supply chain. Their shelf-life expiration date tracking functionality is highly valuable for businesses in the seafood industry.

While their straightforward user interface is a plus, the absence of drop-down menu options in certain fields makes bulk adjustments to inventory or sales orders tedious.

Key Features:

• Multiple units of measure/unit conversions: This feature lets you buy and sell the same products by weight, multiple containers, volume, etc.
• Traceability and recall management: Allows you to detect potentially defective goods and retrieve them from customers to perform a quick and efficient product recall. 
• Effective returns processing: This lets you automate the authorization and tracking of customer returns, warranty claims, and complaints to handle returns and exchanges efficiently. 

Pricing: Not publicly available

5. Katana: Ideal for food and beverage processing (4.6)

Katana’s ERP system integrates the most prominent platforms to manage your food business processes, including purchase management, sales order management, and shop floor control from one place.

This software boasts end-to-end traceability, which lets you track batches and products back to their original batch. Live inventory management also works seamlessly, as our internal testing revealed.

The frequent bugs frustrated us. Another major issue was the inability to automatically process payments through eCommerce from within the software.

Key Features: 

• Shop floor control: This lets you track raw material usage, operational task progress, stock counts, and order fulfillment to make data-driven manufacturing decisions.
• eCommerce integrations: This integrates with different manufacturing, inventory, sales, and financial management tools to manage business processes centrally. 
• Multi-channel order management: Synchronizes all your sales orders from different channels into a single platform to manage inventory levels on a unified view.

Pricing: Starts at $199 per month

6. SOS Inventory: Ideal for stock management (4.6)

SOS Inventory stands out for its stock management capabilities, which allow for tracking stock levels across multiple sites with several warehouses. We also liked the software’s tracking capabilities, which help track products using serial numbers and lot tracking throughout their lifecycle. 

This software also lets you view the location and status of products via barcode tracking, which helps expedite receiving, picking, packing, and shipping of products. The auto-generation of purchase orders to suppliers before stocks dipped below the threshold was also smooth.

However, as testing revealed, you may not like the tedious and confusing setup process. Slow loading at times is another concern that you may want to address.

Key Features:

• Kits: This enables you to build kits composed of in-demand and similar-priced products from single or multiple suppliers to attract high sales.
• Returns management:  This lets you return damaged goods by generating a return through a bill receipt or stand-alone online transaction. 
• First-In-First-Out Accounting: Allows you to move your food products in the sequence they arrive to preserve their freshness until delivery and confine recall to specific lots in case a product is of bad quality, enhancing food service. 

Pricing: Starts at $59.95 per month

7. Aptean: Best for Microsoft Dynamics Users (4.5)

Built on the Microsoft Business Central Cloud Platform, Aptean provides customized solutions for distribution businesses, including fresh produce, beverages, meats, and bakeries.

Equipped with expiration tracking tools, this software helps you track and balance supply/demand and minimize food wastage. We also loved the visibility of the production activities they provide through a collaborative forecasting module.

However, when it comes to handling electronic data interchange, it failed to meet our expectations as it required extensive customizations. Another thing that left us wanting more was the difficulty of integrating it with Paypal or Proship.

6 Key Features to Look for in Food and Beverage Distribution Management Software

While the software you choose depends on your unique food distribution requirements, here are a few features to consider when purchasing. 

1. Inventory management

Real-time inventory and stock management are essential when picking a food and distribution software solution. Your software must help you stay informed about the ingredients and products you produce, buy, store, or sell.  

This information can include details about the quantity, location, receipt date, and expiration dates of different items. This feature enables you to opt for automated reordering of products based on your inventory levels to avoid stockouts and optimize your supply chain.

2. End-to-end traceability

Traceability is crucial for food and beverage manufacturers. It allows for tracking ingredients from when they are bought until sold. This helps ensure optimal quality and compliance with food safety standards.

The comprehensive lot traceability feature allows you to collect information, including: 

• The source or origin of substandard materials and ingredients
• The products where you have used them at your facilities
• Where the compromised products are headed.

With full visibility and control over your products, you can efficiently prevent and handle the emergency recall situation and retain your customers’ trust in your brand.

3. Warehouse management

Integrated warehouse management capabilities eliminate the need for a separate warehouse management system. For example, your food and beverage distribution software must facilitate integration with handheld barcode scanners to transfer data directly into it. 

Moreover, your food distribution software must provide a warehouse management system (WMS) dashboard that lets you visualize and monitor distribution operations centrally in real time. This will streamline your distribution processes and inventory management. 

4. Efficient reporting 

A food and beverage distribution software solution must have advanced reporting and analytics capabilities to provide valuable insights into your business data. It should feature customizable reports, dashboards, and analytics tools that help track key performance indicators.

These metrics can include inventory, sales, and waste/expiry dates. Using this access to real-time and actionable information, you can identify operational inefficiencies, eliminate them with corrective measures, and drive your business growth. 

5. Route planning and real-time tracking

Logistics route planning is indispensable as it helps create the most efficient routes to deliver products to the intended destinations. So, your software must have a feature route planning to reduce the distance on the road, minimize fuel costs, and maximize profitability.

Knowing where your inbound and outbound goods are headed is equally indispensable for food and beverage distributors to know whether they are on schedule. This GPS-based delivery vehicle tracking can help estimate the condition of in-transit products, make informed decisions to minimize delays, and preserve the quality of goods.

6. Mobile-friendliness

Mobility is vital for any industry in today’s digital age, and the food and beverage industry is no exception. Therefore, your food distribution software must have mobile-friendly capabilities that enable you to access your business’s critical information on the go. 

If multiple employees work across multiple locations, including warehouses, production facilities, and on-field delivery, drivers can find it even more helpful. It contributes to real-time reporting and fosters centralized collaboration among distribution managers, drivers, and warehouse managers, streamlining operations.