Wholesale Order Processing Without the Chaos

Wholesale order processing has a funny way of looking calm until it suddenly behaves like a caffeinated octopus. One moment your pallets are lined up politely. The next moment a retailer moves a delivery window, a label spec changes, and a purchase order develops a personality of its own. If you have ever felt like your wholesale workflow has a secret life after dark, you are not alone.

Search trends show a steady rise in questions like how to fix chargebacks or why wholesale orders stall before they ever leave the warehouse. You do not go looking for those answers unless something has already gone wrong. It is a familiar pain. And it is the place where wholesale brands usually realize their 3PL may not be built for this life.

Why wholesale order flow clogs so easily

The trouble usually begins before the first carton is even touched. Inconsistent receiving, loose inventory control, and routing guides written like ancient commandments all combine into a chain reaction. A late receiving event becomes a late pick. A late pick becomes a missed appointment. A missed appointment becomes a chargeback. And a chargeback becomes you staring at the invoice wondering who invented this particular circus.

Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment at G10, sees the aftermath all the time. As he explained, "One of the pain points our clients have experienced with previous 3PLs is inventory accuracy. Maybe their previous 3PL was not great at picking the orders accurately. So they were losing money by shipping wrong items or wrong quantities of items." That kind of slippage feels small in the moment, until a retailer fines you for it.

There is also the slow bleed of time. Connor added, "A previous 3PL took three days from when the order was placed to when they would ship it." In a world that expects same-day turnaround, three days might as well be a decade.

What B2B brands expect but rarely get

Wholesale brands are not asking for magic. They want receiving on time, counts they can trust, and orders that ship when they are supposed to. Yet across the industry, the basics are where things break. Oversold inventory, mis-labeled pallets, bad ASNs, and cartons that wander off into warehouse Bermuda Triangles.

Inside G10, leaders talk about accuracy rates at a level most warehouses only dream of. Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience, described it this way: "We have over 99.9 percent ship accuracy on these B2B orders, which when you look at it on a unit level is almost unbelievable. It is really hard to do." But that level of consistency is not optional in wholesale. Retailers keep score. They track every slip. They do not quietly forgive.

The accuracy problem reveals something deeper about the industry. Many 3PLs built their systems for D2C and then tried to retrofit them for B2B. That is like bolting a trailer hitch to a bicycle. Technically possible, practically disastrous.

Where breakdowns happen behind the scenes

When wholesale order processing collapses, the root cause is usually system-based. An outdated WMS, or a supposedly modern one that only does half the job. Some platforms introduce friction at every stage: receiving without scanning, bin locations that do not match reality, or integration setups that leave key data floating in the void.

Bryan Wright, G10's CTO and COO, has spent decades building and implementing warehouse systems. He explained why the wrong platform can sink a brand quietly over time: "A bad WMS will not track inventory 100 percent. A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point you touch it. If I need to find a pallet, I know who picked it up, what fork truck it is on, and exactly where it is going." Without that visibility, wholesale fulfillment becomes guesswork.

Bryan also pointed out how G10 prevents compliance headaches before they start: "Our WMS was written around B2B from day one. If a retailer has a specific labeling rule or ASN rule or a pick requirement, it is already built into the software." That means G10 does not have to re-engineer itself every time a retailer gets the urge to change carton specs.

Human bottlenecks matter too

Wholesale customers often describe a different frustration: they cannot reach anyone. Their 3PL pushes them into a ticket queue. Responses take hours. Sometimes days. And each reply comes from a different stranger.

Joel sees the effect of that firsthand. "If you are working with another 3PL, it can feel like you are a cog in the machine," he said. "But at G10 every merchant gets a dedicated point of contact. You call one person. That is it. And things get done."

That personal attention matters when a retailer suddenly drops ten purchase orders on a Friday and expects them ready by Monday morning. Joel recalled helping a brand through exactly that scenario. When the inbound arrived late, "our supervisor, warehouse manager, and several employees worked the entire day into the night, then came back at 5 a.m. to make sure the routing was completed." Wholesale moves fast, and retailers do not accept excuses. Neither does G10.

Potential fixes before the damage is done

Wholesale order processing becomes dramatically smoother when all the moving parts speak the same language. That means clean integrations, strict scan-based handling, and routing compliance built into the actual workflow instead of taped on afterward. Omnichannel inventory management replaces the chaos of scattered systems stitched together with hope.

As Connor put it, "You want everything to be scanned in the warehouse, nothing done on paper. You can lose a lot of money by having people ship stuff wrong or store it wrong."

The more the system does automatically, the fewer disasters appear later.

How G10 helps wholesale brands stay ahead

G10 is built for brands that want to grow into major retailers, not just survive the basics. Behind the scenes, the process looks simple because it is engineered that way. Every carton is scanned. Every movement has a digital footprint. Every requirement from Target, Walmart, Amazon, or Dick's Sporting Goods is already baked into the workflow.

But the technology alone is not what makes the difference.

Mark Becker, CEO and founder, believes in rolling up sleeves and building for the long haul. As he said, "All we are is builders. We just love to build." That attitude shapes how G10 treats its customers: not as short-term revenue, but as future heavy hitters.

Customers feel that difference. Joel described one moment that stays with him: "We had an influencer blow up and suddenly there were far more orders than anyone planned for. The client asked, Can you help us? And we said, Yeah, we gotcha. Then we sent a truck to the carrier at midnight to make it happen." That kind of grit is hard to fake.

The bottom line for wholesale brands

If your wholesale order flow works against you, no amount of marketing or product quality can save the day. Retailers reward consistency. They punish sloppiness. They expect you to hit their windows with the precision of a drumline.

If you want wholesale orders to move cleanly, predictably, and without the late-night surprises that wreck your margins, reach out to G10. Let the team show you how steady wholesale fulfillment can feel when the warehouse is built for the way you do business.