Key accounts (off-platform buyers)
Key accounts are buyers who aren’t on DISTRYB yet — national chains, big box, grocery, control-state boards. You record what you sell them and where, so your invoices, tax returns and reports are complete. Find them under Key Accounts in your dashboard.
What it’s for, and what it isn’t
- For sales you make outside DISTRYB, to a buyer who isn’t here. Each one becomes a real invoice you can send, print and track.
- Not for buyers who are on DISTRYB. They order through DISTRYB, and you sell to them from Orders. If a key account joins, link it (below) rather than keeping two records.
- Not a CRM. An account holds what your invoices and tax returns need — name, contact, licence, tax ID, address — not a sales pipeline.
- No payments. Payment happens between you and the buyer. DISTRYB records whether an invoice is paid, unpaid or part-paid; it doesn’t collect the money or take a fee on it.
Three ways to record a sale
| Where | Use it for | Stock |
|---|---|---|
| Record a sale on the account’s page | One product, usually a sale that already happened | Record-only unless you tick Sold from my DISTRYB stock |
| Import CSV on the account’s page | A batch of past sales — a year of a chain’s orders | Never touches stock |
| Orders → New order, picking the key account | A new order with several lines, payment terms and a ship-to state | Takes it from your stock unless you untick Fulfill from my DISTRYB inventory |
Every one of them creates an invoice. An import needs a UPC column — DISTRYB ties each line to your catalog by its barcode. Rows are grouped into invoices by state, payment, date and PO, and importing the same file twice doesn’t create duplicates: the confirmation message tells you how many rows were already imported.
Import CSV columns
The first row names the columns. upc and quantityUnits are required; the rest are optional: productName, unitPrice (dollars), volume, state (two letters — the state the sale shipped to), saleDate (YYYY-MM-DD), poNumber, notes, paymentStatus (paid, unpaid or partial) and amountPaid. Imported sales never draw down stock.
Sold from your stock, or recorded only
A sale from your stock is checked against the stock you have on DISTRYB and recorded for excise tax — an outflow on the inventory ledger your excise return is built from. It doesn’t lower the on-hand counts on your Inventory page; adjust those as you normally do. (DISTRYB’s own warehouse stock is the only on-hand it lowers automatically.) A record-only sale logs the invoice and touches neither — use it for goods that didn’t come from stock you track here.
Two things follow from the choice:
- A sale from your stock needs the buyer’s liquor licence on file — backdated or not. That’s the licence number and its state; if you leave the licence state blank, the account’s HQ state is used. Without a number the sale is refused with “Add {account}’s liquor licence number and state before selling from your stock.” Record-only and imported sales don’t need it. DISTRYB doesn’t yet check the number against the state’s registry, so the account shows Not verified next to it.
- Depletions count only sales made on DISTRYB — a same-day sale from your stock. (Depletions is the report of bottles leaving your hands, by brand, state and account, that brands use to track sell-through.) Sales you import, backdate or record after the fact still go on your invoices, tax returns and reports, but not Depletions.
What tax returns need from each account
Illinois today; other states as their returns are added.
- Liquor licence number and state.
- Illinois sales-tax account ID (the tax ID field).
- Street, city and ZIP — Schedule R, the part of the Illinois return that lists each business you sold to, prints each buyer’s address.
- A state on every sale. The state a sale ships to decides which state’s return it files in. It defaults to the account’s HQ state; if the account has none, the sale asks for one.
An account missing its tax ID or address is listed as incomplete when you prepare the return, rather than left out silently.
Voided invoices: a voided invoice isn’t a sale — it’s left out of reports and returns going forward; filed months aren’t changed. On the account’s page it stays in the activity, struck through and marked Voided, and counts toward no total.
What brands see
If you carry other companies’ brands, they see the volume and state of what you sell to your key accounts — never the buyer’s name. It shows as “Off-platform account”.
When a key account joins DISTRYB and the link is confirmed, brands see that business like any other store. If you mark the account NDA, its name stays private while NDA is on — to brands, and to the buyer, who never sees your records of them — even after it is linked.
Linking, invites and consent
- Link to their DISTRYB account asks the business to confirm. Its owners, and anyone there who manages customers, are notified and answer on Purchase History. Nothing is shared or re-attributed until they confirm; until then the account shows Link pending, and you can withdraw the request.
- Suggestions, never automatic links: DISTRYB never links an account automatically. When a business on DISTRYB adds a licence that matches one of your accounts, you’ll see a suggestion with what we know about them — you decide whether to send a link request, and they confirm it. The suggestion shows whether they’ve passed DISTRYB’s business verification (Verified business or Not verified), their legal name (given at sign-up) and display name (which they can change at any time), the licensee and trade name, status, state and number on the state’s own licence record (or that the state has no record of it), and whether the names plausibly match. That’s information for you, not a decision: Send link request asks them to confirm, exactly like a request you start yourself; Dismiss clears it, and that business isn’t suggested for the account again for 7 days. Only you see a suggestion; the business isn’t told.
- Asking again: if a business declines, or you withdraw a request, you can ask that business again after 7 days.
- Unlink puts the sales back to off-platform for brands; the business has to confirm again to re-link.
- Set them up on DISTRYB emails the account’s contact an invitation to join, using the address already on the account. It needs a contact email — add one with Edit. The link request goes with it.
- Once linked, a buyer whose account isn’t NDA sees what you’ve recorded selling them on their Purchase History.
Editing and archiving
Use Edit on the account’s page to change its name, contact, licence, tax ID, address, HQ state, what they sell and the NDA setting. Every change is kept in your change log, with what it was before.
Archive account hides it from your Key Accounts list and from New order, and stops new sales to it. Its invoices and history are kept; tick Show archived to find it and Restore it.
Adding an account with the same name and state as one you already have — or the same licence number — asks first, and links to the one that exists.
Who can see key accounts
Key accounts are private to your team. Teammates who can view customers can open them; brokers and reps can view but not change them. A teammate scoped to some brands or states can’t open Key Accounts at all, because an account covers every brand and state you sell it.
See also: Invoices & payments · Tax filing.