Electrical Distribution
Internal systems for electrical distributors.
Electrical distribution runs on the project cycle. A contractor sends a spec package with hundreds of line items and a bid date. You quote against volatile copper, chase special pricing authorizations from manufacturers, and win or lose on a number assembled under deadline pressure. Winning starts a second marathon: phase releases over months, submittal packages for engineer approval, and rebate claims that have to be documented to the penny or the money simply isn't paid.
The ERP records what shipped and what was invoiced. It does not manage the bid calendar, the SPA pending with a manufacturer rep, the release schedule negotiated with the GC, or the rebate accrual nobody has reconciled. That project-layer work is what Praxyt builds systems for.
Where electrical distributors lose time and margin
Quotes assembled under bid-deadline pressure
Bid day is a pile-up: dozens of packages due the same morning, each needing cost lookups, copper adjustments, and manufacturer pricing that may or may not have arrived. Without a queue, quotes get worked in the order someone shouted loudest—and good jobs go unquoted. This is the distribution version of manual quote approvals.
SPA requests lost between you and the manufacturer
Special pricing authorizations win project business, but the request lives in an email to a manufacturer rep, the approval comes back as a PDF, and the claim documentation is due in a format every manufacturer defines differently. SPAs get quoted, won, and then under-claimed.
Rebate claims reconciled once a year, badly
Manufacturer rebates and growth incentives accrue line by line, program by program. If reconciliation is an annual spreadsheet exercise, you are claiming from memory and leaving money behind because the documentation burden exceeded the patience available.
Phase releases managed on a whiteboard
The job was won as one quote but ships as fifteen releases over ten months, against the GC's schedule, with fixture packages held for approval. Tracking what's released, what's staged, and what's slipping lives in a spreadsheet attached to a job folder.
Submittal packages assembled by hand
Every fixture, panel, and gear item needs a cut sheet package for engineer approval before release. Gathering current cut sheets, marking them up per spec section, and tracking approval status is days of skilled work per job—and a rejected submittal restarts the clock.
Won/lost visibility that ends at "we didn't get it"
Quotes become orders or they don't, and the reasons—price, SPA denied, spec changed, lost to a specific competitor—are rarely captured. The quoting team can't learn from a record that doesn't exist.
Example Systems
What we build for electrical distributors
Bid queue with deadline discipline
Every quote package in one board, sorted by bid date, with line counts, completion state, and blockers visible. Copper-sensitive items flagged for same-day repricing. Nothing waits because nobody knew it existed.
SPA request and claim tracker
Requests, approvals, expirations, and claim documentation per manufacturer, tied to the quotes and invoices they affect. Accruals build as shipments post, so claiming is a review—not a reconstruction.
Phase release scheduler
Won jobs decompose into releases with target dates, staging status, and holds for submittal approval. Purchasing sees demand before it's urgent; the PM sees slippage before the GC calls.
Submittal package builder
Cut sheets matched to spec sections from a maintained library, assembled into packages per job, with approval status tracked to the release they gate. See how this fits document and data workflows.
Concept Interface
Sample board: the bid queue
A concept for how a quoting team's morning could look when every package, deadline, and blocker sits on one board.
Bid Queue — This Week
Concept Interface — illustrative only, not a client system
| Package | Contractor | Bid date | Lines | Blocker | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Riverview HS, Phase 2 | Meridian Electric | Thu 10:00 | 312 | SPA pending — mfr rep | SPA approval pending |
| Dock 9 Warehouse | Apex Electrical | Thu 14:00 | 87 | Copper reprice due | Pricing in progress |
| Clinic fit-out, floors 3–4 | Halloway & Sons | Fri 09:00 | 154 | Gear quote from mfr | Vendor response overdue |
| Retail refresh, 6 sites | Brennan Contracting | Fri 17:00 | 220 | — | Ready pending review |
Packages sort by bid date; blockers name the specific dependency so follow-up is a task, not an investigation.
Integration notes for electrical operations
- Your ERP stays the system of record—Epicor Eclipse, Infor SX.e, Prophet 21, or whatever you run. Quotes, releases, and invoices post there; the project layer manages the work around them.
- Industry pricing data from services like the IDEA connector, Trade Service, or manufacturer files feeds cost and catalog updates so quotes start from current numbers.
- Manufacturer communication starts as structured email with tracked requests and grows into portal/API integration where the manufacturer supports it.
- Cut sheet and document libraries index manufacturer literature against your item master, so submittal assembly pulls current documents instead of saved PDFs of unknown vintage.
Diagnostic questions worth asking
- How many bid packages arrived last month, and how many were never quoted at all?
- What dollar value of SPA claims is currently unfiled or past the manufacturer's claim window?
- For your largest active job: which releases are scheduled, which are staged, and which are held for submittal approval—and how long did that answer take?
- When you lose a project on price, is that recorded anywhere the next quote can learn from?
- How many submittal rejections last year were for outdated or wrong cut sheets rather than spec issues?
Questions electrical distributors ask
- Yes—the tracker models the common lifecycle (request, approval, expiration, claim) and stores manufacturer-specific formats and requirements per program. Claims are assembled per manufacturer rules from shipment data, which is where the real time savings sit.
- Copper-sensitive items are flagged at quote time with the pricing basis used, so bid-day repricing is a batch operation against current metal pricing rather than a line-by-line recalculation. The quote records which basis was quoted, which matters when the order arrives weeks later.
- The release scheduler holds the job-level plan; when a release is confirmed, it becomes an order (or an order release against a blanket) in your ERP through the normal path. Purchasing and warehouse see real ERP demand—just earlier and with context.
- A spreadsheet tracks what someone remembered to enter. A bid queue ingests packages as they arrive, enforces the deadline sort, and captures outcomes systematically—which is what makes won/lost analysis possible later. If the spreadsheet is honest and current, keep it; most aren't.
Keep exploring
- Wholesale DistributionThe pillar overview: our approach to quoting, exceptions, and order flow for distributors.
- Manual quote approvalsWhy quote desks stall under deadline load, and how exception-based queues fix it.
- Vendor claim managementThe same documentation discipline that SPA and rebate claims demand, examined as a problem pattern.
- Operational dashboardsBid queues, release schedules, and claim accruals your team can actually see.
- System integrationsHow we connect ERPs, manufacturer data, and industry pricing services into one flow.
Bid day shouldn't be won or lost in an inbox.
Show us how a quote package moves from spec to submitted price. We will help you find the workflow worth fixing first.