Overseas Trade

Wholesale & Retail ERP with POS for Italy

Italian VAT, e-invoicing compliance, stacked discounts, multiple languages and integrated POS, serving hundreds of wholesale buyers and thousands of retail stores.

LiveOverseas TradeLarge projectPC · iPad POS · Mini program

Client: Chinese-owned supermarket group, Italy
Industry: Overseas Trade
Platforms: PC · iPad POS · Mini program
Scale: Large project · 2025

01Background

The client is a group of Chinese-owned wholesale and retail businesses around Naples, running seasonal pre-sales, wholesale fulfilment and large-format retail. Stock comes from both Italian suppliers and Chinese imports, each with different VAT rates. Wholesale, retail and mail-order sales were split across several tools that never reconciled, and exported e-invoices were rejected by Italy’s SDI exchange system. They needed inventory and sales software that fits how Chinese wholesalers work and meets Italian tax rules.

Client: Chinese-owned wholesale & retail group, Italy
Scale: Hundreds of wholesale buyers, thousands of retail stores
Store format: Large stores of 3,000–10,000 m²
Platforms: PC, iPad POS, mini program

02Challenges

1Tax compliance

E-invoices containing &, € or accented letters were rejected outright by SDI.

2Layered discounts

Line, order-level and stacked discounts, with some items excluded on bulk import.

3Invoicing tied to stock

Non-invoiceable items and invoice limits could not be handled apart from stock moves.

4Fragmented channels

Wholesale, retail and mail order ran on separate tools; stock and receivables never matched.

No single system fit Chinese wholesale practice, Italian tax compliance and unified wholesale-retail operations.

03Solution

Shanku built an Italian localisation on top of a proven inventory and sales core, with wholesale, retail and mobile sharing one product catalogue and one stock ledger. Three rules shape the design: reservations never touch stock, only warehouse staff post stock movements, and invoicing can be decoupled from shipping.

Three-tier documents

Reservation, sales order and goods-out note are separate; stock and cash change only when the warehouse confirms. Purchasing mirrors this.

Discount & VAT engine

Line, stacked and order-level discounts and surcharges are allocated per line, then taxable amount and VAT use each item’s rate.

Decoupled invoicing

Orders flag whether to invoice; standalone and batch invoicing with status tracking; non-invoiceable items map to equivalents.

Card-based picking

Pickers work from product cards showing photo, barcode, bin location, live stock and outstanding quantity, with barcode search.

Integrated POS

A POS that adapts to PC and iPad handles sales, returns and parked sales (auto-parked on power loss), feeding back into reports.

Localised printing

Italian UI; sales orders show P.IVA, Codice Fiscale, bin and stock; drag-and-drop templates; EAN-13 barcodes generated automatically.

04Core workflow

Wholesale order flow

1
Reservation
Price, deposit, delivery and payment terms
2
Sales order
Sale confirmed, receivable created
3
Picking
Picked from product cards, scanned to verify
4
Goods out
Warehouse confirms, stock deducted live
5
Payment & invoice
Deposit offset; invoice now or separately
6
Print & hand over
Sales order, delivery note, barcode labels

Reservations and sales orders never change stock; it is deducted only when the warehouse confirms goods out. Overdue and due payments trigger reminders automatically.

05Results

Discount rules enforced

Stacked discounts, surcharges and VAT calculate together; a surcharge and a discount cannot coexist on one order.

One gate for stock

Only warehouse confirmations move stock, so mistakes on reservations or orders never distort book inventory.

One dataset, many touchpoints

PC, iPad POS and mini program share catalogue and stock; wholesale and retail report from the same books.

Self-service templates

Receipts, orders, delivery notes and labels are edited visually; stores adjust size and fields without code changes.

06Screens

Screens are prototypes or rebuilt with sample data. They contain no real client data, amounts or accounts.

07Tech stack

Backend: Spring BootJavaModular order / product / reporting services
Web front end: VueElement UIvue-i18n
Mobile & POS: uni-app mini programVue 3 POS (PC / iPad)Arco Design
Printing & barcodes: Visual print templatesEAN-13 generationReceipt / label printers
Deployment: Cloud hostedMulti-store, multi-warehouse