IMS_Demo Overview

ERP inventory, pricing, and sales analytics portfolio case study — built on ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server.

IMS_Demo

Executive Summary

ERP Inventory & Sales Analytics Platform

A complete distribution-style ERP demo built with ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server, designed to showcase operational control, commercial pricing, and management reporting in one portfolio project.

  • Distribution ERP
  • Real-World Business Workflows
  • Multi-Warehouse Inventory
  • Inventory Snapshots
  • Period Close
  • ERP Pricing Engine
  • Sales Analytics
  • Excel Import

Business Problems Solved

Inventory Visibility

Warehouse-level balances, transaction traceability, and snapshot-based beginning inventory.

Period Control

Formal period close, invoice locking, and controlled snapshot rebuild paths.

Pricing Administration

Assigned price lists, item group discount rules, optional customer overrides, and Excel-based bulk maintenance.

Sales Analytics

Live revenue trends, customer concentration, and category mix on the operations dashboard.

Multi-Warehouse Operations

MAIN and branch warehouses with warehouse-aware inventory and reporting architecture.

Real-World Pricing Challenges

Many distributors and wholesalers face recurring pricing management challenges.

When suppliers announce new pricing, accounting and pricing teams often ask:

  • Can we update 5,000 products from Excel instead of editing them one by one?
  • Can we prepare future prices several days or weeks before they become effective?
  • Can the system automatically switch to the new prices on the effective date?
  • Can strategic customers receive different prices from the standard market price?

IMS_Demo addresses these challenges through a multi-level ERP Pricing Engine.

Standard Price Management

Pricing administrators can import thousands of item prices from Excel or CSV files. Each price can include an Effective Date, allowing future price changes to be prepared in advance.

Example

A new supplier price list is received on June 25th for 5,000 products with an Effective Date of July 1st.

The pricing team imports the file once.

When July 1st arrives, all invoices automatically use the new prices without any manual intervention.

Excel Import Template Example

The pricing team prepares future prices directly in Excel using a standardized ISO date format.

The system requires: EffectiveDate = yyyy-MM-dd

Example

CustomerCode ItemCode UnitPrice EffectiveDate
(blank) ITEM00022 27,500 2026-01-07
(blank) ITEM00023 37,000 2026-01-07
Excel template using ISO 8601 date format (yyyy-MM-dd). This avoids DD/MM/YYYY vs MM/DD/YYYY ambiguity across international users and regional Windows settings.

Why this matters

Many ERP implementations fail because Excel files are prepared by different users using different regional settings.

Examples:

  • 01/07/2026
  • 07/01/2026

These values may mean different dates depending on the user's locale.

By enforcing yyyy-MM-dd (2026-01-07), the import process becomes predictable, auditable, and globally consistent.

ISO Date Safe yyyy-MM-dd Open Import Price List

Import preview validates EffectiveDate as ISO yyyy-MM-dd, rejects ambiguous slash formats, and displays accepted dates as 07-Jan-2026 before commit.

Customer Pricing Assignment

Every customer in IMS_Demo is assigned to a commercial Price List that defines their baseline item prices. Price lists represent customer segments such as RETAIL, WHOLESALE, SUPERMARKET, VIP, and CHOLON. Assignment is maintained in Customer Master and applied automatically at invoice entry.

On top of the assigned Price List, customers may have optional Item Group Discount Rules that reduce prices for specific product categories. This is the primary commercial model shown in Customer Master, Price Lists, and Sales Invoice.

Real-World Example

Customer
Customer 0003
Price List
SUPERMARKET
Item
ITEM00022
Price List Price
24,000
Group A Discount
15%
Final Invoice Price
20,400

Why This Matters

Large distributors rarely operate with a single selling price.

The same item may be sold at different prices depending on:

  • Customer contract
  • Customer segment
  • Sales channel
  • Promotional agreements
  • Strategic accounts

Maintaining these prices manually often leads to:

  • Pricing disputes
  • Invoice corrections
  • Margin leakage
  • Customer dissatisfaction

IMS_Demo automatically resolves customer-specific pricing during Sales Invoice processing, ensuring pricing consistency, auditability, and operational efficiency.

Same Item, Different Customers

Item Code: ITEM00022

Customer Type Price
RETAIL 25,200
SUPERMARKET 24,000
VIP 23,500
Strategic Account 22,800

The Sales Invoice module automatically selects the correct price based on customer assignment without requiring manual price lookup.

Real-World Issue Solved

Eliminated pricing disputes by automatically applying customer-specific prices and contract-based discounts during Sales Invoice processing.

This reduces manual intervention, improves pricing accuracy, and protects gross margin.

Why Distributors Like This Approach

U.S. distributors and wholesalers need pricing that is easy to administer, easy to audit, and safe for daily order entry. IMS_Demo follows a familiar commercial model used in distribution ERP systems.

One customer belongs to one commercial pricing program.

Thousands of item prices can be maintained through Excel imports.

Future prices can be loaded days or weeks before they become effective.

Item-group discounts support negotiated commercial agreements.

Pricing remains transparent and auditable.

Sales invoices automatically use the correct active pricing.

Customer-Specific Pricing

The pricing engine supports both standard retail prices and customer-specific pricing.

Pricing hierarchy:

Level 1 – Customer-Specific Price

If CustomerCode is provided in the import file, the imported price is assigned only to that customer.

Example

CUS0001 + ITEM00022
23,800
CUS0007 + ITEM00022
23,500

When a Sales Invoice is created, the system automatically applies the customer-specific price if available.

Level 2 – Standard Retail Price

If CustomerCode is left blank, the imported price becomes the default retail price for the item.

Example

(blank) + ITEM00022
25,200

This price is used when no customer-specific price exists.

ERP Pricing Engine

Every customer is assigned to a commercial Price List. The pricing engine retrieves the active item price, applies any item-group discount rules, and produces the final invoice price automatically.

Customer
Assigned Price List
Item Price Matrix
Item Group Discount Rules
Invoice Unit Price

Pricing Resolution Logic

Sales Invoice Pricing:

  1. Search customer-specific price.
  2. If found, use customer-specific price.
  3. Otherwise use standard retail price.
  4. If neither exists, flag item for pricing review.

Business Benefits

  • Supports wholesale and distribution operations
  • Customer contract pricing
  • Volume-based customer relationships
  • Centralized price maintenance through Excel import
  • Reduced manual invoice pricing errors

This design reflects common ERP pricing strategies used in inventory, wholesale, and distribution businesses.

The full ERP engine also evaluates assigned Price Lists and Item Group Discount Rules when resolving invoice prices.

Real-World Business Impact

Without a pricing engine, accounting teams often maintain prices manually and risk applying incorrect prices on sales invoices.

With IMS_Demo:

  • Bulk price updates are imported from Excel.
  • Future pricing activates automatically on the Effective Date.
  • Customers follow assigned pricing programs.
  • Discount rules are applied consistently.
  • Pricing decisions remain fully traceable.

Why This Matters

Many small and mid-sized distributors still manage pricing changes, customer agreements, inventory balances, and reporting through spreadsheets and manual processes.

As product catalogs grow and customer relationships become more complex, these manual approaches increase operational risk.

Common challenges include:

  • Pricing errors caused by outdated spreadsheets
  • Last-minute price updates before effective dates
  • Customer-specific agreements that are difficult to track
  • Limited visibility into inventory and sales performance
  • Heavy reliance on individual employee knowledge

IMS_Demo demonstrates how these operational processes can be consolidated into a structured ERP workflow.

The platform combines:

  • Multi-Warehouse Inventory Management
  • Inventory Snapshot & Period Close Controls
  • ERP Pricing Engine
  • Excel-Based Bulk Data Administration
  • Sales Analytics & Operational Dashboards

into a single business system.

Benefits:

  • Reduced manual effort
  • Improved pricing accuracy
  • Better operational visibility
  • Stronger auditability
  • More scalable business processes
While IMS_Demo is presented as a portfolio project, the business scenarios, pricing models, inventory controls, and reporting workflows are based on real-world distribution and wholesale operations.

ERP Architecture

Inventory Engine

Ledger, snapshots, period close, multi-warehouse balances.

Pricing Engine

Price lists, item group discounts, optional customer overrides, effective-date resolution.

Snapshot Engine

Beginning inventory snapshots and period-end roll-forward.

Analytics Engine

Chart.js KPIs and ranked revenue analysis from live SQL data.

ERP Operational Workflow

From bulk data preparation through operational reporting — the end-to-end business flow in one system.

Excel Import
Pricing Engine
Sales Invoice
Inventory Ledger
Period Close
Analytics Dashboard

Enterprise Data Import

Bulk Product & Price Import

Import thousands of products, pricing records, and customer-specific price lists from Excel or CSV files.

Features demonstrated:

  • Preview before commit
  • Validation and rejection reporting
  • Insert / Update detection
  • Customer-specific pricing
  • Effective date management
  • Excel date conversion handling

Business Value

Supports high-volume master data maintenance while improving data quality and consistency. See Standard Price Management above for ISO date template guidance.

Live Demo Dataset

Production-scale sample data powering every module in this ERP showcase.

Active Customers 832
Active Products 5.066
Warehouses 3
Sales Documents 6.082
Inventory Snapshot Records 91.014
Commercial Price Lists 5
Customer-Specific Pricing Support Enabled
Effective-Date Pricing Engine Enabled Future-dated price rows resolve automatically at invoice entry

Major Features

Inventory Management
Period Close
Price Lists
Item Group Discounts
Excel Imports
Sales Analytics
Dashboard KPIs

Technology Stack

ASP.NET MVC (.NET Framework 4.8)
SQL Server
Bootstrap
Chart.js
EPPlus

Quick Navigation

Built as a practical ERP case study demonstrating how inventory control, pricing administration, Excel-based data management, and operational analytics work together inside a modern business system.