Even Flow Distribution: A B2B Wholesale Commerce Platform on nopCommerce 4.20 with ERP Integration

A brief background on Even Flow Distribution

Founded in 2005, Even Flow Distribution has grown into a South African value-added technology distributor, supplying networking, unified communications, audiovisual, digital security and IoT, and intelligent energy products to resellers, ISPs, and telcos across Africa. Even Flow joined Epsidon Technology Holdings in 2019 and runs its partner storefront out of Johannesburg and Cape Town. Built around ERP-backed trade accounts rather than public retail, Even Flow needed a commerce platform that could gate pricing by login, carry real credit and ship-to data, and treat ERP as the system of record from the ground up.

Challenges

Even Flow came to us with a clear goal: one public site for trade partners, with ERP as the source of truth for accounts, stock, and pricing. After reviewing the platform and the client's commercial rules, our team identified the following challenges.

Reseller catalog with prices hidden until login: Even Flow needed one public catalog where anyone could browse its networking, security, unified communications, and energy lines, but only mapped trade partners could see prices. Standard nopCommerce shows a price to every visitor, so without login-based gating the storefront would either expose wholesale numbers or push every enquiry back onto the phone.

ERP-backed trade accounts at scale: Each reseller account carries a real ERP record: an account number, a credit limit, a running balance, and a price group, none of which fits into a plain nopCommerce customer profile. Getting this wrong at a scale of thousands of accounts meant partners ordering on the wrong terms, or unable to order at all.

Dual-region fulfilment and branch stock visibility: Even Flow ships from two branches, Johannesburg and Cape Town, with each account's ERP ship-to codes tied to a sales organisation, and partners need to see which branch actually holds stock before ordering. Generic nopCommerce addresses carry no ship-to code, and its stock model is one store-wide quantity, so left unresolved, orders would route to the wrong warehouse or promise stock that sat in the other region.

Account credit, purchase orders, and card payment side by side: Trade purchasing runs on payment on account and uploaded purchase order documents, with card payment available where needed. A standard nopCommerce checkout has neither an account-terms payment method nor a place to attach a PO document, which would force every trade buyer through a consumer checkout flow.

Roles, sales-rep support, and manual pricelist requests: Sales reps need to order on behalf of assigned buyers, while staff and developer logins must never trigger a live order by accident. Partners also need a current pricelist for their own quoting, and handling that by email meant static spreadsheets, out of date as soon as ERP prices changed.

Our Solution

Our team took a plugin-driven approach on Even Flow's existing nopCommerce codebase rather than a rebuild, working within the nopStation-Comalytics B2B stack on the Emporium theme. The core of the build is the B2B Customer Account, Managing B2B Customer, Quick Order, and B2B Pricing Feed API plugins, backed by a generic ERP HTTP integration service and a dedicated Even Flow Account admin area, on .NET Core 2.2 with SQL Server.

Login-gated pricing by account: The storefront shows every product, brand, and datasheet to guests, with price replaced by a "Login For Price" prompt until a partner signs in. Registration captures company name and VAT so a new signup can be tied to an ERP account, and price then resolves from that account's price group.

Image 1.2: Guest product page shows "Login For Price" until account login resolves trade pricing

ERP account sync and a dedicated admin area: A generic ERP HTTP integration service keeps account numbers, credit limits, balances, price groups, and stock in sync with Even Flow's ERP, with timestamps for the last price and account refresh. Administrators manage it all from a new Even Flow Account menu covering B2B accounts, ship-to addresses, sales organisations, sales reps, and multi-account buyers, holding 2.8k+ active accounts at review.

Sales organisations, ship-to mapping, and warehouse stock on the product page: Ship-to codes sit on each account and roll up to one of two sales organisations, JHB and CPT, mirroring Even Flow's Johannesburg and Cape Town branches, across 2.9k+ ship-to addresses. Every product page also carries a warehouse and stock-quantity table alongside the price, an Even Flow specific enhancement so that a logged-in partner sees availability by branch before ordering, rather than one blended figure.

Image 1.3: Logged-in product page with per-warehouse stock table

Account payment, purchase orders, and PayFast at checkout: Checkout carries a B2B Customer Account payment method for trade buyers on terms, a purchase-order upload directly on the cart, and PayFast for card payment, so account, PO, and card customers all use the same flow, gated by a terms-of-service acceptance before the order proceeds.

Image 1.4: Cart with exclusive-of-VAT totals and PO document upload

B2B permissions, sales-rep impersonation, and self-service pricelists: Ordering, quoting, credit visibility, and statement access sit behind account-level B2B permissions, and sales reps can impersonate an assigned buyer to place or review orders on their behalf, while staff and developer logins stay outside that permission set. A PRICELIST DOWNLOAD option in the header also lets logged-in partners export the full product list as Excel or PDF on demand, pulled live from current ERP pricing.

Together, these pieces let one Emporium storefront run wholesale distribution for thousands of trade accounts, with ERP as the system of record throughout. Nop-Station Web API and app push notification plugins are already in the codebase for a possible future partner app.

Results:

• Processed 8.3k+ live orders on the nopCommerce 4.20 storefront.
• Connected 2.8k+ active ERP-backed B2B accounts across JHB and CPT sales organisations.
• Managed 2.9k+ ERP ship-to addresses tied to those accounts.
• Registered 280+ storefront customer accounts.
• Enabled per-warehouse stock visibility across Cape Town and Johannesburg.
• Tracked 2.4k+ low-stock products on the live admin dashboard.
• Added self-service Excel and PDF pricelist downloads for partners.
• Implemented account payment, PO upload, and PayFast side by side at checkout.