5 Metrics Every Distributor Should Track Daily

Ask a distributor how the business is doing and you'll hear revenue, maybe gross margin if they're diligent. But the metrics that actually predict whether next month will be better or worse than this one? Those rarely get checked more than once a quarter — if at all. Here are five numbers that deserve a place on your daily dashboard.

1. Order Fill Rate

Fill rate measures the percentage of customer orders you can fulfill completely from available stock on the first attempt. It sounds basic, but most distributors don't track it in real time — they calculate it retroactively in a monthly report, long after the damage is done.

A fill rate that dips from 95% to 89% over two weeks tells you something specific: either demand spiked on certain SKUs, a supplier shipment was late, or your reorder points are wrong. Each cause has a different fix. But you can only diagnose the problem if you're watching the number daily, not discovering the gap in a quarterly review.

What good looks like: 95%+ for A-class SKUs, tracked daily by warehouse location. Set an alert for any day below 90%.

2. Gross Margin by Customer

Revenue by customer is easy. Margin by customer is harder — and far more important. Your largest customer by volume might be your least profitable after factoring in negotiated discounts, returns, special handling, and extended payment terms.

We've seen distributors discover that their top 3 accounts by revenue were actually bottom 5 by margin once all costs were allocated properly. That's not a rounding error. That's a strategic blind spot that shapes how you deploy your sales team, how you negotiate renewals, and which customers you should be growing versus managing.

What good looks like: Margin calculated net of returns and discounts, updated daily. Flag any customer whose margin drops below your floor (e.g., 18%) for two consecutive weeks.

3. Inventory Days on Hand

Days on Hand (DOH) tells you how many days your current inventory will last at the current rate of sale. It's the single best indicator of whether you're carrying too much, too little, or just the right amount of each SKU.

The problem with checking DOH monthly is that inventory problems compound. A SKU sitting at 120 days on hand in January becomes 150 in February and dead stock by April. By the time someone flags it in the quarterly review, you've tied up working capital for months and might need to discount heavily to move it.

Track DOH daily at the SKU level. Not as an average across your entire catalog — that hides the extremes. Your fast-moving A-class items might be at a healthy 15 days while your C-class tail is sitting at 200+. The average will look fine. The reality won't be.

What good looks like: A-class SKUs at 10–20 days, B-class at 30–45 days. Alert on anything above 90 days — that's capital you should redeploy.

4. On-Time Delivery Rate

On-time delivery (OTD) is the metric your customers feel most directly. A late shipment doesn't just cost you a penalty or a discount — it erodes trust. And in distribution, trust is the only thing preventing your customer from switching to the competitor who quoted them last week.

Track OTD daily by route and by carrier. Aggregate numbers mask the problem. Your overall OTD might be 92%, but Route 4 might be running at 78% because of a specific logistics partner that's consistently late. You won't see that in a monthly summary. You need the granularity to act.

What good looks like: 95%+ overall, tracked daily by route. Investigate any route that drops below 90% for three consecutive days.

5. Accounts Receivable Aging

Cash flow kills more distributors than low margins do. AR aging — the breakdown of how much is owed to you and for how long — should be a daily check, not a monthly one. Especially in MEA markets where payment cycles can stretch well beyond standard terms.

The metric to watch isn't total outstanding receivables. It's the rate of change in your 60+ and 90+ day buckets. If those buckets are growing week over week, you have a collections problem that will become a cash flow crisis in 30 days. The earlier you see the trend, the more options you have: escalate collections, tighten terms on new orders, or have a direct conversation with the customer before the relationship sours.

What good looks like: Less than 10% of total AR in the 60+ day bucket. Alert if 90+ day receivables grow more than 15% in a single week.

Why Daily Matters

None of these metrics are exotic. Any distributor will recognize them. The difference is frequency. Checking revenue monthly and margin quarterly means you're always reacting to problems that started weeks ago. Checking five core metrics daily means you catch problems when they're small, fixable, and haven't yet compounded into a crisis.

The barrier has always been access. Getting these numbers daily used to mean a dedicated analyst, a BI tool with expensive licenses, or an IT team willing to build custom reports. That's not the case anymore. If your data lives in an ERP, you can connect it to Treeo and have these five metrics — updated live, with alerts — running in under an hour.

---