Notes from the shop floor

Practical, not preachy.

Written by people who run a real UK trading business. Trade pricing, order ops, getting paid, and the tools that actually help.

“Customer not found” when taking an order: why, and what to do at the counter

A customer you know exists does not appear in search. The usual causes and the workaround that keeps the order moving.

CSV price import failing? The formatting problems behind most rejections

Import errors, wrong values, half-updated catalogues. The CSV issues that cause nearly every failed price import.

Trade Order POS goes international: set your currency, tax and country in one Locale setting

Trade Order POS now has a team-wide Locale setting — currency symbol, tax rate, tax label and default country — so a business selling in the US or EU can run the whole POS in its own market.

Chat-based admin for contractors: what the US trades can take from a UK experiment

A UK service runs a tradesperson’s whole back office over WhatsApp. The model — mileage logs, instant quotes, receipt capture by message — maps neatly onto US contractor pain.

Admin by message: what EU tradespeople and freelancers can learn from GraftG

Across the EU, sole traders drown in the same paperwork — mileage, quotes, receipts, VAT records. A UK service does it all over WhatsApp. Here’s the model and what travels.

Why Linnworks stock levels look wrong (and how to work out which number to trust)

Stock in Linnworks disagreeing with the shelf, the POS or a report? The five usual causes, in the order worth checking.

Linnworks MCP for EU agencies: AI connectors your clients’ DPOs will accept

European agencies adding AI to client Linnworks accounts face one question first: where does the data flow? A per-client, self-hosted MCP deployment answers it cleanly.

WhatsApp as your office: how UK tradespeople are killing evening admin

Mileage, quotes, receipts, invoices — the average UK tradesperson’s evening. How doing the lot over WhatsApp changes it, with HMRC and MTD in mind.

AI over your Linnworks data: the case for UK in-house teams self-hosting

UK Linnworks sellers want Claude answering questions about orders and stock — without their warehouse data passing through a third party. Self-hosting an MCP server is the clean answer.

Connecting Claude to Linnworks: a self-hosted route for US-based sellers

US sellers and dev teams on Linnworks can wire Claude straight into orders, stock and customers — hosting the connector themselves on Cloudflare Workers for control and cost.

The QuickBooks estimate follow-up playbook for US small businesses

QuickBooks is the default back office for American small business. Estimates that expire unanswered are its default revenue leak. A practical, automated fix.

Running QuickBooks estimates in Europe: follow-up for EU customers

Using QuickBooks Online with EU business customers? Estimates stall in approval chains and formal processes. How automated follow-up fits European B2B manners.

Chasing quotes across the EU: follow-up that respects how European B2B buys

EU business customers decide slowly and formally. Why well-timed, well-mannered quote follow-up works especially well in European B2B — and how to automate it from Xero.

QuickBooks estimates going quiet? The UK follow-up fix

Plenty of UK small businesses run on QuickBooks Online. Its estimates have the same fatal gap as everyone else’s quotes: nobody chases them. Here’s the automatic fix.

The UK small-business habit that loses quotes: sending and not chasing

British politeness is costing you accepted quotes. Why UK firms on Xero under-chase, and how to automate the follow-up without sounding pushy.

Following up Xero quotes automatically: a guide for US businesses

Running a US business on Xero? Your quotes deserve the same follow-up discipline your sales pipeline gets. How automated quote chasing works stateside.

Wholesale price tiers for US distributors: structure beats negotiation

US wholesale runs on negotiated pricing and column lists. How named tiers with formulas bring order to distributor pricing — without losing the flexibility your accounts expect.

Tiered pricing for EU B2B sellers: one engine, many markets

Selling B2B across EU borders multiplies your price-list problem — currencies, VAT-exclusive norms, per-country expectations. Why a formula-driven tier engine is the sane answer.

Trade counter software for Linnworks: an honest buyer’s guide

What to look for in trade counter and B2B order-entry software if you run on Linnworks — and the questions that separate a real fit from a rebadged retail till.

Taking US wholesale orders from a UK warehouse: the order-entry checklist

US trade customers ordering from your UK operation — dollars, sales tax, addresses and the pipeline. A practical checklist for the order-entry side.

Trade price lists for UK wholesalers: getting out of the spreadsheet era

Most UK wholesale price lists still live in Excel. Why that clashes with how UK trade actually works now — VAT-registered accounts, digital records, Linnworks warehouses — and the tidier way.

How do I charge the right tax to EU customers at a trade counter?

An EU business is at your counter or on the phone. What tax goes on the order? How to set up your process so the answer is automatic, not a debate.

Why a default country setting matters more than it sounds

A one-time setting that removes a decision from every order. The small POS features that compound at trade volume.

How to set up tiered trade pricing in Linnworks

Linnworks gives you one retail price per SKU. Here’s how to run proper per-customer trade tiers on top of it — Trade, Wholesale, RRP and beyond — without living in a spreadsheet.

Selling B2B into Europe from the UK: the operational side nobody writes about

Plenty is written about the paperwork of UK–EU trade. Less about the day-to-day: how you actually take, price and process an EU trade order without it being a special event.

Quoting and invoicing EU customers in euros: set your POS to the currency you sell in

Pricing in your customers’ currency wins trust and orders. If your operation sells in euros, the clean answer is a POS set to euros — one setting, not a spreadsheet of conversions.

Handling US sales tax in a trade POS: what actually matters

Selling wholesale to US customers means dealing with sales tax — a different animal from VAT. How a trade POS should handle it, and where to get the rules.

Run your POS in the currency you trade in — and why that beats “multi-currency” for small business

Most small traders do not need per-order currency switching. They need their POS to speak the one currency their market uses. How a single team-wide currency setting does that.

“Token does not exist” or sudden 401s from Linnworks: what happened

An integration that worked yesterday now cannot authenticate. What invalidates a Linnworks install token, and how to restore access.

Multi-location stock in Linnworks: why your numbers disagree

Running more than one location? Here is why totals differ between views, and how to keep counter staff out of trouble.

How to chase expired Xero quotes automatically

Xero happily creates quotes but won’t chase them. Here’s how to follow up expired and unaccepted quotes automatically so “not yet” doesn’t quietly become “never”.

Choosing a wholesale POS with VAT support for EU customers

If you sell trade into Europe, your point of sale needs to handle VAT properly on EU orders. What to look for, and what to avoid.

A point of sale for EU B2B sellers running on Linnworks

Selling B2B to EU customers from a Linnworks warehouse? What a trade POS needs to get right: VAT on EU orders, euro pricing, and orders that land in Linnworks.

The customer’s tier price is not applying — six things to check

You set up tiers but the counter is still charging standard prices. Work through these in order.

Extended properties are not showing in Linnworks — the checklist

Pushed tier prices or custom fields into Linnworks extended properties but cannot see them? Five things to check.

The QuickBooks estimate follow-up most businesses skip

QuickBooks Online tracks estimates but leaves the chasing to you. Here’s the follow-up step that quietly recovers deals — and how to make it automatic.

Why a UK wholesaler ended up building (and selling) its own software

Green & Home Ltd never set out to be a software company. Here’s how running a real trading business on Linnworks led to a portfolio of tools other UK businesses now use.

“Reorder” cannot find an order I placed yesterday — why?

Reorder relies on the Linnworks processed-orders index, which lags. What that means day to day, and the workaround.

VAT looks wrong on a trade order — the usual explanations

Ex-VAT and inc-VAT confusion, per-line rates, delivery charges. Why trade order VAT surprises people, and how to check it properly.

Duplicate orders in Linnworks: how they happen and how to clear them safely

Two identical orders where there should be one. The four common causes, and how to remove the duplicate without wrecking your stock figures.

Linnworks API rate limits: what triggers them and how to stop hitting them

Seeing 429s or sluggish responses from Linnworks? What the limits mean, what usually causes bursts, and the fixes.

A simple system for deciding which tier each customer belongs to

Tier structures fail at the mapping step: hundreds of accounts, no rule for who goes where. A defensible method you can run through your customer list in an hour.

A trade order went out at the wrong price — how to find out why

Wrong price on a line? Work backwards through the four things that set it, and stop it recurring.

What manual trade pricing really costs a UK wholesaler

A back-of-the-envelope look at the time and margin a typical UK wholesaler loses to looking up trade prices by hand — and the two-tool fix.

Barcode scanner not working at the counter? Work through these five checks

Scanner beeps but nothing happens, or types gibberish. The five causes behind nearly every USB barcode scanner problem.

Buy vs build: the honest maths on a Linnworks MCP server

A competent developer can build a Linnworks MCP server in two to three weeks. The source costs £249. The decision is about more than the price gap.

The order did not appear in Linnworks — where to look first

You submitted an order and it is not in Linnworks. A short checklist that finds it (or proves it never made it) in about two minutes.

Below-cost pricing: how it sneaks through and the warning that stops it

Nobody prices below cost on purpose. It happens through stale costs, generous overrides and old quotes — and a margin warning at the point of sale is the backstop.

The quiet revenue leak: quotes that go cold

Most small businesses send quotes and estimates, then never follow up. Here’s how much that costs — and how to fix it without hiring anyone.

Running a price rise without losing accounts: the tier-by-tier method

Costs went up and your prices have to follow. How to execute a price rise across a tiered catalogue — cleanly, defensibly, and without ambushing your best customers.

Self-hosting a Linnworks MCP server: what it actually takes

For dev shops and in-house teams: how to deploy your own Linnworks MCP server on Cloudflare Workers and connect Claude to live Linnworks data — without weeks of integration work.

Cutting order-entry errors at the counter: where they come from and what fixes them

Wrong SKU, wrong quantity, wrong price, wrong address — trade order errors have four sources and each has a specific fix. None of the fixes is "be more careful".

Moving off spreadsheet pricing: a migration plan that takes an afternoon

The spreadsheet grew for good reasons — and now it is the riskiest file in the business. A practical, low-drama path from pricing-in-Excel to a proper tier engine.

The £250 trade counter: a complete tablet POS kit list

You do not need a POS terminal contract. A tablet, a scanner, a stand and a browser-based order tool cover a full trade counter for under £250.

Auto-processing counter sales in Linnworks: skip the pick for walk-outs

When the customer walks out with the goods, a picking step is fiction. Auto-processing counter sales keeps Linnworks accurate without warehouse theatre.

Managing wholesale price lists by CSV without descending into chaos

CSV import and export is how real pricing work gets done — supplier updates in, customer price lists out. The habits that keep it clean.

Tracking payment status at the point of sale (without a separate spreadsheet)

Paid, unpaid, pending, resend — if payment status lives anywhere other than the order itself, someone is maintaining a spreadsheet that will eventually be wrong.

Ten questions an ops team can ask Claude once Linnworks is connected

The practical payoff of a Linnworks MCP server is the questions it answers instantly. Ten real ones, from reorder points to refund patterns.

Turning quotes into orders without re-keying (the trade counter version)

A quote that has to be typed in again as an order is a quote system working against you. How tier-priced quoting should flow into Linnworks.

Minimum order values that actually get enforced (set them per tier)

A MOQ that lives in your terms and conditions is a suggestion. A MOQ the order screen enforces at the moment of sale is a policy. How per-tier minimums work.

Price memory: why remembering the last price you charged beats any rate card

Trade pricing is a negotiation with a memory. Software that remembers the last price you charged each customer for each SKU removes the friction and the awkwardness.

Storing tier prices in Linnworks extended properties: the pattern that keeps everything native

Where should wholesale tier prices live? Inside Linnworks itself, as extended properties on each stock item. Here is why that pattern beats a separate pricing database.

Letting field reps place orders on site (instead of phoning them in)

The order your rep phones in tonight is the order that should have been placed at the customer’s kitchen table this morning. How tablet-based field ordering works with Linnworks.

Do .99 endings work in B2B? What attractive rounding actually does for wholesale prices

Charm pricing is retail folklore — but rounding formula-driven wholesale prices to clean endings matters for a different reason: credibility.

Setting up a USB barcode scanner at your trade counter (it is easier than you think)

No drivers, no config, no special hardware. How scan-to-add works at a trade counter, what scanner to buy, and the settings that make it flow.

Cost-up or RRP-down? Choosing the right formula for each price tier

The two ways to drive a price tier by formula — markup from cost, or discount from RRP — and when each one is the right choice for a wholesale catalogue.

Taking phone orders into Linnworks faster: a workflow that works

Phone orders are where wholesalers lose the most time per order. A workflow for getting a trade phone order into Linnworks while the customer is still on the line.

What MCP actually unlocks for a Linnworks operation

Strip away the protocol jargon: MCP lets an AI assistant query your live Linnworks data in plain English. What that concretely changes for an ops team.

Tiered pricing explained: the wholesaler’s guide to Trade, Wholesale and RRP

What price tiers are, why nearly every B2B seller needs them, and how to design a tier ladder that fits how your customers actually buy.

Trade counter POS vs retail POS: why the difference costs you money

A retail till and a trade counter do completely different jobs. Using the wrong one quietly costs wholesalers time and margin every day. Here is the difference that matters.