If you're managing a distillery, you already know the frustration of juggling vendors across dozens of browser tabs — one site for grain suppliers, another for custom bottles, a third for specialty labels, and yet another for packaging materials. This manual process wastes hours of your team's time and makes it nearly impossible to know if you're getting competitive pricing.

Your "grain-to-glass" operations span raw agricultural inputs, specialized botanicals, custom packaging, bottles, labels, and corks, each requiring relationships with different vendor types. Some suppliers operate entirely offline, taking orders only by phone or email. Others have outdated websites with incomplete catalogs. Still others require minimum order quantities that don't align with your production schedules.

The operational burden intensifies when factoring in today's financial pressures. Market headwinds have strained craft spirits’ margins while input costs continue to climb. Rising interest rates have made capital more expensive as your spirits sit in aging barrels for years before generating revenue. Your distillery needs working capital to purchase grain, bottles, and botanicals today, but that inventory won't convert to cash until years down the road.

The best purchasing software transforms this vendor chaos into streamlined operations that actively optimize your sourcing, consolidate your vendors, and improve your cash flow, not just process payments. Modern platforms eliminate the root causes of inefficiency by centralizing vendor relationships, automating price discovery, and extending payment terms that align with your unique production cycles.

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What defines the best procurement software for spirits producers?

The best procurement software for your distillery balances vendor flexibility with financial control while supporting the unique operational rhythms of spirits production. 

Look for platforms that deliver the following core capabilities: 

• Maintains vendor agnosticism: Supports purchasing from any supplier, your grain farmers, specialized glass manufacturers, and custom label printers, without forcing you into a restricted catalog. The right procurement platform accommodates these existing relationships rather than requiring you to switch to approved vendors who may not meet your specifications.
• Integrates seamlessly with accounting systems: Provides automated data flow into industry-standard AP platforms like NetSuite, QuickBooks, and Sage Intacct for accurate financial reporting. Integration eliminates reconciliation burden by ensuring purchasing data flows directly from the procurement platform into your accounting system with correct GL codes, cost centers, and location assignments already applied.
• Enables multi-location capabilities: Supports location-level budget controls and approval workflows if you operate multiple tasting rooms or production facilities. The right platform delivers both autonomy and visibility through configurable approval hierarchies and spending limits.
• Optimizes cash flow timing: Offers extended payment terms, which is critical when your inventory needs to age for years before generating revenue. Procurement platforms that provide flexible payment terms or embedded financing options align your cash outflows with your actual revenue cycles.

Top pick: Order.co for end-to-end purchasing power

Order.co unifies your sourcing, payments, and vendor management into a single automated platform designed specifically for multi-vendor, multi-location operations. Unlike platforms that offer isolated features, Order.co delivers comprehensive procurement automation by addressing every stage of the procure-to-pay lifecycle, giving you back time to focus on the craft of distilling.

• Centralize all vendors: Order.co's unified catalog consolidates every vendor, including local suppliers who only take phone orders, into one platform, eliminating your multi-site comparison shopping. Your purchasing team no longer needs to maintain separate login credentials for each supplier portal or track orders across email threads and phone calls. Order.co digitizes even your most traditional suppliers, allowing you to place orders, track shipments, and manage returns through a single interface.
• Leverage AI for cost savings: Order.co AI scans thousands of vendor websites to identify better prices on your bottles, packaging, and consumables, delivering an average of 5%-10% savings on supplies. The platform continuously monitors market prices, alerting your team when better pricing becomes available. For distilleries spending $500,000 annually on packaging materials, these savings translate to $25,000 in hard-dollar cost reductions.
• Simplify invoice management: Receive weekly or monthly consolidated invoices with line-item detail for all your vendors, reducing your invoice volume by up to 50x. This consolidation typically cuts AP workload by 60% or more.
• Automate GL coding: Your purchasing decisions carry embedded financial metadata that eliminates manual coding work for your AP team. When your tasting room manager orders glassware, the system automatically assigns the correct GL account, cost center, and location code.
• Access hands-off vendor management: Rely on Order.co representatives to help handle communications,order placement, and issue resolution for your local vendors on your behalf. When your grain supplier requires a phone call to place orders or your specialty bottle manufacturer only accepts emailed purchase orders, Order.co's vendor management team handles these interactions directly.
• Extend payment terms: Access standard Net 30 terms on every purchase regardless of individual vendor policies, plus extended Net 45, 60, or 90-day options through flexible payment solutions. Order.co pays your vendors immediately while extending terms to your distillery, transforming inconsistent payment requirements into predictable cash flow cycles.

Comparison: P2P automation vs. ERP procurement modules for distilleries

Dedicated procure-to-pay platforms like Order.co deliver superior usability and sourcing capabilities that your native ERP modules simply cannot match, especially in daily operational workflows. While your ERP system remains essential for financial record-keeping, the difference becomes pronounced when your operations team needs to discover new vendors, compare prices, or place orders quickly.

• Address the user experience gap: Native ERP modules like NetSuite and Sage excel at accounting and financial controls, but they are optimized for finance teams rather than operations staff who place daily orders. 
• Overcome sourcing limitations: Your ERP tracks inventory well, but doesn't help you find or buy goods efficiently because it lacks vendor discovery and price comparison capabilities. 
• Drive higher adoption rates: Complex ERP procurement interfaces often suffer from low user adoption due to workflows designed for accounting rigor rather than purchasing speed. When purchasing through your ERP feels harder than calling vendors directly, your team finds workarounds that create rogue spending and undermine financial visibility.
• Leverage integration advantages: Order.co complements your ERP by acting as a modern front-end that  pushes clean, pre-coded data  downstream to your accounting system. You maintain the financial controls your ERP provides while giving your operations team an interface designed for ease of use.
• Combine marketplace ease with enterprise control: The user experience feels like shopping on Amazon with search, filters, and one-click reordering, but every transaction flows through approval workflows, budget checks, and compliance rules configured by your finance team.
• Eliminate manual reconciliation: Pre-coded GL assignments at point of purchase remove the need for manual 3-way matching. When GL coding happens at the point of purchase and invoices consolidate multiple transactions with perfect line-item detail, this matching process becomes unnecessary.

Managing purchasing for tasting rooms and multiple production sites

Maintaining consistent purchasing standards across locations requires centralized controls that prevent rogue spending while empowering local teams. As you expand to multiple tasting rooms and production facilities, the challenge becomes balancing location manager autonomy with brand consistency and budget compliance.

• Enforce location-level budgets: Configure  spending limits and approved product lists  for each specific facility. Order.co allows you to configure these budgets at the location level, automatically preventing orders that would exceed allocated amounts while tracking spending in real-time.
• Route approvals dynamically: Configure purchase request routing to appropriate stakeholders based on location, category, and amount. For example, small purchases under $500 might auto-approve for tasting room managers, while larger capital expenditures route to regional directors for review.
• Monitor spend in real-time: Detect spending anomalies instantly across your locations without waiting for end-of-month reports. Your finance team maintains a live dashboard showing spend by location, category, and vendor, making it easy to identify outliers before they compound.
• Standardize products across locations: Ensure consistent glassware, merchandise, and supplies across all your tasting room locations. Order.co's catalog capabilities allow you to pre-approve specific products, making it easy for location managers to order the right items while preventing purchases that don't meet brand standards.
• Centralize vendor relationships: Prevent duplicate accounts and ensure your volume discounts apply across all your sites. Order.co centralizes vendor management, so total organizational spend flows through one place.

Streamline your distillery procurement processes in 2026

Order.co gives distillery operations, procurement, and finance teams the tools to centralize vendor management, automate invoice processing, and extend payment terms that align with your production cycles. Whether you're sourcing botanicals for your next gin release, ordering bottles for an upcoming whiskey batch, or managing supplies across multiple tasting rooms, you can save time on procurement busywork and redirect that energy toward perfecting your craft.

Ready to see how Order.co can transform your distillery's purchasing operations? Book a demo to learn how the platform can help you source smarter, reduce AP workload, and optimize cash flow for your spirits business.