Soft Drinks Distribution in Nepal: The Season Calendar, Empties and Van Routes

Soft drinks are heavy, seasonal and loud. A crate weighs a lot, the peak is short and intense, shops have little room, and a good share of your capital sits in crates and glass bottles that are supposed to come back. A distributor wins by having the right sizes in the right outlets before the heat arrives, getting the empties back, and collecting the money the same day. This guide is built around the distributor's calendar, the empties ledger and the van day, with how to run each in gamitrack.

The soft drinks year

The year in this trade has a rhythm. Your own order history is the best guide, but the general shape in much of Nepal looks like this:

Period	What usually happens	Distributor priorities
Magh to Falgun	Cold, low demand	Clear old batches, count empties, repair crates, plan the season
Chaitra to Baisakh	Heat builds, demand climbs	Raise stock cover, set reorder points, check outlet coolers
Jestha	Peak in the Terai and valleys	Daily stock review, extra van trips, tight collections
Asar to Bhadra (monsoon)	Rain cuts footfall, roads close	Smaller drops, reroute around closures, watch dampness
Asoj to Kartik (Dashain, Tihar)	Festival and family demand, gatherings	Large packs, party and event orders, wholesale stock
Mangsir to Poush	Weddings and events, demand easing	Event and catering accounts, collect festival credit

Two things follow. First, peak preparation happens in Falgun and Chaitra, not in Jestha. Second, the quiet months are when you fix the things the peak exposed: crate losses, routes that took too long, outlets that never paid.

Pre-season checklist (Falgun to Chaitra)

• Pull last year's peak-week orders by size and depot from your records.
• Set low-stock levels per size and flavour at each depot in gamitrack.
• Count crates and empties in every godown and record the opening figure.
• Visit key outlets to confirm cooler placement and display agreements.
• Match van capacity and route frequency to expected demand.
• Clear old batches before fresh season stock arrives; stock is received with batch and expiry dates, so the oldest lots are visible.

Empties are money

Glass bottles and crates cycle between plant, depot, van and shop. When they are not counted, losses are discovered only when the plant counts, and the distributor pays.

Set up crates and returnable bottles as their own SKUs. Then:

• On dispatch, record crates and bottles leaving the depot with the full goods.
• On delivery, the van records empties collected from each shop.
• At the depot, empties returned are recorded as stock movements. Movements cannot be edited later, so the history holds.
• Per account, look at how many crates are out with each wholesaler or shop. A number that keeps growing is a conversation for the next visit.

Your deposit rules are your own business decision; gamitrack gives you the count to apply them to.

A van day, from loading to cash count

Time	Step	In gamitrack
Morning	Load against confirmed orders and the day's stops	Orders for the route; dispatch is all-or-nothing
Route	Deliver, collect empties and payment, take new orders	Proof of delivery with GPS, photo and receiver name; payment recorded against the party
Each stop	Check shelf and cooler, note closing stock	Visit with geofence and photo; no-order reason if none
Return	Unload empties and unsold stock	Stock movements back into the depot
Evening	Count cash, compare with recorded payments	Party ledger and payments for the day

The delivery person's screen shows the amount due at each stop, the location and directions. Payments by cash, eSewa, Khalti, Fonepay, bank or cheque are allocated to the oldest invoice first, so the shop's ledger stays right without manual matching. The all-day location trail is kept on the phone even where signal drops and synced later, but orders, visits and payments need a connection, so plan to record them where there is coverage. For the evening reconciliation in detail, see van sales cash reconciliation.

A hypothetical peak week

Suppose a distributor runs two vans from one depot. In Jestha, the low-stock view shows the most popular 500 ml size will hit its reorder level by Thursday, so the manager orders from the plant on Monday instead of waiting. On Wednesday, the crate count shows one wholesaler holding far more crates than his recent orders explain; the officer raises it on the next visit. On Friday, one van's cash is short against recorded payments; because each payment was recorded at the shop, the gap is traced to one stop the same evening. These figures are invented for illustration.

On-premise, events and coolers

Restaurants, hotels, canteens and event caterers buy differently from shops. They often have their own prices and display agreements, and events produce large one-off orders.

• Give on-premise accounts their own party type and price list, with individual overrides where needed. VAT applies to taxable lines, and invoices are numbered per fiscal year in IRD format.
• For events, book the order early, assign a delivery person and agree the pickup of empties.
• During regular visits, officers check that coolers are present, clean and stocked with your brand, and record it with a photo. Visits outside the geofence, very short visits and missing photos are flagged for the manager.

Collections from on-premise accounts deserve their own attention. Hotels and caterers often pay on longer cycles than shops, and a big event order can sit unpaid for weeks. Set their payment due days deliberately, put them on the weekly collection plan, and check the aging before agreeing the next large order.

Routes, targets and schemes

Build routes with ordered stops and assign them to officers or van salespeople. Compare visit frequency with order frequency each month; convenient shops tend to be over-visited and far ones forgotten. Officers have monthly targets in amount or kg with a daily pace, which matters in a short peak where a slow week cannot be recovered later. Dealers have quarterly or annual targets by fiscal quarter, and tiered schemes on fulfilled secondary sales credit approved rewards to the dealer ledger. Van staff claim fuel and other expenses with a receipt photo, and managers approve or reject with a reason.

A weekly scorecard

• Visits completed against planned
• Productive calls (visits with an order)
• Stock cover in days per size at each depot
• Crates and bottles out per account
• Overdue balances by age

Mistakes that show up every summer

• Counting only full goods. Empties and crates are working capital. If nobody counts them, they leak, and the bill arrives when the plant counts.
• Reordering after the stock-out. In Jestha, a two-day gap at the depot means two days of shops buying another brand. Set reorder points before the season and review them weekly.
• Over-visiting the easy shops. Vans drift towards outlets near the depot. Compare planned stops with actual visits and rebalance the routes in the quiet months.
• Informal cash on the van. If payments are not recorded at the shop, the evening count becomes guesswork. Record each one as it is collected.
• Ignoring old batches in the cold season. Stock left from autumn should be cleared before fresh season stock arrives.

Related reading and next step

Related reading: mineral and jar water distribution, fruit juice distribution, monsoon route and delivery planning, and the beverages industry page.

The best time to start is before the heat: pick one depot and two van routes in Falgun, enter stock and crates, and run a month before the peak. See pricing for plans and the free trial.