Pipe lengths, wire spools, and small-parts bins, all on one bin-mapped warehouse. Reorder points adjust for seasonal demand patterns instead of relying on static minimums.
Every industry has its quirks. Here are yours.
We've mapped the operational quirks of electrical & plumbing supply against Nautilus capabilities. Each challenge here pairs with how we handle it.
Bulk + unit tracking
Wire sells by the foot but ships on 500ft spools. Pipe fittings come in bags of 50 but get picked individually. Inventory systems usually pick one or the other.
Dual-unit tracking
Track bulk and unit quantities simultaneously. Nautilus knows a spool has 347 feet remaining without manual counting, and decrements the foot count on each cut.
Bin management
Thousands of small parts in bins, drawers, and racks. Finding a specific fitting in a sea of brass is painful and slow without bin-level mapping.
Bin location mapping
Every bin, drawer, and shelf position is mapped. Scan a part number and Nautilus tells you exactly where to look, with photo confirmation where useful.
Seasonal demand
HVAC parts spike in summer, heating components in winter. Static reorder points either run dry in peak or sit overstocked in shoulder seasons.
Seasonal forecasting
AI analyzes historical patterns and upcoming weather data to adjust reorder points automatically. The model recalibrates monthly as new data arrives.
From dock to door.
Every action a electrical & plumbing supply warehouse takes, mapped to a Nautilus flow — running on phones, tablets, or rugged scanners.
Receive bulk & units
Scan against PO. Bulk items (spools, pipe lengths) record full and partial quantities; small parts record by bag count.
Bin map putaway
Small parts route to bin locations on the mapped grid; bulk to floor pallets. The bin map updates live as putaway completes.
Counter or pick
Counter customer requests resolve through bin location lookup. The pick path crosses the warehouse once, not three times.
Cut & dispatch
Wire or pipe cut to length. Remnants re-scan back into inventory with new length recorded; finished cuts dispatch with the order.
What customers see.
Averages across Electrical & Plumbing Supply customers in their first 12 months.
Electrical & Plumbing Supply questions, answered.
The questions buyers in electrical & plumbing supply ask before they sign. If yours isn't here, the team can answer it on a discovery call.
How does dual-unit tracking handle wire spools and pipe lengths?
Each SKU defines its tracked units: a 500-foot wire spool might track in 'feet' for sales but 'spools' for inventory. When 35 feet sells off the spool, Nautilus decrements the spool's remaining footage to 465 feet without affecting the spool count. When the spool empties, it auto-removes from inventory. Counter pricing shows feet-of-wire pricing while warehouse staff scan whole spools — no math required.
Can counter staff use Nautilus directly during transactions?
Yes. The web dashboard and tablet app are designed for counter use: bin location lookup, stock check, price quote, and sale processing in a single workflow. If counter staff use a separate POS, Nautilus integrates with Lightspeed Retail, Square, and the major distribution-specific POS systems. Sales decrement inventory in real time.
How are seasonal reorder points handled?
Nautilus's reorder logic uses seasonal pattern analysis from your historical data. A water-heater SKU with strong winter demand and weak summer demand will get different reorder points by month, automatically. The seasonal model needs about 18 months of historical data to calibrate; before that, it falls back to a 30-day rolling average.
Will it integrate with our distributor management system?
Most distributor management systems (Eclipse, Epicor Eagle, P21, Trade Service) have either direct integrations or webhook bridges. The integration depth varies: P21 and Eclipse get bidirectional inventory sync; Epicor Eagle and Trade Service currently run as inventory exports plus order imports. We're adding richer integrations on customer request.
See Nautilus running in a electrical & plumbing supply warehouse.
Live demo with a warehouse engineer. 30 minutes. We bring the data, you bring the questions.