What the solution is
inecta is an American vendor of an industry-specific Business Central solution for the food industry. Their overall product covers the entire supply chain from recipes and batch production through warehousing and transport to direct store delivery, and the B2B portal is a module in that solution.
It is important to understand what that means for selection. The portal is not sold as a standalone commerce product to anyone, but as part of a food ERP. If you are not in the food industry, the solution does not belong on your list, however well it would otherwise fit.
How the integration works
The portal connects directly to the Business Central database in real time. The vendor is explicit that there is no middleware and no batch runs, and that stock, prices and customer data are therefore always current.
It is the most direct model in the catalogue alongside the solutions where the storefront is an app in the ERP. There is no synchronisation that can stall, and no state where the portal and the ERP disagree.
One property is worth highlighting, because nobody else in the catalogue has it: the portal can create both sales orders and purchase orders, and customers, vendors and items can be added directly. That makes the portal a vendor portal as much as a customer portal, and for a food business that both buys and sells in volume, that is a real difference.
Prices, discounts and agreements
Because the portal reads directly on the ERP database, the pricing logic is Business Central's own. Customer-specific prices, agreed prices, volume discounts and discount groups are decided by the ERP, and there is no flat price matrix to keep fresh.
For the food industry there is a detail that matters more than in other trades. Catch-weight items, meaning items whose price depends on the actual weight at picking, cannot be priced definitively in advance. An architecture where the price comes from the ERP in real time is therefore not merely tidier, it is necessary. Ask to see it demonstrated on a catch-weight item.
The portal has no independent layer for campaigns. That is the same trade-off as with the other ERP-driven solutions, and for a food wholesaler it is rarely a problem.
The order and the finance function
The order is a Business Central document from the outset. Partial shipments, back orders, returns and credit memos follow the ERP's own processes, and there is no queue of orders outside the accounts.
Because purchase orders can also be created, there is a different kind of control question to ask than with an ordinary storefront: who may create a purchase order, and what happens before it becomes a commitment. That is an approval question rather than a technical one, and it should be settled in the setup.
VAT is calculated by Business Central. Reconciling payments is a separate job, but it is less pressing in a trade where most is sold on invoice.
Who the solution fits
The solution fits a food producer or food distributor already running or considering inecta's Business Central solution. That is the situation the product is built for, and there the portal sits closer to the business than any general commerce platform can get.
It also fits if you need customers to see stock before they order. In a trade with short shelf life and shifting availability, real-time stock is not a convenience but a precondition.
The solution does not fit outside the food industry, and it does not fit consumer selling. There is no open storefront, and design and editorial content are not part of the product.
What to settle before you decide
Pricing is not public, and the portal is presumably priced as part of the overall ERP agreement rather than separately. Our bands are an estimate with low confidence and should be replaced by a combined quotation for the ERP and the portal.
Ask to see a catch-weight item, a batch trace and a partial shipment in the portal. Those are the three places a general commerce platform breaks down in the food industry, and the three places this solution has to show its value.
Finally, ask for an answer on on-premises and for a named European reference customer. The vendor is North American, and European food legislation is not the same, so a European reference says more than an American one.