6 Essential B2B Reports Every Wholesaler Needs

Remember when sales and marketing teams could rely on gut feelings and industry whispers to bring in leads, close deals, and build repeat business? Those days are long gone.

As B2B eCommerce reshapes the landscape, success relies on one thing above all—data. But here’s the catch: having data doesn’t automatically give you an advantage. What really matters is how you interpret it and turn it into nuggets of insight. Naturally, B2B reporting tools have become essential for wholesale success, turning numbers into clarity and direction.

To grow your wholesale business, you need to see data as your secret weapon. When you harness the insights hidden in your numbers, your business thrives.

In this article, we’ll explore six essential B2B reports that turn raw data into actions to bring in quick wins and nurture sustainable growth.

Why B2B reporting tools are essential for wholesale success

Running a wholesale business is like being a maestro: every part of the operation has to move in harmony. Plus, you have to catch the missteps before your buyers do. You’re conducting sales teams, managing inventory, balancing customer demands, syncing shipping timelines, and keeping the books steady on tempo.

In the past, tracking all that meant back-and-forth between spreadsheets, phone calls, and a fair bit of guesswork. But today, B2B eCommerce platforms—with their built-in reporting tools—have changed the score. Instead of reacting to chaos, you can now orchestrate clarity. Real-time reporting gives you a clear view of your business’s rhythm.

1. Sales reps’ performance reports: Turn team data into growth

One of the most powerful B2B reports tracks your sales team’s actual performance, providing answers on who’s closing the biggest deals and who might need support.

What you’ll learn

• Star players: Which reps are bringing their A game, generating the highest revenue and average order value.
• Performance gaps: Which team members are falling behind on their goals and may need support.

Apply the insight

• Coach with data: Spot your top performers and study their order patterns to coach your entire team: Are they focusing on high-margin products? Cross-selling or down-selling to keep customers happy without missing order cycles?
• Provide support: Check in with struggling reps and provide additional incentives or training to improve performance. For instance, show them how to craft smarter offers for customers—within your profit margin.
• Analyze incentives: Does your commission structure motivate the right sales behavior? Use filters to see reps’ sales per order to get to the bottom of it. For example, you can review rep orders to ensure they aren’t discounting high-value products, secretly chipping away your profit margin for an easy commission.

2. Customers performance reports: Know your customers (and keep them engaged)

Successful wholesalers do one thing great: they know their customer. Yet, many wholesalers don’t have a full picture of where each customer stands, leaving many relationships unattended. Customer churn is invisible until it’s too late. Modern B2B eCommerce platforms make this data visible at a glance.

What you’ll learn

• Top customers: Who your most active and profitable customers are, based on total order value and order frequency.
• Churn risk indicators: Which accounts might be slipping away, based on declining order activity and order size.
• Historic customer behavior: Explore buyer habits change over specific date ranges, signaling their loyalty and future value.

Apply the insight

• Customer tiers: Identify your top customers to segment them into tiers (e.g., Platinum, Gold) and personalize offers, product access, or pricing.
• Strategic segmentation: Check company activity and tailor your sales approach to its business type, ensuring the best service level for everyone. For example, a retailer may have a smaller order size but a higher frequency, while a distributor may place larger —though more sporadic—orders. Volume discounts make sense in the second case, but not in the first.
• Proactive retention: Discover accounts with declining activity and have your team reach out immediately with personalized offers, updated catalogs, or quick check-ins before they defect to a competitor.

3. Customer activity reports: Decode buyer behavior

Sales success comes from understanding what your customers do and which of your products or services matter to them. For wholesalers ready to move beyond basic sales history from your wholesale website, this report offers a decisive advantage. Imagine seeing which products your buyers browse and what they search for most — it’s like having a window into their decision-making process.

What you’ll learn

• Product & category traction: Which products and categories buyers are viewing or engaging with—not only on your wholesale website but also in their custom PDF catalog.
• Active explorers: Which customers are actively exploring your catalog, and how their product preferences change over time.
• Login activity: Which customers have visited your B2B portal and when.
• Search gaps: Which products and categories buyers are searching for most often or place orders over the available quantity, indicating potential unmet demand or navigation issues.

Apply the insight

• Personalized outreach: Use these insights to tailor sales and marketing outreach. If certain customers frequently view a category but don’t place orders, reach out to them to address technical questions, understand their hesitations, or present targeted offers.
• Capture buyers’ interest: Monitor views or searches for products following any major external communication (like a newsletter on new floor finishes) to get a rough pulse check of immediate buyer interest.
• Build customers’ dream B2B storefronts: Fine-tune your website for each buyer with suggested listings or discounts based on what they’ve searched for or engaged with.
• Refine your sales strategy: Pair insights from this report with customer performance and product sales data to gain a 360-degree view of your sales. Do you need to retool your approach for specific customers or products?

4. Product sales reports: Know what’s driving revenue

In commerce, every product tells a story. Some are customer favorites that drive consistent revenue. Others spike seasonally (e.g., pharmacies stock up on Vitamin C during flu season). And then there are a few that just don’t get the traction you expected (maybe that “sun protection water” wasn’t quite the hit you hoped for). That’s where a product sales report comes in.

What you’ll learn

• Revenue magnets: Which products, categories, or brands are bringing money to your bank account and which ones aren’t moving.
• Demand indicators: Spot product seasonality, trends, and category performance to guide sales and marketing opportunities.
• “Dead weight” stock: Identify slow movers and the quantity of product currently occupying warehouse space.

Apply the insight

• Inventory cleanup: Filter product sales to include unsold products and in-stock variants. Decide whether to discount them, bundle them with star products, or discontinue them to free up working capital.
• Catalog check: Filter product sales by category, brand, or variant to assess real demand. Use this data to understand where your catalog is missing out: Is a product underperforming because it’s shelved too deeply in your B2B store, buyers don’t understand the value it can bring to them, or because the price point is too high?

5. Inventory control reports: Optimizing cash flow and stock health

It is a truth universally acknowledged that stockouts and overstocks are a common source of frustration for wholesalers. A B2B inventory report gives you the tools to manage your inventory like a pro. This insight is essential to ensure your capital is healthy, flowing unobstructed between high-performing products and not tied up in stagnant SKUs.

What you’ll learn

• Cash flow health: Measure the total value of your available inventory against the value of sold products.
• Product profitability: Product cost data helps you calculate gross margin and net profit per SKU.
• Stockout prevention: See which products are close to your minimum quantity threshold to decide whether to replenish, clear out, or discontinue.
• Inventory management decisions: Explore which products are moving slowly or are costly to produce or stock. This intel helps you decide whether to adopt different inventory practices, such as backordering, vendor-managed inventory (VMI), or other just-in-time methods, to free up capital.

Apply the insight

• Reduce overstock risk: Monitor inventory value per category to see where you may be “bleeding” cash. For example, you can set up clearance sales or discontinue codes that are sluggishly moving from your shelves.
• Set safety stock: Check the minimum quantity to identify products close to running out of stock. You can also adjust product status rules based on availability and sales speed so customers are in the loop for low-stock items, while you handle restocking.
• Evaluate your sales strategy: Pair product cost data with product sales data to confirm that high-volume sellers are also high-margin items, and to check if you need to re-focus your sales strategy.

6. Order summary reports: Monitoring financial health

This B2B report is the executive’s high-level dashboard. It covers your wholesale business’s actual cash flow, summarizing every transaction placed through your B2B portal.

What you’ll learn

• Financial overview: What’s the total net value, tax, and total value of all orders over a chosen period, providing a clean snapshot of top-line revenue.
• Cash flow visibility: Break down orders by payment method (e.g., credit limits, ACH payments) and order status, providing instant insight into pending versus received funds.

Apply the insight

• Beat bad debt: Drill down data to instantly isolate and prioritize outstanding invoices or delayed payments (e.g., using order statuses like “Awaiting Payment,” “Invoiced,” or “Billed”).
• Optimize payments: View the volume of orders processed via high-cost methods (like credit card fees) versus preferred methods (like ACH payments). This data helps you promote the most profitable options and put ineffective ones to sleep.
• Support monthly accounting: Generate reports containing net value, tax, and payment status, which are essential for month-end close procedures. For instance, your accounting team can quickly verify if the total outstanding balance matches the sum of all orders that you have marked as unpaid.

How B2B Wave’s reporting tools turn data into smart decisions

We’ve talked about core methodology. The six B2B reports discussed above turn raw figures into decisions that inform sales strategy, protect inventory, and ensure financial health.

Our B2B eCommerce platform brings these reports —from Inventory Control to Customer Performance—all in a single dashboard. But we don’t stop there. Our wholesale eCommerce solution goes even further, offering advanced insights to keep your business right on course.

• Marketing efforts: Explore Coupons Activity to instantly assess the ROI of every discount coupon and promotional campaign, ensuring they actually drive profit.
• Sales insight: Use Customer Product Sales reports to see who buys what (and when) for more intentional sales planning.
• Fulfillment efficiency: Monitor Products by Order Status reports to identify inventory bottlenecks and resolve supply chain problems (Reputation saved — crisis averted).
• Operational visibility: Review the Low Quantity and Order Summary by Status Change reports together to understand stock levels and order flow. Decide when to restock, pause supply, or adjust production to keep inventory healthy and operations efficient.
• Business momentum: Use visualization reports, such as Sales per Product per Month, Sales per Category per Month, and Orders per Month, for instant performance tracking.

Seizing data opportunities for sustainable growth

You’ve seen the evidence: success lies in using the right reports to understand where you are, where you’re going, and how to get there. That’s the real goal of reporting: to connect people, products, and decisions so your business runs with less friction and more foresight.

B2B reporting tools give you clarity to smooth out operational bumps, unearth hidden business opportunities, and secure profitability.

Platforms like B2B Wave make that process easier, but the principle stays the same: data only matters when it helps you make better choices.

Don’t wait for a lost account or missed opportunity to realize the cost of missing data. See the difference our platform, and its built-in reports, can make. Book a free demo today.