A tyre is an awkward product for channel software: it is serialised like an appliance, claimed against like a vehicle part, discounted in slabs like FMCG, and sold through a channel that ends at a fitment shop the brand has never billed directly. Most tyre dealer management software picks one of those facts and ignores the rest — a billing package that treats a tyre as a quantity, or a claims tool bolted onto nothing. xMatix carries all four on one platform: serialised stock from plant despatch to the fitment counter, warranty claims settled from inspection evidence, schemes scoped by pattern and size, and credit that gates at the moment of order.
The channel: plant, distributor, dealer, fitment shop
Tyres move plant → regional distributor → dealer → fitment counter, and each hop is a place identity and accountability traditionally leak. On xMatix every tier is a party on one master and every location is a node on one append-only stock ledger, so a despatch from the plant, the distributor's godown stock, the dealer's counter stock and the transfer between them are entries in the same books. Field teams work the dealer tier as planned, geo-verified beats — stock checks, order capture with schemes applied by rule, collections against invoices — the discipline durables brands run, aimed at the tyre counter. What the brand gets back is the view it has never had: where the stock actually is, tier by tier, without asking anyone to fill a sheet — and books that post themselves as the stock moves, GST on the line, e-way bills raised from the despatches that need them.
Serialised stock, because a tyre has a serial
Every tyre carries an individual identity, and a channel system that drops it to a model-level count throws away the one fact that settles arguments. Units despatch as serialised lots; transfers clone the lot with identity intact; the dealer's sale binds serial to buyer. That is what makes the hard questions queries: which serials have sat unsold past a season, which dealer sold the tyre now coming back as a claim, whether the units in a disputed despatch were ever received. Ageing by serial and location surfaces the slow stock while a transfer or a scheme can still move it — before it becomes next year's write-off, or worse, a very old tyre sold as new.
Warranty and pro-rata claims without the phone calls
Tyre warranty is pro-rata by construction — the settlement depends on measured wear — which means the claim is only as good as its evidence. On xMatix the claim starts from an inspection: the returned tyre's serial, tread-depth reading, photos and the defect finding captured on a checklist, the serial's own sale history already on the record. The claim computes its pro-rata value from the captured readings under the brand's rule, routes through approval, and settles as a credit note into the same ledger the dealer's account lives on — decisions per line, rejections carrying reasons. It is the same claims engine that runs automotive warranty claims, with the tyre inspection as the evidence.
Schemes and rebates by pattern and size
Tyre schemes are never "10% off everything" — they are a target on truck radials, a slab on a pattern the plant needs to move, a quarterly rebate on a size range. Because the product master carries pattern, size and category as real attributes, schemes scope to exactly the slice they mean, and the server prices them identically in every order — the officer's app, the dealer's portal, the counter. Consumption accrues in a ledger tied to qualifying order lines, so the quarterly rebate settles from arithmetic the dealer can check rather than a regional interpretation they have to contest.
The dealer's counter, running on records
The dealer tier gets its own full treatment — credit and collections at the counter, stock by pattern and size, self-raised claims, a portal for ordering — on DMS for tyre dealers. The short version: the dealer sees their own catalogue at negotiated terms, their live outstanding, their claim status; the brand sees sell-through and exposure per dealer. Both are reading the same ledger, which is what keeps the relationship out of the argument business. Credit deserves the emphasis, because tyres are a working-capital trade: the fleet account buys sixteen at a time on terms, the dealer carries that credit, and the distributor carries the dealer's. Limits enforced at order save at every tier — with an approval path for the deliberate exception — keep the chain's exposure a set of live numbers instead of a quarter-end discovery, and collections allocated to specific invoices keep the ageing honest all the way up.
Fitment-shop secondary, captured honestly
The last leg — dealer to fitment shop — is where visibility usually ends. Where dealers bill on the platform or through the portal, that secondary sale arrives at source: serial, buyer, date. xMatix does not pretend to be a vehicle-fitment lookup — the catalogue models patterns, sizes and variants, and what fits which vehicle stays the fitter's trade. What the platform adds is that when the sale happens, the serial's journey is complete, the warranty has a start date that is a fact, and the brand's secondary numbers are transactions rather than estimates.