Blue Link runs your warehouse. Harold reads your post.
Blue Link has been serving SMB wholesalers since 1992 — inventory, accounting and order management in one place. Supplier invoices still arrive as PDFs and still get typed. Harold reads, validates and maps them into Blue Link-ready data.
Why wholesalers stay on Blue Link
Blue Link was founded in 1992 by a chartered accountant, and it shows: it's built for small and medium wholesalers who need real inventory and real accounting in the same system rather than two products and a nightly sync.
Inventory and accounting genuinely unified
Not an inventory app bolted to a ledger. One system, one set of numbers, which is exactly what businesses outgrowing a standalone accounting package are looking for.
Sized for SMB, priced for SMB
Industry-specific functionality usually reserved for much larger organisations, without the enterprise implementation that normally comes attached.
Lot tracking and landed cost built in
Traceability, landed cost across duty, brokerage and freight, and barcode scanning through receiving and picking — the things distribution actually turns on.
An open web services API
Two-way integration with external systems is a first-class capability rather than a custom project, which makes adding a layer like Harold straightforward.
The last manual step in an otherwise automated flow
Blue Link automates a lot. Orders flow from eCommerce and marketplaces, picking and shipping are scanned, landed cost is calculated, the ledger updates itself. Then a supplier invoice arrives as a PDF attachment and the whole thing stops while somebody reads it and types it in.
It's the classic shape of a mature system: everything inside the boundary is automated, and the boundary itself is manual. The cost isn't just the typing time — it's that AP becomes the slowest step in a fast process, and errors introduced there propagate into landed cost and margin.
No ERP fixes this, because reading an arbitrary supplier's PDF is a different class of problem from processing structured data.
You already made the right platform decision
If you're on Blue Link you've already chosen a system that fits an SMB distributor. Replacing it to acquire document capture would mean moving up to an enterprise platform, paying enterprise implementation costs, and taking on complexity you deliberately avoided.
The proportionate fix is to add the one capability that's missing and leave the rest alone. Blue Link's web services API means that fix connects cleanly rather than becoming its own integration project.
Same system, same team, same process — minus the typing.
How Harold works with Blue Link
Train Harold per supplier
Upload a few invoices from each supplier. Harold learns the layout and where each value sits. Under ten minutes per supplier, then it holds.
Validate and code before it moves
Totals recalculated, tax checked, supplier and GL codes matched to your own Blue Link reference data, exceptions flagged for a human rather than silently accepted.
Deliver into Blue Link
Harold produces validated output in the structure you define. Blue Link's web services API gives a clean path for writing that data in where you have the resource to connect it.
Why wholesale distributors choose Harold
Fills the exact gap Blue Link leaves
Blue Link handles everything after the data exists. Harold handles turning a supplier's PDF into that data. The two don't overlap.
Landed cost gets more accurate
Freight, duty and brokerage documents can be read and validated the same way as invoices, so the inputs to your landed cost calculation stop depending on careful typing.
No implementation project
Nothing installed into Blue Link, no version dependency, no consultant. Start with one supplier and expand if it earns it.
Free to start, no paywall
Full features from day one, no credit card required.
Common questions
Does Harold connect to Blue Link directly?
Blue Link provides a web services API for two-way integration with external systems, which is the cleanest path. Harold also produces a validated import file if you'd rather not build against the API initially.
Can it handle freight and customs documents as well as invoices?
Yes. Any recurring inbound document type can be trained the same way, which matters for landed cost accuracy where duty and brokerage paperwork feeds the calculation.
Will this disrupt our existing eCommerce and marketplace integrations?
No. Harold operates entirely on inbound documents before they reach Blue Link and has no involvement in your outbound or order-side flows.
How much does it cost?
Harold is free to start with full features and no credit card required. You can train it on your suppliers and evaluate the output before paying for anything.
Keep Blue Link. Lose the data entry.
Start free, no credit card required. Train Harold on one supplier and see the output before you spend anything.
Try Harold free