In this guide 6 sections
Keep the billing package. It files your returns and keeps your books. Add software only for the gaps around it, such as credit by site, part supplies, delivery notes, schemes, returns and brand claims. Replace it only when it blocks those jobs, cannot hold stock by batch or expiry and refuses every import or export from other software.
Start with what the billing package already does well
A billing package earns its place: it raises tax invoices, keeps ledgers, prints vouchers, matches each remittance to a bill and gives the accountant a trial balance. Your staff know every screen. The auditor trusts its numbers.
That is worth protecting, because replacing it means retraining the billing counter, carrying opening balances across and risking a messy close in the middle of a busy season.
List what works first. Then list what is missing.
- Sales and purchase invoices
- Receipts, payments and bank entries
- Stock summary by item
- Ledgers and tax returns
Find the gaps around the package
Gaps appear where work is physical. Credit by site is one gap. Another is the delivery note for the first half of an order, say flanges and reducers today with the strainers next week, which the invoice cannot split. A third is the scheme slab, which changes every month and lives only in a salesman’s phone, so the counter bills it from memory.
One test finds them. Ask the dispatch clerk and the collections caller what they keep in a notebook or spreadsheet beside the billing screen, because every such note marks a gap.
Returns are a common one. A credit note for unused grout, adhesive or hardener rarely carries the batch, the reason and the brand claim that follows it.
Add or replace: a way to decide
Add when the package exports and imports. A thin layer for orders, delivery notes and site credit can sit beside it and post only the totals back into the ledger.
Replace when the package cannot hold stock by batch or expiry, cannot stop a bill on a credit breach or cannot price a ferrule by pack size. Those are limits of design. Training will not fix them. Do not wait.
Ask for the export format first. A closed package is a trap.
- Can it export invoices and stock to CSV or Excel
- Can it import orders from another system
- Does it support batch and expiry fields
- Can it hold a bill when credit is breached
Run the new layer beside the old one
Pilot one gap at one branch. Orders and delivery notes make a good first choice, because the counter feels the benefit within days and the risk to the books stays small. Tell the stockist counter staff why.
Keep posting invoices in the billing package while the new layer runs and compare totals every week, because a difference almost always points to a wrongly mapped field. Mapping errors show up fast.
Move the next gap only after the first has held through a full month end, a stock count and a round of statements.
Questions to put to a vendor
Ask how the product posts to your billing package, who repairs a mismatch when the totals differ and who holds your data once the subscription stops.
Request a demonstration with your own item master, your own buyers and one of your messiest orders, such as a part supply that carries a scheme.
Write the gap list on one page. Mark each line add, replace or leave.
Gap and fit worksheet
One page ruled into three columns. The first lists the jobs, from credit by site to brand claims, and the second records whether the billing package does each job fully, partly or not at all. The third column marks add, replace or leave, and beneath it sits the vendor’s written answer on export format, posting method and who repairs mismatches.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Do I need new software if my billing package works?
Not necessarily. If credit, delivery notes, schemes and returns live in notebooks or sheets, a layer around the package is worth a look. If they do not, leave it alone.
Can a new system post into my existing billing package?
Often yes, through an import file or a connector, but before you sign anything, get the vendor to post live against your own ledger heads.
What should I never lose when changing systems?
Keep opening balances, batch and expiry on stock, buyer credit terms and the last few years of invoices, and test each on a copy before the switch.
Which gap should I fix first?
The one your staff complain about weekly. For many distributors that is part supplies and delivery notes, and for contractors’ yards it is credit by site, because that is where the arguments start.